It is said that you observe that time flies when you start to lose your favorite artists…

Ronnie James Dio died yesterday, on 16th Mai, such a great artist, such a great voice…

RIP DIO

PS: I know it is totally inappropriate, but if I’m allowed to make a short joke, as seen on BeetWeek.com, like a flash of the day:

“DIO died, Ozzy is still alive and well…“

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I started to enjoy more and more fingerstyle guitar music, I had this mate in high school that played that way (sort of) and we didn’t know at that time how to call his style, we just said something like “like this guy (name here)”

Now, once in a while you find one of those guys that really master this style and come up with a great work of art like this guy here,f or example…

So, here it is, Unbreak my heart on jazz guitar…

Enjoy and comment!

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At least 3-4 times in my life I had the idea of doing something great, or at least I thought so, but because not doing it, I lost the train and somebody else did it. OK, I guess it happened to the best of us…

One of the things I wanted to develop was well…something that was later developed and called WordPress (I actually wanted a web site platform able to give people the possibility to make the web a read-write environment, not a read only environment as it used to be in my first days in university. This happened I guess somewhere around 1998 - 1999 or something)

I had a few other good ideas on the way, never put them in practice…Man, I could have been a millionaire…

Now, when I started GuitarFlame I had this list with big ideas to follow that should drive valuable traffic to my site. Some of them were put to practice, some were not.

Among those that were not put to practice was the idea of recording something with a virtual band, a bass player somewhere on the other side of the world, a lead singer on another corner of the Earth and so on. I can tell you that at one moment I even had most of the pots filled in (in my plan, I won’t say who was there because it was my dream, I have the right to keep it secret)

Why am I telling you this?

Today I have seen this video on YouTube that I really liked, because those guys did exactly what I wanted in my early days with GuitarFlame! And they rock!

So, without other words, guys, I give you Welcome to the jungle!

Enjoy!

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Hello, my good old online friends…
Haven’t seen you in a good while! I haven’t updated my blog since a while but I couldn’t really tell you why, I don’t know, I just didn’t feel like it.

Today listening some songs on YouTube I suddenly felt like saying hello again here, just for the sake of it. Again, I don’t know why…

I know I owe you a couple of good posts about how things have been lately, I promised you I will tell you more about this and I really can tell you about it at this moment. I just don’t feel like it today.

Today I just felt like posting here this beautiful song that made me write this post, read a couple of posts on other guitar blogs (that also started again the urge to write).

So here’s the song. Enjoy and see you soon!

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This morning I was in the mood for GNR (the new one, I mean, yes, that one that I don’t actually consider to be GNR) so I started to search for it on Youtube, I couldn’t find the original This I love but I found this one here and I must admit I didn’t expect that this guy actually sing this song this good.

You know that damn feeling that you have when you are waiting for the guy to screw up at every note he takes. I had this exact feeling with this guy so at the end of the song I found myself tensed because I waited for him to not be able to sing high notes. So I listened the song again, this time more relaxed, actually enjoying it…

After I watched the video I realized the guy gives rock singing lessons. So I can only say keep it up, dude, you rock! Literally! He also has a site, http://www.rockstrip.com.

How about it?

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I was thinking about something that bothers me since my first day on stage:

Can you ever watch/listen your own concerts fully happy with the result?

I mean, every time I watch one of our own shows there’s something bothering me: look, I sucked on backing vocals here, I sound like a choked goat, fuck! Or damn, the sound was horrible, or I don’t know, like, one time it happened that Costin, the lead singer in my band jump right to the chorus when he wasn’t supposed to. We ALL looked at him asking ourselves WTF happened?!!

It happened that I(cheers: yeaaahh!) entered earlier with the solo (stupid me!) and none of us realized that…After the damn solo, the math of the song told us to go on with the lyrics while Costin, the lead singer, knew that after the solo comes the chorus. So he entered that…

OK, but that’s something that happens once in a while, a very rare while, I hope it never happen again on stage. And the fact is that nobody in the crowd realized that, it was one of our own songs, the lead singer realized at one moment something was definitively wrong and he improvised something so we could all stand proud at the end of the show. Nothing happened!Ih!

But the main idea was not to speak about the moments we/you screw up, but about the normal shows that you watch on tape later on. Is there any perfect show there?!

1) Can you happily watch your shows saying well, yeah, that’s one heck of a show right there!!!

And 2) because I started the parallel thread here: what’s the worst screw up on stage you’ve ever experienced?

I will start here by telling you about a contest we were part of somewhere around 1999 I guess, we were playing this song here, “Doar tu” is called (translation:Only you), the song has some breaks here and there and at one moment, the drummer started on the wrong hand, I mean he started half a measure later or God knows what happened, because after that moment we played that song half measure earlier than our drummer who only realized something was wrong when we all finished the song and he kept on playing…

We were close to killing him for that at that moment. The fact is that the next year, in the same formula we won the second place in this national contest, with this song here, the song brought us a contract  so we didn’t actually suck, generally speaking, right? Don’t get that impression, OK?

So, here’s the song, in an acoustic version, no drums or bass, but you get the point.

So, now, honestly speaking, what was the worst moment you have experienced on stage!?

Come on! Amaze me!

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It’s a shitty weather in Romania these days, it’s raining, there’s no sign of sun, I barely woke up this morning, I feel like going back to sleep.

So, naturally, I am in a mood for listening some acoustic guitar…Or Gary Moore. Or both…
So here it is Still got the blues, Gary Moore, on acoustic guitar

And The prophet

Or Samba pa ti, Santana?

So, how’s the weather where you live in terms of music you listen?

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Yesterday I posted that article about an analysis of Single ladies, the song of Beyonce and I posted here that video I found on YT of a 2 people band singing it.

I realized I liked that version so much that I listened it about 10 times I guess since yesterday so I decided to go on and explore a bit more, to find out who are these guys playing there.

So I went to their YouTube channel and I discovered a very interesting band, Pomplamoose, with a very interesting music. I say interesting because it is somehow a bit outside what I do. I kind of only know the “band” way of making music. You know, take a guy with a good voice, throw in a guitar, a bass, some drums and maybe a keyboard and hit play. Whatever.

These guys are what I could call a project. A very interesting project that I really enjoyed. I have already told you I liked their version of Single ladies more than the one of Beyonce, it’s fresher, makes me think of a great holiday morning without the obligation of doing anything, you know the high school or college holiday mornings. Yeah! That’s it!

Pomplamoose reminds me of college, I guess also because the way they are dressed and the way they act. However, I love the way they record their music and make clips out of it. Again, it’s fresh!

So here’s another song, September by Earth, wind and fire, a cool cover IMO.

By the way, you can find their music on iTunes and you can download their music from MySpace.

Now, enjoy and comment!

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Today I have found a great article (and I would dare to say a great blog, but I didn’t yet have time to explore it more, but I will), an article discussing a pop-dance melody, Beyonce’s Single ladies.

What, no guitars?! No rock or blues?

No, but I dare you read further and then read the original article!

OK, I must admit I didn’t know the song, I am not spending my time on MTV since a good while and I rather listen radio channels that broadcast music that has some kind of guitar on it. Whatever. Also, my perception of dance, rnb music is somehow simplistic, not much happening there, that’s my call. And I don’t like the music of Beyonce too much. A matter of taste, I guess.

Now, reading this article made me listen the damn song 3 times already. I don’t like it, and honestly I don’t give a damn because this is not the reason I listened it.

The reason is the article of this guy who broke the song into pieces and made an in depth analysis of the whole song from a melodic, harmonic and rhythmic point of view. Conclusions are pretty wild, I didn’t even know you could hide so much under the skin of a pop song.

Read the article here and then come back to comment and let me know what’s your take on that!

Also, I reached that article after listening this song on YouTube. What do you know, I like this version better, I guess it’s more creative IMO.

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The manager of U2’s 2009-2010 World Tour, said the tour is not yet profitable, after 3 months from starting it and 33 concerts. OK…and why is that?

They have this strange looking scene, called The Claw. The Claw costs 470.000 pounds per day, no matter if they play or not!! Plus they have about 200 trucks for the tour. So far, seems that the tour cost is 45.000.000 Euro! Damn, that’s an expensive tour, I guess, I can’t quite figure out these numbers, they are a bit over my capability of perception!

The tour is scheduled to end on 2010. Now you do the math to see how much will they pay until the end of the year for that damn stage.

Now, question: if such a stage is so profitable, don’t you think I should buy one myself and just rent it to U2 or Metallica or to whoever wanna take it? Don’t you think that’s one profitable business?!

By the way, if it costs 470.000 pounds per day, how much could it be to buy it?

Damn business math!

PS: I just figured out why it is named The Claw, cause it gathers the money so easily and it never let them go…I guess

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