Big Four - for the first time in history, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax (The Big Four of Trash) will perform on one stage! They'll have appearances at the Sonisphere shows in Warsaw (16 June, Poland), Jonschwil (18 June, Switzerland) and Prague (19 June, Czech Republic). Maybe they're not my favorite bands playing heavy metal, but I'm sure, that these shows will be awesome! Why?
Born January 18. 1963 in Zurich, Switzerland. Son of a musician (bass player Vali Mayer), he spent his early childhood on the road traveling throughout Europe and the Far East. At the age of 2 he got his first drum set, and his first public performance took place in Hong Kong when he was only 3 years old. Growing up in the influence of a musical environment Jojo is basically self-taught.
At the age of 18 he joined Monty Alexander's group and toured extensively all over Europe, playing all the major jazz -festivals including the North-Sea-Jazz Festival, Montreux, Nice, Antibes, Athens etc.This lead to back-up gigs with other jazz-greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Nina Simone and introduced him to an international audience.
More recently, Jojo has been venturing into New York's Techno / Multimedia / Avantgarde / club scene by promoting his own weekly party event called PROHIBITED BEATZ. This new platform for live "Drum n" Bass", "Nu-Skool Breaks", "Speed Garage" and the latest stylistical hybrids and mutations in DJ culture, has also provided the back drop for his first solo project called NERVE. Described as an "endeavor in reverse engineering the textures and rhythms of the current stream of computer generated music into a live performed, improvisational format", NERVE and PROHIBITED BEATZ have created a reputation in the New York scene that already goes way beyond "a serious buzz".
He was featured as the cover story of the January 2008 issue of Modern Drummer magazine. His DVD, Secret Weapons for the Modern Drummer, is a bestseller worldwide.
Okay, enough of the bio. Let's see Jojo in action :) This is a clip from his DVD on which Jojo plays some short solos / grooves. This one is called "New York Grooves":
And here's another video of Jojo Mayer performing on Modern Drummer Festival 2005 with his band Nerve:
Hopefully now you see, why he is considered one of the greatest drummers alive.
Another short story for you. But don't worry, this time I'm not going to write about myself again;)
02.02.1963 - on that day in Oxon Hill (Maryland, USA) little Eva drew her first breath. No-one expected, that her life would be so dramatic, but so wonderful.
She was very talented girl, possessing amazing, magical voice. When she was 9, her father gave her first guitar. Sometimes she was performing occasionally for her family or friends, but she never thought, that she could became a famous singer. She was very, very shy, she wasn't feeling comfortable while performing.
However, when she was 18 she joined the band called Easy Street and started playing with them on weddings, parties, in pubs, her carrier started to pick up steam. Later, she was playing with some other bands, but she was still remaining not so famous. Even fact, that she released 3 albums: "The Other Side" (with Chuck Brown, containing amazing version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"), "Live at Blues Alley" (album from concert) and "Eva By Heart" didn't change her status - she never became a star.
Eva Cassidy passed away on 02.11.1996 in Bowie (Maryland, USA). The cause of death was a melanoma.
Few more Eva's albums have been released after her death. Surprisingly, her surname became famous worldwide! The compilation "Songbird" became a golden record in USA, Michelle Kwan was performing her show on Winter Olympic Games in 2002 to Eva's version of Sting's "Fields of Gold". What is more, her three albums, that have been released after Eva's death achieved position number one on UK bestsellers list - even Elvis Presley didn't achieved that!
Her voice is one of my favorites. Every time when I'm listening to her songs I'm feeling special - feeling difficult to describe. I'm sad, that she won't be singing anymore, but on the other hand, I'm happy, that some day someone decided to show her music to the world and let me know, who was Eva Cassidy.
Lady GaGa is a candidate to play an important role in a new Quentin Tarantino movie.
The singer got acquainted with the famous director after she had borrowed the "Pussy Wagon" from "Kill Bill" movie to use it in her new music video for "Telephone". A close co-worker of Tarantino had revealed in an interview for MTV News that the singer and the director are considering working together on Tarantino's latest project.
fot. Universal.
A source close to Tarantino said: "Quentin is a huge fan of GaGa and loves her whole personality. He has already sounded her out on a couple of projects, one of which would see her playing an assassin.”
GaGa supposedly is very excited, because starring in a movie is a whole new experience for her and Quentin told her she has natural talent - says the director's associate.
After seeing Gaga in the Telephone video (may not be suitable for minors!) I agree with the MTV - she would make a quite good asassin...
Hello!
Today I'm gonna share my feelings about one very interesting phenomenon - Ordinary Brainwash. I'm sure, that for all of us good progressive rock played by a band is nothing weird - there are some classics of that style, such as Dream Theater
or
Porcupine Tree
or great Polish band Riverside
(my love to their music forced me to show you this tune: Reality Dream II
...I hope you liked it;) )
But... Can you imagine progressive rock composed, played, sang and mixed by only one person?! Rafał Żak - Polish student of Warsaw School Of Economics, also multi-instrumentalist, who is the body and soul of the project named Ordinary Brainwash.
Where did I found him? Well he's a friend of my sister, they're studying together, and one day she showed me a few of his songs, than told me about his first record called "Disorder in my head". I listened to that and I was under great impression of his music!
I'm sure, that in the nearest future world of rock music will get to know this guy! (world should!:P)
Ordinary Brainwash
Ok, stop talking, now go to his myspace profile and enjoy that music! I hope you will like it too!:)
Hello everybody. Today I would like to share with you about my recent discovery - a band named Radio Moscow. Wikipedia and all the other smart music websites define their music style as "psychedelic rock". Ok, "rock" sounds good... and what's the deal with this "psychedelic" adjective? Well, this is what the band itself has written about the evolution of its style: "channeled through the blues with experimental breakdowns, unpredictable tempo changes, crazy rave-ups and fuzzed out psychedelic guitar work".
If I had to define Radio Moscow's style myself, I am sure I wouldn't use the term "psychedelic" rock. Not that it is not adequate - simply because not until recently I had no idea that such genre even existed. Instead I would tell you that it's a fine mixture of blues rock and progressive rock with a subtle hint of some of more "heavy" music styles.
But let's forget about the nuances of genre names and ask one, very important question - are they any good? Of course I am no music critic and I can only speak for myself, but I have to say: hell, yes! If you are into blues rock, progressive stuff and even all kinds of metal you'll simply love the band, however even my friend, who listens to completely different, non-rock music told me that he liked them very much.
If you want, you can give them a listen right now on this player, ripped from their myspace site:
Current touring band members (from left): Parker Griggs - Guitars/Vocals/Drums, Paul Marrone - Drums, Zach Anderson - Bass
"So who are those Radio Moscow guys and if they are so great, why haven't I heard of them?". The band started very typically as a garage project in Story City, Iowa in 2003 by Parker Griggs who writes songs, sings and plays guitar. Oh, and he also plays drums on the records. Quite impressive. What's worth noticing is the fact, that back in the early days Parker would pre-record the drums on a 4-track and then blasts it through amplification. Later, Zach Anderson replaced Serana Andersen as a bassist and, with help of some of their drummer friends, the band is touring ever since.
The cover of "Brain Cycles", their latest album, fits perfectly with the common understanding of the word "psychedelic".
And why are they not famous yet? That's a good question to which I have no definite answer... Maybe with the help of websites like this one, the band will get more of much-deserved attention. Links:
"Pop Idol was a British television series which debuted on ITV on 5 October 2001; the show was a talent contest to decide the best new young pop singer, or 'pop idol', in the United Kingdom, based on viewer voting and participation."1.
Up till these days there has been editions in over 30 countries all over the world with hundreds of contestants and even more people just auditioning for the show. In such a great number of people from various cultures, speaking different languages and, as we will see later, with different vocal skills, there are bound to be some that didn't manage to enter the true contest, but nevertheless became Idols. Of the Internet.
Fist we would like to share with you a video from Bulgarian Idol Where a women will sing... oh, hell, we won't spoil the surprise :-) Just look at this:
If you are a curious person, as I am, you would like to see how much her lyrics resemble the original. Here you can find lyrics for Mariah Carey "Without You". Play the clip again and try to follow along :-)
What is worth noticing is the fact, that the woman actually got into Idol and became quite popular in her country. We also have a video of the Mariah Carey reaction on the performance: Mariah's reaction to '' Ken Lee '' !!! EXCLUSIVE! + ENGLISH SUBS. Before we proceed I must say that I fully concur with her - it sure takes a lot of courage to go out on the stage and don't mind if you become the next YouTube video tagged as "hilarious".
Speaking of hilarious - we move to Kazakhstan where a young man performed a one-way hashing algorithm over Boomfunk MC's "Freestyle" before singing it. The effect is stunning:
Exactly the same as with the Bulgarian lady above, hi actually qualified for the finals. We are beginning to think that maybe it is the way to do it? :-)
We finish this post with the excellent improvisation of Michael Jackson from Malaysia. Sadly, this lad wasn't to juries' liking:
Surely you can find dozens of such videos all over the web and these guys are just a tip of an iceberg. And just to be clear: we are not encouraging you to make fun of them or abuse them verbally in comments. We simply believe that laughing is very healthy! :D
...I decided to fall in love with music:) I think you're at least little bit curious, why student of Aviation&Aeronautics is going to write a blog about music...here is a little story for you... I was about 6-7 years old when for the first time I was aware, that music that I'm listening to has a composer, title, there is a band and generally how does it work. It was Queen - "We are the champions" - my cousin was a great fan of that band so, when I was visiting him, I had no choice - I had to get to know Queen's music.
Queen Later, I added some more rock bands to my music world: Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Metallica, Iron Maiden... And probably now I could belong to "metalheads subculture", having long hair, wearing leather, but suddenly...
My mum forced me to be a dance partner for my sister!... During first few trainings I was really unhapy - even if I "have to dance", I couldn't do it to my favorite music! So I was getting to know new (for me) genres of music: classical, latin also pop, even hip-hop. I discovered for myself, that there a lot of songs, that are excellent, even if it's no rock! Wow - sounds very stupid and childish, but for that time that was like a miracle for me!:P By the way, I fell in love with dancing too;) Now, if someone is asking me "what is my favorite music genre?" I'll answer "there's no one favorite genre, I love music, but only good;)" Have a nice day!:)
Ordinary Brainwash
Queen