Pensamiento Aleatorio

New Field Music album on the way

2012-01-05T16:35:00.001-08:00

Just received a notification that the new Field Music album Plumb is available for preorder in iTunes. The release date is set for February 12th. Should be worth listening!

My Favourite Albums of 2011

2012-01-01T01:19:00.000-08:00

Contrary to what I hoped at the end of last year, and as you can see by the very meagre output on this blog, I didn't get enough time to listen to new music. I still managed, however, to find a few gems here and there. As with the last couple of years, most of my music came in through eMusic. I didn't get enough time to trawl through sites like Bandcamp or even Twitter for new music. Bandcamp is high on my music searching agenda in 2012 as is Kompoz.

It seems to me that this year, a number of Folk bands on both sides of the Atlantic made it heavily into the mainstream media and had a bigger influence in music. I think this influenced my list this year a little bit.

5. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

Girls is a an American indie group (more like a duo) that came into prominence with their first album back in late 2009. There was a lot of buzz around at the time and I dutifully checked their album. I remember thinking this is to raw for my liking and the sound is a bit off. It never grew on me.

Much to my surprise, I really liked "Father, Son, Holy Ghost". It has a fuller sound, better production and it feels overall like a better thought out and more structured album. The record is divided in two parts. The first few songs are pretty up tempo and cheerful, while the second part turns more introspective. I'm sure there is more to get out of it if you pay attention to the lyrics, I never do! The single Vomit received a lot of praise from bloggers and established magazines alike when it came out. My favourite track of the album however is Forgiveness.

4. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart took me by surprise when I discovered Belong as one of the featured albums en emusic back in April. Another American indie band, this time from NY, but with a very different sound. It took me back to the days when I was in college and I listened to music all the time, yet the sound was fresh and new to me despite the fact that you can hear the early 90's fuzzy indie scene influences all over it.

I am not sure whether this is an album that will last the test of time, but in 2011, I listened to it over and over again.

I simply love Heart in your heartbreak.

3. Bird of Youth - Defender

Bird of Youth is one of those folky acts I referred to at the top of the post. Not sure if this particular one has actually made it into the mainstream yet! I don't know anything about them except the brief bio on their website that mainly talks about Beth Wawerna's musical birth and not much else. The Album was released by Jagjaguwar records and produced by Phil Palazzolo along with Okkervil River’s Will Sheff. However it is not listed on the label's website except for a reference where they were supporting Okkervil River on a show back in December.

Another emusic discovery, this is a pretty folksy album with good melodies and an overall feel good element to it, I had to listen to it over and over again. I couldn't get enough of it.

I hope they don't fade into obscurity!

2. Steven Wilson - Grace for Drowning

My list wouldn't usually include Grammy nominated albums. However, in early December, GFD was nominated for a Grammy in the Category of Best Surround Sound Mix.

I think Steven Wilson is one of the musical geniuses of the 21st century. A very prolific artist with a number of different outlets primarily driven by Porcupine Tree. Despite this prolificness, GFD is only Steven Wilson's second album. For me, this was one of the most anticipated albums of 2011. Back in the summer, SW put out a teaser on his website with cuts from every single track of the album. From there, I knew that GFD was going to be something special. This is a complex album that is difficult to explain. I hesitate to call it a prog rock album for a number if reasons, but it definitely is one, it is more eclectic than that though. It has some pop elements but also borrows heavily from jazz. One of the biggest achievements in my mind is the fact that despite being a huge piece of work, it doesn't suffer from the over the top flamboyance very commonly associated with prog rock groups.

You can see videos of some of the songs, including some live cuts on the album link above and judge for yourself. Simply beautiful.

1. Lisa Hannigan - Passenger

And from the expansive musical landscape that is GFD, I move to an album that used as a first sigle a song that starts with a Ukulele.

It is no secret that I think Lisa Hannigan is one of the best Irish musicians out there. I simply loved See Saw when it came out back in 2008. It made it to my first list of albums of the year. I was a bit apprehensive about Lisa's new album. What if she turned out to be a one trick pony that only managed to get from under the shadow of one Damien Rice for a brief moment. I shouldn't have worried, I feel that with Passenger, Lisa Hannigan planted herself firmly amongst the leading group of Irish artists currently out there.

Passenger is a beautifully crafted album that just begs to be listened over and over again. As with See Saw, this is one of those albums that I see myself going back to from time to time in the years to come.

Other Stuff

Some other interesting albums included the third installment of one Matt Stevens, mentioned a few times around here before. Also some new music by ASIWFA, The Aristocrats, Laura Marling and Adele.

Probably the most interesting discovery I made this year was the Australian brother and sister duo of Angus & Julia Stone and their related solo albums.

The biggest musical disappointment was definitely the new Yes album.

As for Live Music, this year I didn't go to as many concerts as I would have hoped and will forever be marked as the year I saw Justin Bieber live in concert! On a more serious note, over the summer there were a few good gigs, including Journey and Foreigner. I saw Rush with Geedy Lee play live (and they played La Villa Strangiato!). But the event of the year had to be Roger Waters' show The Wall.

It might sound like a strange choice after you have read the full post above, but the track of the year for me was Adele's Someone Like You.

Even if I don't get enough time to listen to all the music I want in 2012, I know I will discover some new and noteworthy music worth talking about at the end of the year.

Roger Waters, The Wall Live at the O2 Dublin - May 23, 2011

2011-05-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Words are not enough to describe the show earlier today at the O2. It was the most technologically advanced show I have ever seen. Probably the best sound I have ever experienced and overall one of the most fantastic live experiences any rock concert goer will ever have. According to some critics, this is probably the most ambitious rock tour ever conceived.

We had everything from the headmaster puppet to the walking hammers and even the now classic flying pig.

Similar to the concerts in 1980, a wall is built during the first part of the show only to be brought down at the end of the show. The wall is used as a screen where a multitude of CGI graphics and cartoons from original movie are shown. I would like for someone to explain to me how it works. Every time a new brick is added, a couple of seconds later images start to appear on that brick. It is incredible. I'm sure there will be a DVD at some stage, and it will be worth getting. I suspect that, contrary to what happened back in 1980 where the band lost a significant amount of money, this tour will make a lot of Money for Mr. Waters.

The only thing missing was the voice of David Gilmour on Comfortably Numb!

The setlist is the same as the live shows in 1980, with a couple of extra songs not on the original album:

Set one

In The Flesh?

The Thin Ice

Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1

The Happiest Days Of Our Lives

Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2

Mother

Goodbye Blue Sky

Empty Spaces

What Shall We Do Now?

Young Lust

One Of My Turns

Don't Leave Me Now

Another Brick In The Wall, Part 3

The Last Few Bricks

Goodbye Cruel World

Set two

Hey You

Is There Anybody Out There?

Nobody Home

Vera

Bring The Boys Back Home

Comfortably Numb

The Show Must Go On

In The Flesh

Run Like Hell

Waiting For The Worms

Stop

The Trial

Outside The Wall

Rush live at the O2 Dublin - May 12, 2011

2011-05-13T11:14:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was given a masterclass on how to produce and perform a rock show. Rush, the Canadian power trio finally made it to Ireland. For me, it was a long wait... Over 25 years since I first discovered their music. It was either Tom Sawyer or Red Barchetta. Whatever song it was, it was from the album Moving Pictures. It was worth the wait! It couldn't have been scripted better. The Time Machine tour, is the tour where they are playing the whole of Moving Pictures, non-stop.

The setlist was exactly as expected, and for the people outside looking in, this might sound boring and predictable, but for most Rush fans is what makes the band so exciting to watch. While you may know what song is coming next, you still don't know what to expect. And when you get a chance to see performances of songs like La Villa Strangiato... There are no words that can quite describe the experience.

The attention to detail is extraordinary. The movies at the beginning and end of the show are just fantastic. The "Jesus Mary and Joseph" from O'Malley was received with a chuckle from the audience. The moving lightning rig was amazing. And even things like the sampling of Aimee Mann's voice in Time Stands Still, or Alex Lifeson playing the bass pedals for the keyboard solos in Subdivisions and Red Barchetta. Fantastic!

I have been playing the bass as a hobby for many years, so being able to see Geddy Lee perform live, was a treat in itself. Wow!

It wouldn't be a Rush concert without the drum solo. There are no words to describe it! I'm sure this will be released as a live DVD at some point, so my advice is to go an buy it.

For those interested in the guitars, Alex played manly Gibson Les Paul's, many of them with tremolos. The PRS's are long gone, although he did use one for one of the songs. He used a 12 string acoustic (Martin I think) for the intro on Closer to the Heart. He also used a strat and a tele for a song each and finished the set with a white Gibson ES-335.

Geddy, used a couple of Fender Jazz Basses, both with maple necks. Not that common these days, but I have to admit that I much prefer maple over any other neck on my bass. It is incredible the sound that he gets out of that thing!

As for the chimpanzees, they played an Epiphone Les Paul, and a Squire Jazz Bass!

The picture is from Alan Moore's Audioaperture flickr's stream.

Preview - Rush live at the O2, Dublin - April 12, 2011 Dublin

2011-05-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've been a Rush fan for the last 25 years or maybe more. I've never had the chance to enjoy their live experience first hand. If their live albums, DVDs and hundreds of reviews are anything to o by, it is an amazing experience!

This will change on Thursday!

Here is the expected set list to wet the appetite:

"The Spirit of Radio"
"Time Stand Still"
"Presto"
"Stick It Out"
"Workin' Them Angels"
"Leave That Thing Alone"
"Faithless"
"BU2B" (from Clockwork Angels)
"Freewill"
"Marathon"
"Subdivisions"

Intermission

"Tom Sawyer"
"Red Barchetta"
"YYZ"
"Limelight"
"The Camera Eye"
"Witch Hunt"
"Vital Signs"
"Caravan" (from Clockwork Angels)
"Love 4 Sale" (Drum solo)
"Closer To The Heart"
"2112 Overture / The Temples of Syrinx"
"Far Cry"

Encore:

"La Villa Strangiato" (with polka intro)
"Working Man" (with reggae intro and Cygnus X-1: Book I outro)

Just google and read any review from a blog to get the picture!

Databases on the iPhone / iPod Touch - Updated!

2011-03-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Back in August of 2008 I wrote a post about some database applications available for the iPod Touch / iPhone. You can find the original post in this blog somewhere.

I think it is time for an update. As there have been a lot of new apps added to the App Store over the last 2 years, some of which are worth exploring.

First of all a quick update. FMTouch has come down in price significantly! It is now only €7.99. It makes it a lot more accessible. Still I haven't gone for it.
I still use CSV Touch as it is a very simple way to carry data around. With good search capabilities. However, CSV touch forces you to have a essentially a materialized view of your data as you can not perform any joins between different tables. You can think of it as carrying a number of reports on your iPhone.

Since I want to play around with SQL, I have looked at a few options. Note, there are a lot more options available these days, including things like HanDBase or AppCreator that let you develop more application like forms on the iPhone, or even clients that let you connect to corporate databases and keep copies of the data on your phone.

So to choose, I ran a search for sqlite on the App Store, and after reading about the different app features I settled on SQLite Editor as it seems to have the most features available. I am only starting with it, but so far, so good.

As always, comments are welcomed!

Julie Feeney in New York 2011 - Video

2011-03-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Julie just posted this beautiful video on YoutTube. It has live excerpts of Grace and Love is a tricky thing as well as a fantastic live version of Impossibly Beautiful.

Worth checking out.

Google Arbutus Yarns for some more fantastic videos

Justin Bieber.... seriously?

2011-03-03T06:11:00.000-08:00

After months of inactivity I am not so happy to report that the next live show I will have the pleasure to attend will be... Justin Bieber... seriously... imagine the reasons. Needless to say that I will not be posting a review or the setlist.

Thankfully the summer is approaching with vintage shows like Foreigner / Journey, Rush and more importantly, The Wall.

In the meantime, here is a link to an Interesting new track from And So I Watch You From Afar, directly through the Swear I'm Not Paul Music Blog.

My Favourite Albums of 2010

2010-12-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

2010 was a great year for music, although I wasn't able to listen to as much as I would have liked, here are my top 5 albums of 2010 in reverse order:

5. Field Music - Field Music (Measure)

Third full length studio album from Field Music, English band led by the Brewis brothers. This one got me by surprise as I hadn't heard of the band or related side projects before. It was a suggestion from eMusic.com, and it hit the mark! A well thought out album well worth checking out!

4. The Pineapple Thief - Someone Here Is Missing

I love prog rock, but lets be honest, prog rock is more often than not pretentious and self indulgent. And there are only a handful of groups that can pull it off these days. My favourite group of the new breed of prog rock musicians is Porcupine Tree. After I discovered them I went looking for similar artists and I haven't found many that come anywhere near. The Pineapple Thief do, and in my opinion, with Someone Here is Missing, they are finally standing on their own with their individual sound. A fine modern prog rock album and the best of 2010!

3. Matt Stevens - Ghost

Matt is from a new kind of musician that does it for the love of the art (obviously selling his music is what allows him to keep going, so I encourage you to drop by his site to get some pay what you'd like music). He is very active on the social media (twitter, facebook, ustream, you name it) and is always available to engage on conversation. You can ask him about his techniques, chord progressions or even what he had for breakfast, if you are so inclined. What this really does is to make the music more personal and accessible. He plays solo guitar by looping parts of a song and layering more sections on top of each other.

Ghost is a solo guitar album like you have never heard before. It is a must!

2. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I came late to the Arcade Fire party. Having only bought Funeral earlier this year means that I haven't been enjoying their collective music as long as most people out there. When I saw their Glastonburry set (on TV only unfortunately) they really drew my attention. I saw there was substance to all that craze around them. I bought Funeral shortly after that and The Suburbs a few weeks later. If ou haven't yet, check this one out, you won't regret it.

1. Suzanne Vega - Close-Up Vol 1, Love Songs

In theory compilations are not allowed on a favourite albums of the year list, however this one is slightly different. As I have mentioned somewhere else on this blog, I have been a big fan of Suzanne Vega since I heard Luka for the first time back in 1987. The Close-Up series features re-recorded versions of some of her most memorable songs. What makes these recordings so powerful is the way Suzanne Vega has managed o make them more raw. They feel closer. You almost feel like she is playing in your living room. Volume 2, People & Places was released a few weeks ago, and it is also worth checking out.

Other Stuff

Some other good albums to check include:

Belle & Sebastian - Write About Love
The New Pornographers - Together
Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart
Peter Gabriel - Scratch My Back (still waiting for the second album!)
Eels - Tomorrow Morning
Villagers - Becoming a Jackal
Polar Bear - Peepers

My favourite non-single track of the year is Crash Years by The New Pornographers

My favourite Irish single of the year is This Is Goodbye by CODES

The concert of the year for me was Julie Feeney live at the National Concert Hall back in February. Magical!

And finally, the weirdest opening act has to be the acoustic set by French prog rockers Averse when opening for Lisa Cuthbert (another interesting album to check)

I hope to have more time for more interesting music in 2011. Happy New Year!

Porcupine Tree Live at Tripod in Dublin - October 11th, 2010 - Setlist

2010-10-12T02:15:00.000-07:00

Fantastic show yesterday evening in Tripod. Just the setlist for now. I will publish a review later on.

Set 1

Even Less
Open Car
Lazarus
The Sound of Muzak
The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase One)
I Drive the Hearse
Anesthetize

Set 2

Occam's Razor
The Blind House
Great Expectations
Kneel and Disconnect
Drawing the Line
Blackest Eyes
Time Flies
Sleep Together

Encore

Trains

Suzanne Vega Live at The Village in Dublin - June 10th, 2010

2010-06-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I have seen Suzanne Vega live 6 or 7 times, I still get a sense of anticipation every time. I first listened to her when back in 87 on a rare day I stayed home from school and the local rock station had a feature on her. Her voice captured me instantly and I went on a quest to get her first 2 albums (not easy to get imports in Mexico back then!). I had become a true fan.

I have seen her with a number of different backing bands, including 3 piece (guitar, bass & drums), 4 piece (keyboards, guitar, bass & drums) and even just herself and a bass player, usually Mike Visceglia. However this time she was joined on stage by Mike, and by Dubliner Gerry Leonard on electric guitar, giving her performance a whole new dimension.

This tour is to promote Suzanne's new album "Close-Up Vol 1, Love Songs". the first in a series of 4 that are planned to be released over the next 2 years and are more raw re-recordings of Suzanne's songs. This tour also marks the 25th anniversary of the first album, so a good few old songs were included in the set, sadly no Undertow (I have never heard it live!), although she told me after the show that she still plays it occasionally. Here is hoping for the next time!

The show started with "Marlene on the Wall", her voice sounding as good as ever, and the crowd of mainly seasoned fans enjoying every bit of it. She played the usual suspects of Luka, Gypsy, Left of Center and The Queen and the Soldier. She played some new ones for me live: New York is a Woman, Frank & Ava and a rare gem for me Some Journey. The setlist also included the DNA version of Tom's Dinner which was fantastic!

She was more talkative than I have ever seen her before, telling stories before every song, and not the same ones I have heard before! This time I learnt that the guy behind Gypsy was the Arts and Crafts councilor in the boys camp... which brought a chuckle to the audience. There was no reading before Neighborhood Girls, which thankfully didn't skip like on my original vinyl. (Well, I couldn't travel back to the States to return it so I had to leave with it... to this day 23 odd years later, I still expect the CD to skip when I am listening to the song!)

I got the setlist from stage, if you are wondering what are the numbers beside every song, it is for Suzanne to know where to place the capo on her guitar. I then went to the the merchandise stall to buy her new CD (well worth a listen) where I was told that she would be coming out to sign autographs in 5 minutes, so I decided to stick around and she kindly signed my setlist.

If Suzanne Vega plays anywhere near you, go and see her. I hope she keeps coming back to Dublin tour after tour. I will keep going to enjoy what has always been a great night!

Setlist

Marlene on the Wall
Small Blue Thing
Caramel
Frank & Ava
New York is a Woman
Pornographer's Dream
Gypsy
Harbor Song

Intermission

Tombstone
Left of Centre
Blood Makes Noise
Solitaire
The Man Who Played God (A Sparklehorse song)
The Queen and the Soldier
Neighborhood Girls
Some Journey
Luka
Tom's Diner
Calypso
Rosemary
In Liverpool (it was on the setlist but it wasn't performed!)

Live picture of Suzanne from the flickr photostream of zoomzuzaki

Julie Feeney Live at the National Concert Hall - May 29th, 2010

2010-06-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

When I was telling people that I had tickets to see Julie Feeney at the National Concert Hall, I was always asked: What kind of music does she play? Answering the question is not straightforward. Julie's style can best be described as "classical pop".

For last Saturday's concert, Julie was accompanied on stage by the Pages Orchestra, a 20+ piece orchestra with piano, strings (violins violas, cellos and a double bass!), winds, harp and percussions. Julie played the piano, recorder, accordion and her trusted harmonium.

She played a selection of songs from '13 Songs' and 'Pages' in full. As always, the arrangements are very different from the album versions and really emphasize her beautiful melodies and harmonies. She also added a couple of covers, including a great version of Halleluja, and excerpts from Philip Glass' Songs from Liquid Days.

I was lucky enough to get 2nd row tickets despite the fact that I only bought them 5 days before the concert and it was fully sold out by Saturday. And the acoustics of the National Concert Hall really made for a fantastic show.

Aching sounded beautiful with the full orchestra, as opposed to last year in Crawdaddy when she sang it with the harmonium only. One More Tune is a favourite of mine live, she gets the crowd really engaged clapping and singing. Myth went down very well as Julie walked around the theatre while interacting with the crowd. And of course the encore of Love is a Tricky thing, followed by Impossibly Beautiful finished what was a fantastic night and a very different concert.

Julie's songs, interwoven harmonies and poetic lyrics are truly beautiful. I hope that she releases a live album to enjoy the experience over and over again.

Setlist:

Autopilot
Monster
Alien
Grace
~~Instrumental Interlude~~ 1,000,001 (instrumental version)
Valentine's Song
Stay
Nothing to Declare
Knock Knock
Wind Out Of My Sails
Myth
Excerpts from Songs from Liquid Days
Fictitious Richard
Mr. Roving Eye Guy
Aching
You Broke The Magic
Life's Nudge
Hallelujah
One More Tune
Love Is A Tricky Thing
Impossibly Beautiful

Update, June 5th, 2010 - I received a message from Julie yesterday where she kindly told me that the first instrumental was a special arrangement of 1,000,001 that she prepared for the show, so I have changed the setlist accordingly!

My Favourite Albums of 2009

2009-12-31T08:21:00.000-08:00

This is becoming a tradition now! For the second year, here is my list of favourite albums of this year. Again, somewhat different from all the other lists out there. Here are my top 5:

Porcupine Tree - The Incident. Long awaited follow up to Fear of a Blank Planet
Julie Feeney - Pages. You can read my reviews somewhere else on this blog
God Help The Girl - God Help The Girl. Simply brilliant!
And So I Watch You From Afar - And So I Watch You From Afar. Cracking debut of this instrumental rock band from Northern Ireland
Steven Wilson - Insurgentes... aptly names after a very long avenue in Mexico City

As always all comments are welcomed!

Lisa Hannigan Live in Vicar St, Dublin - December 3rd, 2009

2009-12-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Musically, Lisa Hannigan is about the complete opposite from Yes. Barely a week later after seeing them I was treated to the perfect week for a Thursday evening. I discovered Lisa a while back through her work with Damian Rice but I became a big fan after the release of her Mercury Price nominated album See Saw. I don't know the full story behind the break up with Mr Rice, but nothing in the set made reference to her musical past. Having seen him opening for Leonard Cohen and then Lisa's show earlier this week. I am firmly on Lisa's camp.

The set started with a fantastic version of Pistachio, and was made up of most of Lisa's debut album. She complimented it with a couple of covers and she was brave enough to play 3 or 4 new songs. For me the highlights of show where "I don't know", "Teeth", "Lille" and the closing song, which was a fantastic version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus".

The simplicity of Lisa's music accompanies her voice perfectly. The beauty of the arrangements and the energy and happiness of the musicians made for an incredible gig. I imagined myself going back to Vicar St to see her over and over again for the next 20 years as the memories build up of her incredible music.

Setlist:

Pistachio
Sea song
Blurry
Ocean and a rock
My Pirate disco
Braille
Venn diagram
Courting blues
Passenger
I don't know
Just like tom thumb
Couldn't love you more
Teeth
A Sail
Lille
Blow the wind southerly
Keep it all
Personal Jesus

Lisa's live picture is from kDamos's flickr Lisa Hannigan Live Set.

Yes Live at the Olympia, Dublin - November 26th, 2009

2009-12-06T01:49:00.000-08:00

Nearly 8 years to the date after I saw Yes for the first time as part of their Symphonic tour at The Point in Dublin, I had the opportunity to see them again. The fact that Jon Anderson is not with them doesn't bother me, but don't et this the wrong way, I understand the importance of Jon Anderson in the history of Yes, but 2 things: The fact that he is not with them on this tour means that they played a couple of Drama tracks, and more importantly, right around the Union tour I remember him making a comment that Yes was like an Orchestra, where it didn't matter who was playing as long as the Spirit of Yes was kept alive. Indeed it is!

The crowd in Dublin was fantastic, like me, most of them didn't seem bother with the fact that Benoit David was singing or that Oliver Wakeman was on keyboards, although lets face it, the number of keyboard players in Yes over the years is rather large.

First to Benoit, I think he did a fantastic job. He was able to hit all the notes ad he had lots of energy, even if his dancing was a bit dodgy. He gave the show a different vibe. The guys were having fun on stage, and I think he was the main driver behind that.

As for Oliver, he is a really good keyboard player, although his timing was not impecable like his father's. A lot of the previous reviews pictured him as a bit cold, I felt he was really involved in the show.

Alan White played a good set with a a solid and fun drum solo. I think his playing is a bit understated, and to be honest I wasn't paying to much attention to him as I spent most of the time enjoying Steve's playing.

Chris Squire played a fantastic show, although he was about to collapse at the end of it! It still gets me how he can sing background vocals while playing Roundabout, if you have a bass, try playig it, let alone singing at the same time. A highlight for me was the bassline for Tempus Fugit.

But to me, the star of the show was Steve Howe. I have seen him with Yes a couple of times and with Asia a couple of times, and this was by far his most fun performance. He was dancing around and improvising in some of the soles, which is unheard off! In true over the top prog rock mode, at some stage he had his Gibson ES, while playing the Line 6 Variax on a stand, beside the Fender Dual Pro Steel and changing between the three. Fantastic!

For his solo set, I wanted to see him play Mood for a Day, which he played the last time I saw him with Asia, but instead he played Classical Gas... it was superb!

As I mentioned before, the highlights of the show where the two Drama songs, and the fact that there were no 20 minute epics didn't bother me. Easy for me to say because the last time I saw them they played Gates of Delirium and Close to the Edge. The other song that is worth mentioning was Siberian Khatru. So the opening was exactly like the start of the famous Yessongs. All in all a fantastic show, from a fantastic band, and yes, if they come back again, I will go and see them. Doesn't matter who is playing what instrument, as long as the spirit of Yes is alive, I will continue to support them.

The Setlist:

Firebird Suite
Siberian Khatru
I've seen all good people
Tempus Fugit
Onward
Astral Traveller (with Drum Solo)
Yours is no disgrace
And You and I
Steve How Solo
- Classical Gas
- Cactus Boogie
Owner of a lonely heart
South side of the sky
Machine Messiah
Heart of the Sunrise
Roundabout
Starship Trooper

Cats and Cats and Cats - Oh Boy!

2009-10-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

On the way back from work this afternoon, I was listening to the latest BBC Introducing Podcast. The featured DIY Label of the Week was Robot Needs Home records. One of the bands they showcased was the fabulously named Cats and Cats and Cats as they have a new download only double A single out. It is available on iTunes and emusic.com.

I immediately logged on to emusic and used my remaining credits for this month to download the few songs they have released. Real high quality indie rock, specially their newest release. Worth checking out! I do hope they make it big!

Check them out on their myspace page.

Enjoy!

U2 Croke Park, Dublin - July 25th, 2009

2009-07-26T08:12:00.001-07:00

Pics from U2 360 Tour
Originally uploaded by
Michelle Kenna [satsuma7]

Yesterday I saw U2 for the 4th time, but it had been a while since the last time in Slane in 2001. U2 have been known for a while as the masters of Stadium Rock but in recent years they seemed to have lost some of that spark that made them so popular in the late 80's and early 90's. And certainly "No Line on the Horizon" hasn't helped much to improve that image. But was I in for an amazing show!

The concert started promptly at 6:30 with a short set from Republic of Loose who to me where a bit disappointing. In all fairness, the place was less than half full. I things in the pitch may have been a bit better for them. They finish their set with their most well known song Comeback Girl.

They were followed by a slightly longer set from Kaiser Chiefs, who rocked the place. They were fantastic! Highlights for me where Ruby and Oh My God. Ricky Wilson said at some stage that his job was to get us moving, and he did it very well. I hope they regain the momentum from their previous albums. I would like to see them headline one of the summer festivals soon.

Finally at 8:50 U2 came out and started with 4 new tracks, which worked much better on a live setting than on the album. From the new songs I really liked Magnificent, Get on Your Boots and I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight. Despite the fact that they played many new songs, they brushed up a few classic tracks, and although I missed I Will Follow and New Year's Day which they had played every time I had seen them, they played Angel of Harlem, In a Little While and The Unforgettable Fire, which I had never heard live.

The first time I saw them in Mexico City for the Zoo TV Tour, I remember an interview with Bono who said that he had heard that Mexican crowds where the only ones that were as loud as the Irish. I think he was wrong and Ireland is still the best place to see U2. One of the highlights of the night yesterday was when they started I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Bono stopped singing and the crowd took over until the end of the first Chorus. It was something incredible.

The setlist changed significantly from Friday to Saturday to make it worthwhile to go to all the gigs. Now I am thinking if I should get tickets for Monday.

Here is the full setlist thanks to swearimnotpaul:

Breathe
No Line on the Horizon
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
Mysterious Ways
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Angel of Harlem
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
The Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride (In The Name of Love)
MLK
Walk On
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
---
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

By the way, can anybody tell me if Adam Clayton's hollowbody bass is a Jack Casady, a Rivoli or an EB2?

Bruce Spingsteen Live in Dublin - RDS, July 12th 2009 - Review and Setlist

2009-07-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

About 20 years ago, a friend told me to make sure that if I ever had the opportunity to see Bruce Springsteen, that I should take it as it would probably be one of the best concerts I would ever go to. He did this while bragging over the fact that he had been on the concert in LA that ended up
as most of the last album in the Live 1975 - 1985 retrospective. It took a long time but finally yesterday I was able to see The Boss play live in the RDS Stadium in Dublin.

I wasn't disappointed!

We got to the stadium at around 7:00 PM, the concert was scheduled to start at 7:30, but it didn't start until just after 8:00 and in typical Irish fashion after a short shower, but even the rain couldn't dampen the excitement from the crowd. Thankfully that was the last of the rain we saw for the evening, in contrast with the Saturday gig where it poured over Dublin for most of it.

The stage was quite plain. And as for gigs this size (I read somewhere that it was 40,000 people, can anybody confirm it?) it was lacking a lot of flair. It had two screens on either side, and a big screen behind the stage which would come on and off from time to time. Lights were fairly basic and most off them were to illuminate the crowd. A couple of times during the show they even turned on the floodlights! The show is obviously about the music, and no better man than Bruce himself to carry the show for the 3+ hours that the show lasted.

Springsteen is well known for his changeable setlists, where he throws surprises and takes on requests from the crowd. The full setlist is below, but let me give you some of my highlights and lowlights first. I was bitterly disappointed that he didn't play The River, he had been playing it
for the last few shows so I had high hopes. The River is up there with Billy Joel's Scenes from an Italian Restaurant as one of my favourite story songs. I have seen Billy Joel play that song live a couple of times, and I was really hoping to hear my other favourite, but it didn't happen. He
played other great tunes, including No Surrender, Darkness on the Edge of Town (which he has played only a handful of times during this tour), Jungleland, 41 Shots (which according to Stand Goldstein is the first time he plays it since 2003!) and Born to Run.

The show started with Nil's accordion solo which morphed into the Irish song Fields of Athenry and after 3 hours it ended with a bang with Rosalita, Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark and Twist & Shout, where he also had us singing La Bamba for a little while.

You could see the smiles on the faces of the people as they left the stadium. It was a night to remember for a long time.

Full setlist:

Intro: Nils accordion solo - Fields of Athenry
No Surrender
Badlands
Night
My Lucky Day
Outlaw Pete
Hungry Heart
Working On A Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
Darkness On The Edge of Town
Raise your Hand (Instrumental)
Spirit In The Night (Request)
Sherry Darling (Request)
Proud Mary (Request)
Prove It All Night
Trapped
Waiting On A Sunny Day
Promised Land
Radio Nowhere
American Skin (41 Shots)
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born To Run

Encore:
Jungleland
American Land
Rosalita
Glory Days
Dancing In The Dark
Twist & Shout (with a little bit of La Bamba!)

Please let me know if you have a goo picture of the gig that I could use for the post!

Yeats to Music: Mike Scott at the National Library Dublin - June 30th, 2009

2009-07-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

So I caved in to the pressure of my adoring fan base who were asking for a review of yesterday's poetry reading. Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, I said poetry reading. Yesterday was the final event of the summer programme that the National Library of Ireland had dedicated to the work of Irish Poet W.B. Yeats: Yeats to music by Mike Scott.

If you don't know Mike Scott, he is the lead singer, and the main force behind The Waterboys. Check out one of my first posts for a review of the Midlands Festival a couple of years ago where they were on the bill. Mike Scott has already recorded a few songs with Yeats' words, most notably Love and Death (on the album Dream Harder) and A Song of the Rosy-Cross (with Sharon Shannon). Mike is also working on a full stage production of Yeats' songs that will be on stage next March in the Abbey Theatre.

The "gig" was an hour long event where Mike read Yeats' poetry for the first 30 minutes or so, focusing on some more obscure poems, and then he was accompanied on stage by Steve Wickham on the fiddle and John McCullough on keyboard.

For the musical part of the event, they played five or six "musical adaptations" of Yeats' poems. I particularly enjoyed the last two songs as they reminded me more of the Waterboys sound:

Politics, which happens to be the last poem on the last poetry compilation... not necessarily the last poem he ever wrote! I hope this song gets released at some stage.
Let the Earth Bear Witness which was inspired by the current events in Iran. Mike explained that he took the lyrics from two poems that seemed appropriate for what's going on over there at the moment. And composed the music around them.

WARNING: The video has some very strong and violent images of the events in Iran

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEoEUdOKhsA

I have to say that all in all, it was a very interesting event from the National Library of Ireland well worth attending

iPod Touch 3.0 - First Impressions

2009-06-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

Well, for once I am disappointed! Granted, I am using an old 1st Gen iPod Touch but for that reason I had to pay €7.99 to get the update, and what do I have to show for it...

Shake to shuffle (like I will really use it)
Cut & Paste (that is cool!)
Spotlight search
Landscape keyboard
I can download movies directly, if there were movies available in iTunes in Ireland
Sync notes. I thik this ability will come in handy.

And I think that's about it!

Here is the link with all t he details from apple http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/softwareupdate.html

Comments are welcomed.

Tesla, Journey, Witesnake & Def Leppard Live at the O2 Dublin - June 12th 2009 - The Review

2009-06-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I ventured to the O2 for the first time since it reopened at the end of last year. What a change! It really is a magnificent arena for rock concerts. It has a capacity for 14,000 people and it is perfectly designed to ensure that you have the best experience while you are there. It really is miles apart from the old Point Depot. Now, if it only had a proper car park.

With 4 acts on the bill, the show started promptly as advertised at 5:45 when Tesla hit the stage. I was trying to get my backstage passes (more on that later) so I missed the first couple of songs of the set. It had been years since I last heard them. They didn't disappoint, even if the place was only about 60% full, they gave it all. They played for about 45 minutes, and their set included the classics Signs and Love Will Find A Way. In typical 80's rock fashion, at some point Frank Hannon was playing an acoustic guitar on a stand while holding a double neck SG! You can almost make it out on the picture if you squint a little bit.

Journey came out at around 6:45 and played close to 60 minutes, you can see the setlist on my previous post. A much shorter set than the one on the National Stadium last year. I think Arnel Pineda is getting better and better. It sounded fantastic, but I was left wanting a bit more. The highlight was obviously Don't Stop Believin'. The place was about 95% full by the time Journey came out, and it was great to hear the whole place singing along with them.

On came Whitesnake. The reviews on the web are a bit mixed. Those who liked them didn't like Def Leppard and Journey, and vice versa. I fall on the later camp. I have never liked Mr. Coverdale, and he didn't do anything on Friday to change my mind. The highlight for me was a little bass solo at the beginning of Is This Love. We ended up getting up and going out to get a beer and a hot dog.

We decided to chance it and get downstairs to see Def Leppard, we had backstage passes after all! We found a perfect spot on the left hand side of the stage. I had tickets to see Def Leppard for the Adrenalize tour in the early 90's, but I ended up being sent on a business trip and had to give them away. I started listening to Def Leppard in the mid 80's when Pyromania came out and then a bit later with Hysteria. I used to simply love those records. I had forgotten all about it, but Friday reminded me just how much I did.

Def Leppard are the ultimate hard rock professionals, their sound was really tight and clear. For the most part, Joe Elliot is still well able to reach the high notes and bring the audience along with him. I was particularly impressed with Vivian Campbell's playing. As a kid, when Hysteria cam out, I wanted to see Rick Allen play live on that fancy drum kit of his... he didn't disappoint. He is not the fastest drummer in the world but he has a punch that cuts through the music and holds the songs together. The setlist was a good mix of old and new. In particular, the second part of the show was very strong. You can see the full list on my previous post as well. Highlights for me were Armageddon It (my favourite DL song!), Animal, Rock of Ages and Photograph.

To top it all up, and if seeing three great bands on stage in one night wasn't enough, thanks to my brother, who met Rick Allen as a result of some charity work they have done together through their charities The Raven Drum Foundation and Fogo es Fuerza, I got back stage passes for the meet and greet after the show. Rick came out to meet us and had a chat with us about the concert. A true gentleman, despite the fact that it was nearly 1 o'clock in the morning he still spent some time talking to us about the show. He was very tired, and I was too cool to bother him asking to take a picture with me... now, that was stupid!

Julie Feeney, Pages Live at Crawdaddy - June 10th, 2009 - Review

2009-06-14T03:50:00.000-07:00

This was a fantastic week from the musical point of view. Two concerts, one intimate and one huge, eight acts over three days.

It all started with Julie Feeney's concert to promote the release of her second album Pages last week. As I have mentioned before on other posts, Crawdaddy is a fabulous place for an intimate gig like this. It only has capacity for about 300 people. There were tables on the ground floor and although the second floor was full I think there were only about 200 people in there. Most of them looked like family and friends, and a handful of loyal fans. Crawdaddy is the perfect place to see an artist like Julie.

The night started with Kevin Nolan (can someone confirm the name?) playing a couple of songs that he described as "dark fairy tales" . Although I enjoyed his music, his singing was, let me call it, non-conventional. Having said that, I will try to check him out later.

The second person on stage was Vertigo Smyth, definitely worth checking out. Again, he only played two songs and where incredibly powerful. You can listen to some of his songs on his website. I haven't checked whether he has released anything just yet. Let me know if you find anything.

Vertigo was followed by Size 2 Shoes, two brothers from Limerick that I can probably describe as the Irish Flight of the Conchords. Musically they are incredibly gifted, yet they don't take themselves very seriously. I thought they were fantastic. They do have an album out that you can get from their website. Definitely worth checking out.

Finally at around 9:30, Julie's musicians started setting up. She had 7 or 8 people on stage (was there someone to the left of Eugene?): Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Percussion, Trumpet and Flute. A guitarist joined her for one of the songs while Julie played the keyboards for the 13 Pages songs, and the Harmonium for Aching.

The concert started with the video for Love is a Tricky Thing. Afterwards we heard Julie singing a cappella, she started walking from the back heading towards the stage. She weaved through the tables as she was singing. She played a number of songs from 13 Songs on the keyboards before moving to the Harmonium to sing a beautiful version of Aching, followed by a very different arrangement of Alien where she sang accompanied only by her percussionist playing a Cajon. At some stage she spoke about the difference between her two albums and how Pages represents her current mood, definitely more lively!

After that she played all of the songs from Pages. Highlights for me included Mr Roving Eye Guy, Love is a Tricky Thing, Myth, and my favourite song from the album Impossibly Beautiful. Check my previous post with the setlist which I got from the stage. After the show Julie was signing copies of her album, as I had already bought it, I asked her to sign my ticket which she did. The handwriting was the same as the one on the setlist!

Every song was arranged differently. Julie's attention to detail definitely paid off. The arrangements took into consideration everything, even the place itself. For instance, on Valentine's Song, the trumpet player played from the second floor, while Julie sang from the middle of the ground floor without microphone. It was simply beautiful. One of my favourite arrangements was definitely One More Tune hard to describe, but just look at the musicians as I caught them in the middle of playing that song!

It was a fantastic concert, where the music was the main character. Brilliant music and extraordinary musicians enjoying themselves and really bringing the public along on their journey!

Def Leppard Live - The O2, Dublin - June 12th, 2009

2009-06-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

Setlist from the Def Leppard show yesterday

Rocket
Action
C'mon C'mon
Make Live like a man
Too late for love
Nine Lives
Love bites
Rock on
Two steps behind
Bringing on the heartbreak
Switch 625
Hysteria
Animal
Armageddon It
Photograph
Pour some sugar on me
Rock of ages
---------------------
When love and hate collide
Lets get rocked

Update: I have posted a review of the show

Journey Live - The O2, Dublin - June 12th, 2009

2009-06-13T01:14:00.000-07:00

Almost a year to the day I saw Journey for the first time, I saw them yesterday for the second time. Even better! I am glad I saw them last year because this was a shorter show and I would have been left wanting a lot of songs that they didn't play this time around. But Don't Stop Believin' sounded even better... if that's possible. No printout of the setlist this time, but here it is:

Separate Ways(World's Apart)
Stone in Love
Ask the Lonely
Change for the Better
DD Harp Segway (this time Neal used a mandolin rather than acoustic guitar)
Wheel in the Sky
Wildest Dream
Faithfully
Don't Stop Believin'
Anyway You Want It

Anybody got Def Leppards setlist from the concert?

Again, I will try to post a review later on.

Update: I have posted a review of the show

Julie Feeney Live at Crawdaddy - June 10th, 2009 - Setlist

2009-06-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the setlist for yesterday's concert. It was fantastic! I will do up a review at the weekend with some pictures. Hopefully my little camera worked OK as it was very dark.

I got the setlist from the stage handwritten by Julie, I will post a scan later on.
Update: I posted the setlist, please note that she changed things around a little bit!

Setlist
Hiho - Julie a capella
Autopilot
Judas
You Broke The Magic
Wind Out Of My Sails
The Reaper
Aching (with Harmonium)
Alien

Pages:
Nothing To Declare
Grace
Valentine's Song
Mr Roving Eye Guy
Myth
Stay
Life's Nudge
Knock Knock
One More Tune
Monster

Encore:
Love Is A Tricky Thing
Impossibly Beautiful

2nd Encore:
One More Tune

Julie Feeney - Pages. My first impressions

2009-06-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

I finally got the long awaited (for me anyway) Pages last Friday when it was released here in Ireland. If you are in the UK you will have to wait another few weeks. I am afraid I am not sure when will it be released for the rest of the world.

As much as I liked 13 Songs, Julie's first award winning album, Pages feels like a far superior album. It is more coherent and consistent. Where 13 Songs was a collection of great tunes where each song stood on its own, Pages has a sense of purpose. 13 Songs was at times quirky and the arrangements a little overworked, Pages in turn is well structured and the arrangements let you appreciate the melodies for what they are. Each song flows from the previous with great ease. Julie says on the album notes that she spent a long time preparing for the album and working alone on it for most of 2008. The notes appeared last January on her blog and you can get a link to it from my previous post.

One of the things that you notice immediately is the orchestration. Julie worked very hard since the release of 13 Songs to improve her orchestrating and conducting skills. In my view it really paid off. The arrangements are beautiful and they support and lift the melodies. Some of the vocal harmonies are, well, just beautiful. Two songs jump straight away: 'Mr. Roving Eye Guy' and the aptly named ' Impossibly Beautiful'.

In terms of the orchestral arrangements, perhaps the best example is the opening track 'Love is a Tricky Thing' which you can download for free from Julie's website.

I already have my tickets for the show in Crawdaddy next Wednesday (June 10th, 2009). I am really looking forward to the show. I am wondering how will Julie be able to pack so much music in such a small stage!

If you are reading this outside Ireland and the UK, I really recommend you buy this album as an import from one of the online stores. Some details on the mittens website, the label that Julie setup to release her music. You won't regret it!

Julie Feeney live at CrawDaddy in 10 days!

2009-05-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

There has been very little activity around here the last few months. But I am looking forward to a few gigs during the summer. I will start with Julie Feeney next week, on the 10th of June in CrawDaddy.

Her new album Pages is out in Ireland next Friday (June 5th) and in the UK on June 29th. If 13 songs is anything to go by, this new album should be great. I am really looking forward to the gig and the new album. Besides I think it CrawDaddy is the perfect venue to see Julie play live.

I'll post my review of the concert next week and hopefully a picture or two. If you are in Dublin on June 10th, you should get your ticket now!

Steve Lawson's - Behind Every Word

2009-04-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

These days I find new music through means other than radio. Podcasts, blogs,music websites like Spotify or Last.fm and even through social networks like MySpace and Twitter. I download music mainly from emusic.com and directly from the musician's websites. The radio is simply not enough these days.

Through emusic in particular, I have come across a huge number of different things, from the back catalogue to artists like Elbow and Porcupine Tree to gems like Bill Evan's Complete Village Vanguard Session.

One of those gems that I found recently was Steve Lawson. Steve is a London based bass player who mainly plays solo bass music. He is very well known for being highly active and visible on the internet on Twitter in particular, but also a very active blogger. He teaches bass through normal face to face classes but also using new and innovative means like skype and iChat.

Recently, I asked him which album to download to start getting into his music and he recommended going for his latest one, which I got from emusic in the last few days. This is incredible music that you wouldn't be exposed to if it wasn't for the power of the internet. Steve's solo music is made of live looping of multiple layers of bass "soundscapes".

Essentially, what this means is that Steve plays the first layer of a song and records it, probably the equivalent of the bass in a "normal" song. That keeps on repeating. Then he plays a second layer. Lets say, the rhythm guitar equivalent. And then he plays the melody as a bass solo on top of it. Don't know how long has this technique been around. The earliest example I have seen was Jaco Pastorius for some of his solos with Weather Report. These days is very common with artists like Michael Manring but even with mainstream artists like KT Tunstall

The first song of the album, Blue Planet, is a particularly good example because of the way the layers are played, it is very easy to understand the process.

I really recommend this album, but if you don't believe me, believe Victor Wooten himself when he says:

"Steve Lawson is a brilliant musician. I've known about him and listened to him for many years. He may not be one of the most famous bassists but he is definitely one of the most talented."

Taken from the notes page of the CD in CDBaby.com

George in India - New Single

2009-03-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

George in India have finally managed to release their first single, produced by production wizard Jim Soundman. You can check the new single on their blog.

George in India is not a real band (at least I don't think they are) but the brain child of Tommie Kelly, writter of the web comic Road Crew, which tells the story of Jim, the sound guys, who is working as a roadie for a Rock Group and has recently taking on the job of producing the bad that was opening for the band he used to work for.

The comic is wellworth checking out. It can be found at http://www.roadcrewcomic.com/

Catching up with my podcasts - BBC Introducing

2009-03-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks I hadn't been able to listen to the Huw Stephens BBC Introducing Podcasts.

The introducing podcast is one of my favaourites, as they showcase new and upcoming unsigned bands. Last year they played bands like Fight Like Apes, Pete and the Pirates ans Los Campesinos, well before they released their albums.

I particularly liked the episode from feb 19th which showcased Peggy Sue and Marina & The Diamonds. And the episode from Feb 26th with a track from the band from Northern Ireland And So I Watch You From Afar.

Check Huw's Blog for more details

You can find the podcasts on iTunes

Suzanne Vega talks about melody

2009-03-07T00:15:00.000-08:00

Another instalment of the Measure for Measure blog. This time Suzanne Vega talks about melody in her own unique way. As always, it is a beautiful piece.

This time accompany it by listening to Cracking on Last.fm

Interestingly one of my favourite melodies is Gipsy by her. Beautiful song! There are a number of versions on YouTube. I had never seen this one, it is over 20 years old from a German TV show and starts with Tom's Diner. Despite the obvious effects of the VCR on the video, Suzanne's voice is as clear as always!

Making a Piñata of your mother in law!

2009-03-01T03:03:00.000-08:00

What a great idea... although I would prefer to use a picture of my mother in law rather than my mother.

Lisa Hannigan - I Don't Kow at the Tonight show

2009-02-28T00:20:00.000-08:00

I shamelessly stole this from the swear I'm not Paul blog, but it's 4:15 minutes worth watching.

And here is another beautiful "unplugged" version recorded in in a pub in Dingle!

I really like the drums!

Journey Live in Dublin again

2009-02-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

Almost a year after they last played in Dublin, Journey are coming back again, this time the are sharing the bill with Whitesnake and Def Leppard. I have ordered my tickets already.

There is that, and a couple of weeks later the boss...

Now, I need to get myself to a gig with younger musicians!

Fight Like Apes - Tie Me up in Jackets Video

2009-01-31T01:24:00.000-08:00

I just came across this and had to share it. The song is great, but the video is absolutely amazing!

Fight Like Apes - Tie Me up in Jackets from Eoghan Kidney on Vimeo.

DB2 on Mac!!!

2009-01-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, you read it right, finally IBM has released a version of DB2 for the Mac! On December 22nd they released a version of DB2 Express-C for Mac (Leopard on Intel), which is essentially a version for developers who will be able to now use it to work on enterprise solutions on a Mac! I never thought this day would come.!

Antonio Canguiano has an interesting blog post that discusses some first steps, very useful.

You can get DB2 from the IBM Download Page.

I installed it using Admin GUI (as root) install and the tested the Ruby connection as per Antonio's blog. Initially I had a few issues with some libraries, but after downloading the latest version from the website, all is working well now.

This initial version does not have any of the admin tools (Comand Centre, Control Centre, etc.) but I was able to use SQL Workbench/J without any issues. It seems however that some of the tool jar files are there, I will look into that later.

There is a DB2 Express Forum, but feel free to ask any questions through this blog.

Next, Ruby on Rails!!!

Julie Feeney's Pages, coming soon

2009-01-09T23:41:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I wrote a music related blog. Yesterday I came across this blog post from Julie Feeney and I thought I would share it. For those that don't know Julie, she is a athe multitalented musician (add here composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, etc...) winner of the Choice Music Prize for the Irish album of the year in 2006 for her debut album '13 Songs'.

Julie's blog entry talks about the process she went through to create here new album 'Pages' which will hopefully be out in the next couple of months.

If you haven't heard '13 Songs', look for a copy of it and be prepared for a really good (and different) experience.

Update: I left a comment on the MySpace version of the blog post, and Julie wrote me back a quick e-mail thanking me for it. I thought it was a really nice touch!!

Coditional formating for tables in TiddlyWiki

2009-01-07T13:45:00.000-08:00

Well, sort off. I have been using TiddlyWiki for a long time to keep notes. TiddlyWiki is essentially a self contained wiki that can be easily transported. Read more on the TiddlyWiki site. One of the really interesting things about TiddlyWiki is that it can be easily extended with plugins and javascript. I use it with a number of plugins to have a ToDo list of sorts.

I use a couple of plugins:

The DataTiddlerPlugin, which lets you store structured data on your tiddlers.
The ForEachTiddler plugin, which lets you generate customised lists of tiddlers.

One thing I had been struggling with was to come up with a way to have conditional formatting on the tables. The idea is to change the colour based on the priority of the ToDo item, or whether the target date is in the past or not.

I have posted an example in TiddlySpot. You can find it on the followuplist TiddlyWiki.

Here is the script I used for the tiddler:

<<forEachTiddler 

 where

 'tiddler.tags.contains("FollowUp")
&& tiddler.tags.contains("Name")  &&
!tiddler.data("Completed") == true &&
!tiddler.tags.contains("TiddlerTemplates")' sortBy 'tiddler.data("Priority")' 

script

   '

  // date format DD/MM/YYYY

   function dateDifference(tiddler) {

      var d1, d2;

      var s = tiddler.data("TargetDate");

       if (s == undefined) { return 0 }

      d1 = new Date();

      d2 = new Date();

      d2.setMonth(s.substr(3,2)-1);

      d2.setDate(s.substr(0,2));

      d2.setFullYear(s.substr(6,4));

      return d2-d1;

   }   

   function writeRow(index, tiddler) 

     { var result = ""; if (index == 0) {result = "|!Priority|!Description|!Date Opened|!Target Date|\n";}  

       if (tiddler.data("Priority") == 1) {result += "|bgcolor(orange):"} 

       else if (tiddler.data("Priority") == 2) {result += "|bgcolor(yellow):"} 

       else if (tiddler.data("Priority") == 3) {result += "|bgcolor(lightgreen):"} 

       else {result += "|"}

       // result += dateDifference(tiddler) + "|";

       result += tiddler.data("Priority") + "|[[" + tiddler.title + "]]|" + tiddler.data("DateOpened") + "|" ;

       if (dateDifference(tiddler) < 0 ) {

          result += "bgcolor(orange):";

       } else if (dateDifference(tiddler) == 0 ) {

          result += "bgcolor(yellow):";

       }

       result += tiddler.data("TargetDate") + "|\n"; 

       return result;

     }

   '

 write

 'writeRow(index, tiddler)'

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Multitouch gestures on new firefox beta for Mac

2008-12-15T12:14:00.001-08:00

Last week I downloaded the new beta of firefox for my mac (3.1b). I usually don't download beta versions of products I use regularly, but the the fact that I could use multitouch gestures on the trackpad of my macbook was reason enough to try it. I am really pleased I did. It is even better than what you can do in Safari. So far, they have implemented:

swipe: move three fingers on the trackpad on any direction
twist: rotate two fingers
pinch: move two fingers away or closer to each other

And the actions you can perform with the different gestures:

Swipe Left: Go back in history [press Cmd to open it in a tab]
Swipe Right: Go forwards in history
Swipe Up: Go to the top of the page
Swipe Down: Go to the end of the page
Pinch Together: Zoom out
Pinch Apart: Zoom in
Twist Right: Next tab
Twist Left: Previous tab

It is available on Mac's with multitouch trackpa, including the Mac Book Air, the MAc Book Pro's releaed in early 2008, and the new laptops released later in 2008.

Download it and enjoy!

Christmas FM! What the... well, it's for a good cause

2008-12-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I got into a shop in town and after the usual Christmas song finished, on came a DJ announcing that we were listening to Christmas FM, Ireland's first all Christmas Radio Station, broadcasting on 89.9 FM.

That sounds crazy!!!

But hey, what the heck if you want to feel christmasy, just tune to Xmas FM, on the radio or on the web, and the most important thing is that it is for a good cause. All proceeds from their broadcasts will go to aid the ISPCC.

Check them out on http://christmasfm.ie/

My Favourite Albums of 2008

2008-12-05T23:30:00.000-08:00

A number of bloggers are coming out with the list of favourite albums of 2008. The swear I'm not Paul blog has a link to some of them on this post. Here is mine, somewhat different from what you will find out there. When I started, I thought I would only be able to pick 2 or 3, but I had trouble stopping at 15. Here they are:

Asia - Phoenix. (The return of the original 80's supergroup lineup!)
Marillion - Happiness is the Road
The Raconteurs - Consolers for the Lonely (Check their wensite... pretty cool retro stuff)
Polar Bear - Polar Bear
Light Speed Champion - Falling of the Lavender Bridge
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew
Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers
Alanis Morissette - Flavors of Entaglement
Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns
Fight Like Apes - Fight Like Apes and the Mistery of the Golden Medallion
Cat Power - Jukebox
Coldplay - Viva la vida
Curios - Closer

Not sure if these two count as they are live albums, which can be seen as greatest hits, but I sure liked them:

Suzanne Vega - iTunes Live: London Festival '08
The Police - Certifiable

As for the my favourite albums that I bought this year, they are a couple of old Porcupine Tree albums. I discovered PT last year, I am not sure how they flew under my radar for so long. But that's a story for a different day:

Stupid Dream
Lightbulb Sun

2008 has been a great year for music!

Lotus Symphony on the Mac!

2008-11-07T11:59:00.001-08:00

Finally, last Wednesday (November 5th, 2008), IBM released the long awaited version of Lotus Symphony for Mac as part of the version 1.2 update. Despite the fact that IBM is using the old name for the GUI version of Lotus 1-2-3, that's where the similarities end... I am a bit annoyed that IBM didn't respect the '/' menu options on the spreadsheet product... but I digress.

IBM Lotus Symphony is a free office suit that has a word processor, spreadsheet and a presentation program. It supports the OpenDocument format (ODF), as well as the binary Microsoft Office and Lotus Smartsuire formats. One of the really good features is the fact that it can export documents in PDF format.

Symphony is based on OpenOffice techoloy and uses the Eclipse Rich Client for it's framework.

It is available fon Windows, Linux and Mac, and best of all it's free!

Brazilian GP 2009

2008-11-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

I can't believe the final Grand Prix of the season. It has been the most thrilling end to a race I have ever seen... let alone a championship. The title changed hands so many times during the race, it was unbelievable.

I felt really bad for Felipe Massa, he did everything he was supposed to do. He finished the race and for 38.9 seconds he was the World Champion! Vettel did his work for Ferrari overtaking Hamilton with 2 laps to go. And you have to admit that Glock's slowness looked a bit suspicious, but I have to admit he was driving under very hard circumstances. Being a Ferrari fan for many years, I would have preferred to have seen them won the championship. Well, there is always next year. Whatever I think of Lewis Hamilton, he really is an excellent driver.

By the way, there is an interesting interview with Glock posted to this website:

Brazilian GP: in the Glock

marillion - happiness is the road

2008-10-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I received my copy of happiness is the road, Marillion's 15th studio album, which you can only buy physically from the marillion.com website, except in the US and Poland.

Although it is a double Album, it is being sold as 2 albums, unless you buy the Deluxe Campaign Edition, which is what I did. This edition comes in a special package with additional artwork, and the list of all people that pre-ordered the album before it was even completed. My name is listed there amongst a million other. This is essentially how Marillion funds their recordings these days, they get the money for the album before it is even completed from the fans. The have been doing this since Anoraknophobia back in 2001.

You can also download the album on various different formats from their site, as well as iTunes, emusic.com an I'm sure a few others.

I believe this is far better than the last two albums. Somewhere Else had a couple of really good tracks, but overall lacked consistency, and Marbles, well, I could never really get into it. Although Marbles has received a lot of good reviews, maybe I should really give it another go.

The first CD, Essence. is a a bit more laid back than your usual Marillion album. And it struck me as I was listening to it that Mark Kelly's Piano featured heavily which is unusual. You can always hear the keyboards, but as layers on the song. This time around it adds a different dimension, which I really like. Over the years, they have influenced a number of artists, but in Essence, you can hear their influences, and it is as if they were paying tribute to them, from Pink Floyd to the Beach Boys, and if you read the press release, it even lists Interpol (Anybody else thinks that's strange?) as one of their influences. You can definitely hear the influences all along, it is even good to hear a guitar solo or two from Steve Rothery that reminded me of the Marillion sound of the Fish years.

The second CD, The Hard Shoulder, is my favourite at the moment, and it brings me back to Albums like Afraid of Sunlight and The Strange Engine. It is a beautiflly layered album, where you can hear the playing a bit more. I have been a big fan of Pete Trewavas since I first tried to learn how to play Kayleigh. One of my favourite gigs was when I saw them in Vicar Street for the Anoraknophobia tour and I was standing just a couple of meters from him and was able to see how he played some of the songs. He supports the songs through different melodies that weave through the layers of the tracks.

I think this is a more accessible Marillion than in recent years, yet it won't dissapoint the hard core fans. But what do I know about this, I have been listening t this type of music for a long time, so of course I will find it accessible. It is difficult to name a favourite song at this stage. It is too much music to take in in only a few listens. However, at the moment "Whatever is wrong with you" its at the top of my list.

Marillion seeded the music on torrent sites before the album was released, in a move that caused a lot of controversy amongst the fans that had pre-ordered the album. However, when you download the album this way, you get a message from the band asking you that if you liked the music, to go to their website and check out other stuff.

Overall, Happiness is the Road is a great album! You should at least try it from the torrent sites, and o and buy it if you liked it.

Suzanne Vega - Tom's Essay

2008-09-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

One of the blogs I read on a regular basis is Measure for Measure, a blog published by the NY Times about how to write songs. One of the contributors is Suzanne Vega, who I have been a fan of for the last 21 years... ever since I heard Luka on the radio for the first time.

Her blog entry published yesterday talks about the song Tom's diner. It tells the story of the song the remixes and the MP3 algorithm. Not ony Suzanne is a great songwriter, she is also an excellent story teller. It really is a pleasure to read.

Incidentally, the new iTunes Live in London release has a very interesting version of the song where the esentially play the DNA arrangement rather than the usual a capella version of the song. The album itself is an excellent download as it is Suzanne Vega playing on a trio, which is quite unusual. I have seen her live with a four and a five piece band, and with a duo with her bass player only, but never as a trio. Excellent!

Lisa Hannigan - See Sew

2008-09-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

What can be better than a new album that starts with a couple of a riff on a doublebass. It is quite unusual to listen to new "pop" music these days played with acoustic instruments.

There is a good review on the Swear I'm not Paul blog.

Let me just add a couple of things. In my honest opinion, this is the album that Damien Rice could have produced. The music styles are very similar, but this See Sew is so much better achieved. The arrangements are so simple, but they fill the space beautifully. I agree with the review, "I don't know" is the best song in the album.

Interestingly, the album is being published by Lisa herself. It can be bought in the shops Ireland, and online only from her website lisahannighan.ie. It is not available from the usual download sites.

Asia Live in London - December 3, 2006

2008-09-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

I know I will get a lot of flack for this one... a couple of years ago I realised one of my musical dreams when I saw the original members of Asia for the first time. I just came across this in YouTube.

I had seen ELP, Yes, and eve Asia with John Payne, but nothing quite like this. It was excellent. I was about 2 metes away from Steve How on the left hand side!

By the way, if you notice carefully, John Wetton is playing bass in a very unorthodox way. The reason is that he had carpel tunnel syndrome, and he couldn't play with his fingers, he had to tape a thumb pick to his thumb in order to play. Despite this his playing was incredible, they even played roundabout and in the court of the crimson king, and he didn't miss a bit!

iPod Touch 2.1 - First Impressions

2008-09-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

After a lot of hassle I managed to install version 2.1 on my iPod Touch. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but I have founf two really good things.

Lyrics are finally supported
Additional information for podcasts is now visible
Genius Playlists (I haven't found the button that generates them, but then again, I am not sure if I synched after I enabled them in iTunes)
Faster backups
Changes in UI
Ability to turn off individual sound effects
For the first time I noticed the parental controls, but not sure if they have been there for a while

Any more, let me know

Update
I found a couple more things... after synching aain, now genius is enabled on the iPod. It is a cool feature, it generates 25 song playlists based on whatever song you are playing

When you have a partially heard podcast, you get a half full dot beside it, before you only had the dot wen it was new and nothing if you had started. Presumably this is the same for movies and prgrammes
The shuffle and repeat buttons are now below the ong slider, which makes it easier to choose a particular part of the song.
Album details are now also below the song when you are playing a track

Behind the bass guitar - Duke Special in Dublin

2008-08-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

Last Friday (August 22nd), Duke Special played in the National Concert Hall here in Dublin, I'm sorry I missed it!

Below is a link from Simon Little's Blog that gives a little view of what it means to be a "hired gun" with an established artist. Simon's main gig is currently with the Divine Comedy.

If you haven't checked Duke Special, do it now.

I'd be interested to hear any reviews of the show from the audience's point of view.

http://simonlittlebass.blogspot.com/2008/08/duke-special-dublin-dorchester-and.html

Enjoy!

A simple database on the iPhone / iPod touch

2008-08-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

I have been looking for a simple application to have a few databases that I can carry around on my iPod. There are quite a few on the other mobile platforms, mainly Windows Mobile and Palm. I was surprised at first that I couldn't find anything... but now I have.

First, the ones I didn't go for, and my reasons why. Remember that essentially what I am looking for a simple app to carry information that I have on my computer.

FMTouch. This is essentially FileMaker Pro in your Pocket. It looks really good, and it seems that data replication is quite simple. This is what I was looking for, but the price is a bit steep. Specially since I don't have my data in FM, so I would have to get a licence for that as well. It sells for €54.99 on the Irish iTunes store! This is really a commercial offering and not for me. Worth a look!
iDB Datamaster. It comes in 2 flavours, Lite and Pro. Interestingly, the two versions use a different backend strategy for their databases. The lite version, which sells for €3.99, has a limited number of records that it can hold, and they have to be distributed evenly across multiple database (odd!). Pro goes for €10.49. The big issue for me here is that you don't have control over the structure of your database, you have to use their templates, and importing external data seems like a real chore. I gave this a miss as well.

So I went for CSV T ouch. A very simple application that lets you load CSV (comma separated values) files directly from a web server or via ftp, and then you can display them in a list and do searches and sorts. It is very lightweight and it does exactly what I need. Brilliant.

There are a couple of neat features, like the fact that you can have links within the fields of your list and can move the columns around or sort using different columns or choose different code sets.

And the best part, it is only €1.59!

What I have now, is a number of exports from my Derby databases, that I can publish through the built in Apache server on my Mac that I can load on my iPod to carry around for reference.

The only thing I need now is a front end to run SQL queries against the sqlite database engine that comes with th OS.

RTE Web Coverage of the Olympic Games

2008-08-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

As I was crawling over lots of links yesterday, trying to get live coverage of the Olympic Games on the web, I was getting more and more frustrated. The sites I found with good content were country specific, and the official site has Windows as a pre-req.

I should have looked close to home, RTE has good coverage on their website, where you an pick from a number of live feeds, and in both WMV and Real formats, so mac friendly!

Here is the link:

http://www.rte.ie/sport/olympics2008/player.html

Chuck Berry - Live at The Academy - Dublin July 24th, 2008

2008-07-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

Chuck Berry is "The Man"

Enough said!

Polar Bear at Crawdaddy (Dublin) - July 18, 2008

2008-07-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

It is not often that you get t see jazz musicians of the calibre of Seb Rochford in Dublin. Last Friday Polar Bear gave the small crowd in Crawdaddy a rare treat. They played a short but very intense set of about 1 hr and 15 minutes which was mainly made of songs from their new album which was released barely a week ago. Each song included some improvisations and went on for considerably longer than the versions on the albums.

Seb Rochford is an incredibly talented drummer, who has worked with many people including Herbie Hancock and Brian Eno. I was fortunate to be standing about 2 meters from where he was playing and it was qute interesting to see how he kept the beat during the songs with his left foot on the hi-hat while the songs canged tempo. You know this is always going on when jazz is being played, but it is something else when you can see it first hand.

On the double bass Tom Herber didn't put a foot wrong, whether he was playing a walking bass line, a syncopated bass line or simply playing root notes. It has been a long time since I've seen a goof double bass player.

Leafcutter John was playing the mandolin and the "electronics", which basically means that he was triggering samples and noises through his powerbook. You can read more about him, ad the software he uses on the wikipedia and his own site. It blew me away, he was standing there with the laptop and at times he was sampling and playing what was happening on stage. At some point he was able to do a solo of something that soundes similar to a sax with the touchpad on his mac.

The group was rounded up by Mark Lockheart and Pete Wareham on tenor sax.

The setlist:

Hope every day is a happy new year
Leafcup
I am alive
Tomlovesalicelovestom
Appears, moves and sails
The king of Aberdeen

encore
To touch the red brick

The image comes from jazzreview.com by Brian O'Connor, and yes, the hair looks bigger in person!

Fight Like Apes - Something Global

2008-07-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

Last Friday a headed into town as I was going to see Polar Bear, so I decided to go in early to catch Fight Like Apes for the launch of their new single "Something Global". It was really worth my while! I was treated to a set of all their songs, which you can get through their singles only at this time.

The sound wasn't excellent, and at times they didn't seem to fit, but I think it is more the venue than themselves. They are new and they still need to get experience, but they are good. They have been getting a lot of good press in the UK through BBC's Steve Lamacq and the Huw Stephens and their BBC Introducing shows, and I can see why. I am tempted to go to Castle Palooza in a couple of weeks time to see them play live in a proper concert setting

Not all their songs a radio friendly, but "Something Global" seems to be. I do hope they do well.

New Single - Fight Like Apes

2008-07-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

Fight Like Apes will release their new single Something Global tomorrow with a gig in Tower Records in town. It will be a numbered limited edition.

The single is already available in iTunes and eMusic.com

Check them out!

iPod Touch 2.0 Software update - first impressions

2008-07-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

The 3G iPhone was out yesterday. That meant that the software update for iPod Touch was out yesterday as well, unfortunately the apple servers were overloaded with requests for new iPhone activations and were acting up. Finally this morning I was able o download the update.

First you have to download iTunes 7.7, that worked first time yesterday through software updates!

Then, after you have downloaded the full 222MB (and paid €7.99 for it), the process backs up your iPod, completely replaces everything, restores your settings, and finally your music. It takes a long time to do this!

My initial views... not much has changed from the previous version with the exception of the new "App Store". The additional applications that came out earlier in the year, are now part of the OS. Couple of good things that I have found so far, you can now take screen shots (press and hold the home screen, and then press the power button for a couple of seconds. When you let it go, the screen will flash white, and you will have a new picture in your photo library) and the fact that you can now save picture attachments from mail to the iPod for external viewing.

I had a few problems trying to synch applications. It took a few attempts before applications downloaded on the iPod transferred to my Mac and vice versa.

The mac rumours website has an iPod touch forum that might be useful as some users are having problems with the update.

I need to pick a couple of applications. Any recommendations?

New blogs added to my blog roll

2008-07-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

I have just added a few blogs to my blog roll on the right. A couple of them are bass related:

Simon Little's Blog. Simon is the current bass player with the Divine Comedy. He also has a podcast where he posts homemade solo bass songs. Check him out
The Bass Guitar Blog. Self explanatory.

I also added a new blog about live music around dublin and new album reviews:

I swear I'm not Paul.

Let me know if you know of any other blogs worth reading

Pete and the Pirates

2008-07-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

Over the last year or so, there have been a lot of new groups popping all over the place, some of them very good including The Ting Tings, Blood Red Shoes, Los Campesinos and many more. My Favourite one is Pete and the Pirates. Here is a link to their video Mr Understanding in YouTube.

By the way, check out Fight Like Apes, a Dublin band that is starting to make a name for themselves, they played the BBC introducing stage in Glastonbury last weekend and are playing Castle Palooza later in the summer.

Mike Scott's return to the west of Ireland

2008-07-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

I just came across this really eloquent piece from Mike Scott (from the Waterboys) that describes his journey into the west of Ireland for a session with Sharon Shannon. It is a good read!

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=71722921&blogID=408851240

Amy Winehouse in Glastonbury (BBC)

2008-06-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Did anybody see Amy Winehouse in Glastonbury? I just saw the broadcast on BBC3 and it was quite scary. She kept on slurring the words and seem pretty out of it. At some stage she was even elbowing someone in the audience!

Just a reminder of how good she can be when she is on the ball, here is a video of Rehab from a year ago. I hope that someone posts a video from today to contrast.

Update
The Spaghetti Incident has a link to the "elbow incident"

Journey Live - Dublin, now the review

2008-06-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

So now the review. We got to the national stadium a few minutes before the show was due to start. If you haven't been there, it is an excellent venue for concerts. It can sit 2000 people and because it is such a small venue, every seat has excellent visibility. I was sitting on the left of the stage behind Jonathan Cain (see the picture below!). One good piece of trivia, the national stadium was the first purpose built boxing stadium in the world and was opened in 1939. It was packed!

The concert started just before 8:00 with John Parr doing a short acoustic set, closing with his big hit from the 80's St Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion).

Journey came out just before 9 o'clock to a standing ovation. I was worried that the Ray Foley effect would have meant that the place was full of people that wanted to hear "Don't Stop Believin'" and knew nothing else. Well I needn't have worried, there are a lot of Journey fans who knew and sang along to all the songs from "Wheel in the Sky" to "Change for the Better". It was absolutely fantastic. The guys where having a great time on stage, and because of the size of the venue, it was great to actually see what they were playing. Neal Schon is the fastest guitarist I have seen in a long time, but he also knows how to play a melodic solo, or just play chords if that's what the song needs. Ross Valory is still full of energy, and he plays with such ease that it is contagious, his faces are so funny. Jonathan Cain moved between the keyboards and the guitars all night long. Unfortunately I coudn't see much of Deen Castronovo on drums, but he was very good as well. He sang on "Mother Father", and was great. Note how the setlist (from JC's piano) has the details of who is going to introduce each song!

When I first got interested on the bass, the first couple of songs that I learnt where "Anyway You Want It" and "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'". A bit later I learnt how to play "Don't Stop Believin'" and it was the sound of Ross Valory's bass in Escape that made me want to learn how to play the bass. Not surprisingly my highlights from yesterday where "Stone in Love" (listen to that bassline towards the end of the song!), "Who's Cryin' Now" and "Don't Stop Believin'" which has been my favourite song for the last twentysomething years! I also enjoyed the fact that they opened with Majestic, which they hadn't been playing for a while. On the other hand, they played Lights on it's own! The picture on the left is from when they started "Don't Stop Believin'"

Arnel Pineda has to have a special mention, he looked the part. Not even a year ago he was playing in a cover band in the Philippines, and now he is the lead singer for a big band on a worldwide tour and an album that has sold more than a quarter of a million copies in the first month. He was fantastic!

For those interested in the gear, Ross Valory played a Music Man stingray, judging from the way he played, he was using his signature tunning (B-E-A-D), using the 4 top strings of a 5 string bass on a 4 string one. Neal Schone played mainly on his Gibson signature les paul, although he used a stratocaster for one of the songs. Jonathan Cain played a telecaster, a 12 string stratocaster, and a Neal Schon signature les paul, on a stand, for the rythm guitar section on don't stop believin'

What a great show!

Journey Live - National Satdium, Dublin - June 25th, 2008

2008-06-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Wow... your man Arnel Pineda can sing. I am just back from the Journey gig at the National Stadium in Dublin... what a show, it was fantastic!

Here is the setlist for now, I will post some comments and a couple of pictures tomorrow. I got the setlist from Jonathan Cain's piano!

Majestic
Never Walk Away
Separate Wayes
Only the Young
Guitar Segway
Stone in Love
Ask the Lonely
Keep on Runnin'
The Journey (Revelation) - Instrumental
Who's Cryin' Now
Change for the Better
Lights (They didn't play Stay Awhile!!!)
After All These Years
Mother, Father (Dean on vocals)
Key Segway (JC Solo)
Open Arms
DD Harp Segway (NS on acoustic guitar & JC on harmonica)
Wheel in the Sky
Edge of the Blade
Faithfully
Don't Stop Believing

encore
Escape
Anyway You Want It

To see the a picture of the actual setlist, go to the review post.

Fur Elise for dummies on acoustic guitar

2008-06-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

I came across this while I was browsing through Joost recently, and I though it would be nice to share it with all of you that like to play guitar. A very simple lesson from guitar world's Jimmy Brown on how to play "Fur Elise", Beethoven's classic piece.

http://joost.com/298871j

Enjoy!

The next one!

2008-06-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

So, my next show will be Journey at the National Stadium. I am really looking forward to it. I used to liste to Journey just as much as REO Speedwagon back in the 80's, but I was too young then to be able to go to one of their concerts. I will post the setlist and a quick review next week.

I am sorry I won't be able to see Steve Perry, but I have to say that Arnel Pineda's voice is remarkable! It is going to be a treat. The new album Revelation is pretty good, and Arnel's voice works very well with the oldies.

There have been a huge number of gigs in Dublin over the last few days. Let me know if you have gone to a good one recently, post a link to your reviews or leave a comment!

Leonard Cohen Live – June 13th, 2008 – Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin

2008-06-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, the 3rd concert in a week. And what a show!

I have never been a huge fan of Leonard Cohen, I guess it is because I was never exposed to his music. Anyway, a friend of mine offered me a ticket last Thursday, and although I don't really know Leonard Cohen's music, I do know that he is, arguably, one of the most influential people in the music business. It was an opportunity I couldn't miss. Boy, was I in for a treat!!

The concert was on the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, a museum just opposite Heuston station in Dublin. A beautiful venue for the first concert of Leonard's European tour. Damien Rice opened the show with a short acoustic set at 7:15 sharp. The main show started at 8:00 and went on until 11:00 with a short break halfway through.

Leonard walked in to a standing ovation. His first visit to Dublin in 20 years! A long wait for his fans. He treated us with a good selection of his songs, a catalog that spans more than 40 years of music , all performed incredibly well. Although his music doesn't require virtuoso performances, the musicianship was evident. His voice is so deep and rich, and the music builds around it to complement it. The band used lot of different instruments that you wouldn't normally see in a show these days, including a Hammond B3, bandurria, spanish laúd, guitars (12 string spanish, electric, steel, nylon acoustic), bass (5 string, 5 string fretless and double bass), harp, and a number of wind instruments, some of which I couldn't recognise but that included an Akai EWI4000 Electric Woodwind.

Leonard Cohen knows his business, the show builds up to the point where you are completely immersed in the music, the setlist, everything is done with a purpose. Just look at the last two songs, "Closing Time", immediately followed by a standing ovation and "I tried to leave you".

I don't have notes for the full setlist, when I get it I will post it. In the meantime, here is a link to leonardcohenforum.com with the setlist for the last few shows. It looks remarkably similar

http://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11147

There is also a lot of information about the tour and the instruments on the Leonard Cohen Files.

Get his music, and enjoy it!

Los Amantes de Lola - Beber de tu Sangre

2008-06-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favourite songs from the Mexican group Los Amantes de Lola. Unfortunately the video and the sound are slightly out synch.

Check out the version of this song from their live album "Historias de Cabaret"

Enjoy!

REO Speedwagon Live in Dublin - July 8th 2008

2008-06-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

After something like 18 years, I went to my second REO Speedwagon gig. The first one was when I was in college back in 1990. It was 5 years after they had had their huge hit with Can't Fight this Feeling. Back in the mid 80's I would have listened to their albums all day long. My vinyl copy of Good Trouble was completely worn down by the time I bought the CD. The gig yesterday brought back so many memories, and I enjoyed (and sang... if you can call that singing) every minute of it.

The guys aren't young anymore. KC is now in his late 50's, and although they gave it all, he is not jumping up and down the stage any more as he used to and the show was very intense, but only lasted 90 minutes.

REO's lineup hasn't changed much since that concert back in 1990 just before the release of the album "The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog and a Chicken". Which was the first album that featured Dave Amato and Bryan Hitt, except on that tour, they had a second keyboard player (Jesse Harms, better known for playing with Sammy Hagar).

The gig was at the Olympia Theatre, incidentally, this is the same venue where R.E.M. tested their new material for Accelerate with a series of "secret" gigs. It started just before 9:00 PM with the usual Don't Let Him Go. The place was about 90% full and everybody there went absolutely mad screaming and shouting... singing every song. The usual suspects made their appearence, but they sang a couple of songs that I didn't expect: Son of a Poor Man (from Ridin ' the Storm Out) and That Ain't Love (from Life as We Know It).

All in all, it was a really enjoyable gig. Lots of energy, and happy fans singing and enjoying themselves. People left the venue chanting Keep on Lovin' you at the top of their voices!!!

Here is the Setlist:

Don’t Let Him Go
Take it On The Run
Keep Pushin’
Find Your Own Way Home
That Ain't Love
Tough Guys
Can't Fight this Feeling
Dangerous Combination
Son of a Poor Man
I Needed to Fall (The set list I got from the stage had Smilin' (Audible), which was changed)
Time For Me To Fly (KC's 12 string ovation failed, he had to drop the guitar!)
Back on the Road Again
Keep on Loving You
Roll With The Changes

encore
Ridin’ The Storm Out

The setlist from stage also had 157 (Riverside Avenue), but they didn't play it.

Rdiohead in Malahide Castle - June 7th 2008

2008-06-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

So, the long wait was over. and finally after many years I had the opportunity to see Radiohead. I had huge expectations and, sadly, I was a bit disappointed. In fact I felt annoyed as I was leaving the show yesterday.

For those of you that have never been to Malahide Castle, it is a beautiful castle, north of Dublin, with a beautiful parkland. The ideal setting for a concert like Radiohead's.

So, what happened yesterday... well, the band came out at 8:30 and started with 15 Step, Bodysnatchers and Airbag... they rocked!!! But after that, they seemed to have lost the crowd. People around us were chatting away, and it was difficult to get into the music. Specially on some of the quieter songs like Faust Harp... I love the song and I could barely hear it!!!

We were standing close to the sound booth, which is usually a good place to listen to a concert. We also moved around a bit to try to avoid it, but it was the same everywhere we went. If people wanted to chat, they should have gone to Starbucks instead!

Having said that, I did enjoy some of the numbers, songs like Jigsaw Falling into Place, There There, Planet Telex and All I Need were very good. Generally speaking the 1st encore was the best. As for the second encore, I was really disappointed... no Paranoid Android, and they finished with Idioteque, perhaps my least favourite track... arrggghh!!!!

The band were good, they are all incredible musicians. On the way back, we had a discussion as to whether the fact that people were not into it was or wasn't Radiohead's fault. I think it was, they should have been able to get the crowd more involved.

If you are looking for the setlist, check my post from yesterday evening

Radiohead Setlist - Malahide Castle June 7th, 2008

2008-06-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

01 15 Step
02 Bodysnatchers
03 Airbag
04 Bangers&Mash
05 Nude
06 Pyramid Song
07 Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
08 The Gloaming
09 The National Anthem
10 Faust Arp
11 Videotape
12 Optimistic
13 Where I End And You Begin
14 Reckoner
15 Everything In Its Right Place
16 All I Need
17 There There

encore 1
18 Exit Music (For A Film)
19 Jigsaw Falling Into Place
20 Climbing Up The Walls
21 Planet Telex
22 How To Disappear Completely

encore 2
23 Super Collider
24 You And Whose Army?
25 Idioteque

I am a bit dissapointed with the gig.. more details tomorrow!

And today... Radiohead

2008-06-07T00:27:00.000-07:00

Finally, the wait is over. I will see Radiohead this evening in Malahide Castle. The setlists from this tour look incredible They are playing a few songs fro The Bends, but nothing from Pablo Honey.

Here is te setlist from yesterday (No Jigsaw!!!!)

http://videotape.tistory.com/447

Note that they played "How to disappear completely"... it hs a cool reference to Dublin!

And a few more

http://thespaghettiincident.blogspot.com/search?q=radiohead

Can't wait

... and tomorrow REO Speedwagon!

Ibanez 1915 Hollowbody Bass

2008-03-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of posts about my bass guitars. I have been playing the bass for close to 20 years. I am not a great bass player, but I do enjoy a good session.

My father bought my my first bass guitar back in the late 80's. I don't know how much did he pay for it, but I can guess that it was a cheap-ish one. It was an old (I didn't know how old then!) Ibanez 1915 bass guitar.

According to the blue book of electric guitars, it was a model based on the Yamaha SA-70 bass with a semi-hollow symmetrical double cut-away body, with two f holes, bolt-on neck, 22 fret rosewood fingerboard that was manufactured between 1971 and 1973. It came in 2 colours, mine is sunburst red.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, and the excellent work of some hard-core fans, I was able to find all of these details, including a picture of the original catalogue from 1971. (The picture was originally hosted n the new ibanezwiki - http://www.ibanezwiki.com). At some stage I am hoping to upload some pictures of my bass. It is still in good shape, the sound is incredibly deep and warm, and it is a joy to play. One neat feature, is that it has a fret 0!

Unfortunately it is not in perfect shape. The pickguard and bridge cover are missing, one of the pick-ups is busted (I'm trying to get a new one), the bridge is a bit rusty, and I am not sure if it is a "feature" or bad design, but the neck seems to be a bit sunk into the body, which makes it difficult to use the higher frets on the 1st string.

When I got the bass originally, it came with Nylon covered black strings, which made the sound really dull. I am using it with flatwound strings at the moment to get a nice warm sound out of it.

The bass is the second from left to right in the picture. I will try to post pictures of mine at some stage.

Fish live at the Sugar Club - March 2008

2008-03-08T23:15:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday I was lucky enough to see Fish. For those of you that don't know who Fish is, he used to be the lead singer in Marillion. More info as always on the wikipedia

Now, I have been a Marillion fan for over 20 years, and have seen them live a good few times, but nothing could have prepared me for the almost cult like devotion of some of his fans. This obviously made the concert even better. The gig was delayed a while as there had been an electrical issue. The tension outside was palpable, and it reminded me of the first time I went to a gig when I was in my teens. But we are talking grown ups here that had seen this man a few times! Make no mistake about it, I am sad enough o have been there early enough to get a sit on the front row, buy the special edition CD from the merchandise table, and get a copy of the setlist at the end of the show. But I was amazed by the fact that the hardcore fans knew every single lyric, even for the new songs.

Eventually Fish himself came out and explained what had happened and that there would be a short delay but that the gig would go ahead.

I personally prefer he Steve Hogarth Marillion, so I was not sure whether I would like the show or not. I shouldn't have worried, the show was fantastic! Fish played a lot of songs from Clutching at Straws and a good few songs from his new album 13th Star. I have been listening to 13th Star since Wednesday, and I have to say that I like it! Check it out

If you have never been to the Sugar Club, I have to say that t it is a very interesting place. It is a small club for perhaps 200 people. The main entrance is on the side of the stage. There is a real intimate atmosphere, and makes for a great experience if you are into the music as you can almost touch it.

The quality of the music was superb, and the performances were even better. I was quite impressed with Steve Vantsis the bass player. He played a couple of 5 string Spector basses which I hadn't seen in years. What struck me when the group came out was that they didn't look like rock stars. They all looked like musicians who were enjoying the music, and playing together. The full line up was:

Fish - Vocals
Frank Usher - Guitars
Steve Vantsis - Bass
Foss Paterson - Keyboards
Gavin John Griffiths - Drums
Chris Johnson - Guitars

There are a few pictures of the gig in Fish's website.

And finally the setlist, mind you, they didn't play the last encore because people came down and effectively blocked the stage. I am sure a lot of them would have been gutted if they knew!

Until next time!

The Inferior by Peadar O'Guilin

2008-02-03T03:35:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of last year I intended to write a piece talking about some of the books that I read during last year. I just never got around to do it. However, I wanted to share at least one book: The Inferior by Peadar O'Guilin (yes I know, that's not accurate Irish spelling).

The inferior is Peadar's first novel. It has been classified under "Young Adult", and it really is a mix between Fantasy and Science Fiction. It is book one of the Bone Trilogy.

The book works under a very interesting premise: "What if you lived in a world where the only food available was each other". It sounds gruesome, it is a bit gory, but it is extremely well managed from beginning to end. While not all the characters are developed in great detail, Peadar spends a lot of time talking about some of the different races that inhabit the planet. My favourite ones are the diggers and the long tongues. In my opinion this is more valuable to paint a better picture of the universe of this trilogy. There are more details of the plot on the Amazon link above.

Peadar is currently working on the second book of the trilogy, and I can not wait to get my hands on it!

Peadar maintains a website, frozen stories, where, among other things, he keeps links to some of his work published on-line. Drop by to get a taste for his writing.

Macworld is coming!

2008-01-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

I had always wanted a Mac.

Having worked for a few years with OS/2, and then having to move to a Windows world once OS/2 Warp was withdrawn from the market, I felt that I wanted more from my OS than what Windows offered. When the Mac Mini's were announced three years ago, I thought it was a great opportunity to finally own a Mac. I wasn't disappointed, and I haven't looked back.

Since then, I started following the crazy "Macverse", and was captivated by the sheer passion and enthusiasm of the Mac users. Shortly afterwards I even moved off my Sony mp3 walkman and bought my first ipod.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about the Apple world is the yearly Macworld event every January. This year, Macworld starts on Monday, January 14th. There is a good article in CNET that describes why is it so good. As always, there is a lot of excitement about Steve Jobs' keynote speech on Tuesday.

I am hoping for the announcement of some updates to the MacBooks. I been holding up on buying a new one, initially because I was waiting for Leopard, but now because it seems that there might be a complete overhaul to the line. Roll on Tuesday, and here is hoping that they will announce a new version of the legendary Apple Newton!

Radiohead, Radiohead, Radiohead

2008-01-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

I finally received my In Rainbows discbox on the post a couple of days ago. I guess it took longer than expected because of the post delay over the holiday season. Although I had listened to "In Rainbows" in full, I was waiting for the 2nd CD. The current issue of Mojo Magazine (Issue 171, February 2008) has a really good review of the Extras CD. I do hope that it gets a general release somewhat. It would be a same for it to be distributed through torrent sites more widely than through the group.

Its brilliant! Try o get it

I also got tickets to see them in Malahide Castle later in the summer. I have never seen them live, and I can't wait!

Squeeze at the Olympia

2007-12-13T02:10:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday (December 11th) I was lucky enough to see Squeeze for the first time. Having been brought up on the other side of the world, I was not very familiar with theit music, so I had to do some homework prior to the concert.

I was well impressed with what I saw, specially by the guitar playing ability of Mr Glenn Tilbrook and Stephen Large (previously from Tilbrook's touring band) on keyboards.

They played some of the expected favourites, including Pulling Mussels, Up the Junction, Goodby Girl and Tempted.

I have attached a picture from flickr of the setlist from a concert in Newcastle earlier in the year... it looks to be the same from the Dublin concert.

They still have amazing energy, and a back catalogue to rival any band's. I can see, had I lived here when I was growing up, that I would have been a big fan. All in all a great concert. If you are a fan of that type of music from the late 70's, early 80's, this is a must see show.

Here is the link to the flickr page:
http://flickr.com/photos/95547674@N00/2079312638/

Duran Duran Live in Dublin - Phoenix Park

2007-12-06T02:20:00.000-08:00

After about 25 years or so, I saw Duran Duran yesterday. While they are not one of my all time favourite bands, I have always liked their music. It was a good show, although a bit short.

First the venue. It was surprisingly good for what is effectively a circus tent! For those of you not from Dublin, let me explain. These type of concerts are usually held at The Point, which is famous because sometime in the 90's, the first performance of Riverdance happen there as part of the Eurovision song contest, and more recently, as the venue where the first official R.E.M. live album was recorded. But I digress, you can read all about it in the Wikipedia.

The Point is undergoing a massive renovation, so they have this temporary site in the Phoenix Park. It is only a few minutes away from my house, there is plenty of parking in the park itself, and it was generally very comfortable. Despite the fact that yesterday was a cold damp night, and the concert was effectively in a Park, my shoes were not mucky at the end of the show... that says it all.

Now the negatives. The show was scheduled for 8:00 PM, Duran Duran did not come out until 9:00, and there was no support act!!! And it was a short set. Only 90 minutes, including 1 encore.

For the last few shows, including the one in London last week, they had been playing Red Carpet Massacre in full, followed by a few of the oldies. Yesterday they only played 6 out of the 12 new songs, and they only added two of their back catalogue, admittedly two good ones. But they didn't play my favourite song of the new album (She's too much). Here is the setlist:

The Valley
Red Carpet Massacre
Nite Runner
Hungry Like the Wolf
Notorious
Falling Down
Skin Divers
Tempted
Rio
Reflex
Ordinary World
Shame
Planet Earth
A View to a Kill
Sunrise
Wild Boys
Girls on Film

The band came out at 9:00 PM all dressed in black. They looked funny uniformed, almost like a school band. They immediately started with The Valley, and played the first 3 songs of the new album. After a little pause, they launched into Hungry Like the Wolf, and that's when the crowd went nuts! They sounded really good. I was particularly impressed with John Taylor's bass work as it seemed effortless. Simon LeBon can still hit the high notes, but he missed quite a few! I think they did the right thing by mixing old and new songs. The crowd would have lost interest had they played the album in full.

Having said that , people reacted well to the new material, and was really into it for the old ones. My favourite one yesterday was Rio. All in all, it was a good show. I could have done with a few more songs. I really missed Serious, which I know they played earlier in the year.

A good show for a Wednesday evening!

Basscast is back!

2007-11-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Basscast "...the podcast for bass players and lovers of the bottom end" is back!!

For those of you that are not familiar with Basscast, it is a podcast produced in Australia by David Burges that focuses on bass related music. It is hosted by David himself and a guest bass player local to the australian scene and is typically divided in 3 segments:

News

Bass related nes, music and book releases and new gear

Featured album
Step back in time - where they take a look at influential albums or bass players

The show has had some interesting features on a number of great players from Jaco Pastorius to flea. One of my favourite episodes though, is the one dedicated to the Chapman Stick.

Well worth a listen to the whole series!

I'm always on the look for new music podcasts... let me know!

In Rainbows

2007-10-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

OK, so it has been more than a week now since Radiohead released their new album In Rainbows. I have been listening since I downloaded it, and I think it's brilliant.

For an established band, they have taken a huge risk in the way they are distributing the music, as you can download it directly from their website, and you set the price... yes... you can download it for free if you want it.` Just for the record, when I went to download it, I ended up paying £40 for the Discbox version which should be delivered some time before December 3rd.

There are a number of reviews around the place, so I will not rehash them. .. suffice to say that this is a must for any music fans and specially for Radiohead fans.

My favourite track is Faust Arp!

Go and buy it!!!

My new iPod Touch

2007-10-17T02:52:00.000-07:00

Ok,so I have had my new iPod Touch for a week now... and no, I didn't need it as I have an "old" 5.5 gen iPod, which is in perfect state, not full, and I'm still using it. Bu I had to get it.

The first thing I have to say is that the pictures on the web, don't do it justice. It is a beautiful piece of engineering.

Once you get over the shock of how it looks, and you turn it on, you get a chance to experience something unique. Out of the box, as soon as I turned it on, it tried to connect to my wireless network. I only had to provide the password, and it was connected. Safari works like a charm, it is unbelievably fast, and for such a small device, it works very well. There are 2 ways you can zoom into a web page, you either double tap with your finger in the centre of the area you want to expand, or you can touch it with 2 fingers and drag the fingers apart to expand the image. And if you tilt the iPod, you can change the orientation from portrait to lanscape, and back again.

The next thing you can do is go to the YouTube applet, and stream the videos... just like that!

The last WiFi applet is the iTunes music store, where you can buy music on line, which can be transferred back to your computer the next time you sync. The interface is pretty clever and works very well with the device.

OK, now I connect it to my Mac, and copy some music, videos and podcasts... because I can't wait to see how coverflow works on it... It is great!!! It is difficult to explain all of the interface, just drop by the apple website to have a look at the video they have of it. Here is a link to it while they keep it there.

iPodTouch Guided Tour Video

In essence, this is like the iPhone without the phone features.

Is it all good? Well, no, I have a couple of gripes.

Battery life is not great when using WiFi

It doesn't have a notes applet, or a Google Maps applet

You don't have an option to display the lyrics for a song, or the comments for a podcast.

Apple promised an SDK in February, and hopefully a few more apllets will come out then that will make this an even more interesting gadget.

I can't wait for the Newton to make its comeback!

The Police - Croke Park

2007-10-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

Wow... I do not have words to describe my experience yesterday. The Police Live! A dream come true. Many years ago I saw a TV broadcast from the Synchronicity tour and how I longed to have been there.

I only had to wait 23 years, but yesterday it finally happened. It was a great night, even the weather was with us. After the dismal summer, yesterday was the best night for a rock concert. The crowd played a big part, you could actually see the guys enjoying themselves when the crowd sang the songs with them. According to some of the reports there were 82,000 people there yesterday.

After the opening act, Fictionplane, and a few minutes after 8 o'clock, Stewart Copeland came out to the excitement of everybody there, followed by Andy Summers who immediately started playing Message in a Bottle, only to be joined by Sting a second or two later.

The selection of songs was pretty good, and covered all the 5 albums. Pretty much all songs have been rearranged, but all sounded great. Some of the highlights for me yesterday where:

Truth hits everybody
Every little thing she does is magic (Sting said that he had written the song in Galway!)
So Lonely
King of pain
Synchronicity II

From the shows in the US, the only song I would have liked to have heard is Murder by numbers.

Overall, it was a great show, with the 3 musicians playing at the top of their game.

See them if you have the chance!

An old post to start with - The Midlands Festival

2007-07-29T04:32:00.000-07:00

Some time ago (july 18th, 2007) I went to the Midlands Festival near Mullingar, Co Westmeath. The main attraction on the bill was Christy Moore, although my main reason for going, was the chance to see Aimee Mann, I have been a fan for a long time. She was brilliant, my favourite song of the set was Momentum.

I have to say that Country / western is not my scene, but there were a few other acts worth mentioning. I was pretty impressed with Steve Earle and his wife. Mundy played a pretty solid set, and there was this guy that I had never heard of before who is worth checking, His name is Raul Midon. His guitar playing was amazing

However, in my mind the best set of the show yesterday were the Waterboys. I was blown away. Songs like Medicin Bow, The Whole of the Moon, The Glastonbury Song, really rocked the crowd. It made me come back and dust off my old CD's to add them to my ipod. If you get a chance to see them play live, get there!!!!

Some new music

2007-07-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I have been buying a lot of music recently, among other things: Aimee Mann's I'm with stupid, new releases from REO Speedwagon, Modest Mouse, Ash , Marillion & Suzanne Vega.

I have been a very big fan of Suzanne Vega, and here new album is fantastic (Beauty & Crime), It is a shame that she will not be playing in Ireland during her current tour... but hey Aimee Mann is, so hopefully I will catch her!!!!

I really like prog rock (I know, sad), Marillion's new album (Somewhere Else )is pretty good as well, a bit more mellow thatn some of their earlier stuff, but very good... they even managed to get an article in Q

Finally, Modest Mouse latest release is fantastic (We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank ), Johnny Marr (yes, the same Johnny Marr from trhe Smiths!!!) joinned them, you can definitely hear his infulence. Well worth a check

By the way, Basscast is back... check them out!