Rain

This is the video of the song "Dozd" (Rain) from the Russian band DDT. I want to share it for I like it so much.



The text is something like this in English:

Rain draped the sky in a twinkling shroud. May's rain.
Thunder hammered along the rooftops, scared all the cats away. Thunder.
I opened the window, and a merry wind scattered everything on my desk -
Silly poems that I wrote in a clammy and miserable emptiness.

May's thunder roared, and joy, in a sweeping, drunkening wave,
Rolled over: "Hey, get up, and jump in after me!
Get out into the yard and hop around the puddles till morning, if you want, -
Look at how the funny, blessed children are running about.

Droplets on my face - it's only the rain, or maybe it's me crying;
The rain cleansed everything, and my soul, sobbing, suddenly felt soaked through, -
It rolled down in a creek, away from home and towards the sunny, unsown plains,
Turning into vapor, it flew with the wind towards unknown, undiscovered worlds.

And then I imagined: the city suddenly filled with merry people.
Everyone came out into the rain and sang, and laughed… dammit!...
Having forgotten about all shame, and the possibility to fall sick with complications,
The people in the rain greeted thunder like fireworks; the very first spring thunder.

Do you have a ticket, by chance?

I feel a little sad

Yamato

Yamato
This was almost a week ago - one wonderful musical experience in a warm Saturday night.
The performance was amazing. I think I'm not able to describe it in English. It was a brilliant mixture of very deeply traditional music, bringing the sense of Japanese culture, and marvellous interaction with the public, making the audience laugh and become part of the performance thus coming closer to the heart of the Japanese music/culture/art/soul/spirit. And it was true - every beat was like a heartbeat. I enjoyed the show very, very much.
This is a part of it:


And some information:

Yamato’s drummers must first find the ‘heart tone’ of the sound. We try to expose the very heart of life, which is beating inside our bodies and is the origin of performance energy. It is the heartbeat of a lonely runner, beating hard in his smooth flesh, and the embodiment of the soul that strongly supports it. You can’t see it with your eyes, or touch with your hands, but it exists beyond a doubt.
Our intensive training helps us make this heartbeat reverberate the world over, sometimes with gentleness, sometimes with overpowering force. For the drummers of Yamato, it is a celebration of the sound inherited by humankind at the beginning of time.

Placebo

A lot of concerts are coming and a lot of concerts I was to last week, so I'll try to catch up. And Placebo deserves a separate post.
I decided to go to this concert because I have once listened to "Every Me Every You" and I liked it. At the time I was listening to Suede (not only a song, but a whole album, yeah!) so Placebo were labelled "cool".
And that was it. And now - a concert. Well, OK, I'm going.

What was that sentence about the good intentions and the road to Hell? My good intention to listen to the music of a performer before going to their concert hasn't lead me to Hell (yet) but I never manage to do that (the listening).

I'm a photographer this time. The sticker given to the photojournalists is very clever - looks like a prescription. I like it.

The sound was not good enough most of the time. I liked the bass player - very intensive attitude, nasty look, punk behaviour - well done!




In the beginning I was bored. All the songs sounded the same to me. Poor sound quality... no contact between the artists and the public... great whim: video screen behind the musicians made as the one is broken:


The encore was amazing. It was a completely different story. There was the yellow light, flooding the hall and the thumping music that made me feel... just feel the music. And I like that feeling. When the music starts travelling through the veins and clears the dark and misty corners of the brain like a witch cleaning her closet in Spring. Then I didn't care anymore about the absence of contact between the musicians and the audience - it was all right, everything was all right and I was just feeling happy only because I could feel the music.
See, I didn't want to listen to Placebo when I got home (I'd rather play Suede), I didn't become bigger fan after the concert but now I can label the concert "success". Because a concert is not only listening to the performers' music.





Set list:
Placebo, Winter palace of Sports, Sofia, 18 June 2007

1. Infra-Red
2. Because I Want You
3. Meds
4. Drag
5. Soulmates
6. I Know
7. Song To Say Goodbye
8. Cops
9. Every You Every Me
10. Special Needs
11. One Of a Kind
12. Without You
13. Bionic
14. Blind
15. Special K
16. Bitter End

Encore:
17. Running Up That Hill
18. Taste in Men
19. Twenty Years

Vaya Con Dios

A lot of people think that the singer's name is Vaya Con Dios. And now it's closer than ever to the truth, because she is the only original member of the band left to continue perform their music.
Saturday, June 9, National Palace of the Culture, Sofia. The grand hall was full - the band has never been in Bulgaria and people love it.
We knew that the concert will be "acoustic" and the hit songs will be performed in new arrangements. But I expected something more dance-like, maybe. Instead it was a lot of blues, jazz, a tribute to the Roma music with their anthem "Jelem Jelem" and the extraordinary voice of Dani Klein.
The sound was poor and it was very hard to hear the guitar most of the time.
In general, I liked it. However it is more suitable, in my opinion, for a large bar with very expensive tickets ;)

Procol Harum

Procol Harum. What does this mean?

Few days ago everything I knew about this band was:
- They had a smashing hit called "A Whiter Shade of Pale".
- They were produced by Brian Epstein and when their first album went N1 in 1967 he celebrated with them with a bottle of champagne.
- Ummm.... nothing more.
Then I was searching to buy Marillion album and instead I bought seven different albums, including "Procol Harum - The Essential Collection". Then I started listening to it and I was amazed. I won't say more than the fact that if you list the "top listeners" of Procol Harum in last.fm, I'm there. One of the first.
This band is so good. I can't stop listening to the album. I must find all their albums. And find out what their name means. The latter is easy, three-step exercise:
- google it
- read it
- post it to enlighten the readers (whom I seriously suspect in being not more than one)
"The band name was chosen by its original manager, Guy Stevens, after the name of Reid's cat, and it is almost the Latin for "beyond these things". A more correct spelling of the Latin phrase is in fact Procul Harum, and the band's name has frequently been 'corrected' to this in articles and catalogues. However, even Procul Harum is not quite right grammatically, and the correct Latin translation of "beyond these things" would be Procul His."

One thing I like in Google (apart everything else) it that you usually learn more than what you were searching for. So I'll skip the band's biography and stop at interesting facts:
"-The asteroid 14024 Procol Harum is named after the band.
-The second book in the Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker Trilogy, "The Restaurant At the End of the Universe," was inspired by the song Grand Hotel."

Up The Irons!

Yeah! That is it! Iron Maiden in Bulgaria!
I'm not a great fan but I do enjoy their music. It was a perfect show with Bruce Dickinson singing at his best (except for the last song when his voice got a little bit lost) and all the others playing at their best.
The support act - Steve Harris's daughter Lauryn - that bird can't sing! End of story.
Iron Maiden, the stage - it was huge. But ridiculously, after seeing George Michael's stage on Monday, Maiden's seemed so small to me :(
Iron Maiden, the band - perfect performance.
Iron Maiden, the show - very well done, with all the lights, the decors, the devil and Eddie on a tank (yes, a tank)... one word - impressive!
The crowd - from the place where I was it looked wonderful - hands in the air, everybody singing, headbanging - a human sea where there are no individuals, all personality is lost into the Crowd. The same word - impressive! Metal music has the particularity to provoke this phenomenon better and faster than other genres.
When Bruce stood up and shouted: "Scream for me, Sofia!", that was a thrill. And I screamed. Hell, yeah!
The sound was not very good. The set list was short. The new album they are promoting is not good for me. The concert was not great - I've seen better. But this was Iron Maiden in Sofia! People waited for them more than 25 years!
So I'm satisfied.
Next target - Vaya Con Dios acoustic, Saturday.
Meanwhile I'm listening a lot to Procol Harum, I just discovered how great band they were (and are) and reviewed last Linkin Park album... Now, that's a mix of styles ;)
The set list:

Iron Maiden
Live In Sofia, Bulgaria
Locomotiv Stadium - 04.06.2007

1. Different World
2. These Colours Don't Run
3. Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
4. Wrathchild
5. The Trooper
6. Children Of The Damned
7. The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg
8. For The Greater Good Of God
9. The Number of The Beast
10. Fear Of The Dark
11. Run To The Hills
12. Iron Maiden
Encore:
13. 2 Minutes To Midnight
14. The Evil That Men Do
15. Hallowed Be Thy Name

I love N 14....



Photos: Svetoslav Dagiev, SME

Marillion, 18th May, Munich

Here we go.
I caught my plane one dark morning, it was very early, the plane was cute and small and took me to Budapest. During the flight it was racing with the sunrise but at the moment it landed, it lost. Nevermind, I was in Budapest, at Budapest airport, more precisely, stayed there for an hour, trying not to fall asleep and then - next plane to Munich.
Munich was sunny and hot, while Sofia that I left six hours ago was rainy and cold. Am I not lucky, heh.
My one week stay in the capital of Bayer deserves another post, so let's go directly to the concert evening, 18th May, club Backstage.
In the beginning it was quite confusing, the venue has two halls, on both sides of the road, so I got lost. But eventually everything got sorted out, I took an interview with Mark Kelly, Marillion's keyboardist, and entered the hall - it was still almost empty so we could choose wonderful places - near the bear bar ;) and only few meters from the scene.
The support act were young German boys, very talented, sorry, I didn't remember their band's name, but it can be checked any time. It's Germany, all right, so they came on stage at 20:00. After them the stage got prepared and at 21:20 it went dark. Then a ray of light fell on Steve Hogarth and illuminated his face. Very strange, he was wearing some kind of coat that reminded me the child on the "Misplaced Childhood" album's cover...

I like both Marillion with Fish and with H. Most people chose one of those two bands. A friend of mine always says that Fish is extremely charismatic artist. And what I see in H is the creative force of the madness. The one that moves most artists at any age or place in the human history. That night he was not only a musician, but also an actor. And he didn't stop singing for two hours. The band didn't use any solo - drums or keyboards, to give the other members time to rest. Two hours perfect performance plus 20 minutes encore. And H's voice was at its best. Powerful, crystal clear, emotional. They did songs from a lot of albums, including, of course, "Somewhere Else", promoted on this tour, and a lot of "Marbles".
But - from the beginning. Mark Kelly said that this tour they decided to perform songs that the audience wants them to do - and as people discuss that on forums, the dates to come are prepared :) In Munich the hall shouted "Easter", it was the last encore.
And there we are, the diabolic light, Steve Hogarth started "Splintering Heart" from "Holiday In Eden". Then the stage become all light and we saw the others - Steve Rothery:
Ian Mosley,
Pete Trawavas:


and Mark Kelly:

Next song was „The Other Half” - the first track from the new album.


I didn't rank "Somewhere Else" very high, but after the show I am considering to revise my opinion. It sounded powerful and enchanting.
Before the second single Last Century For Man, came Ocean Cloud and You’re Gone from Marbles.


The public was amazing. H told them "I remember the show in Munich during Marbles" and they went crazy. It was possible to actually feel the love they were sending to the musicians and to see how this was giving the band power and was charging them like battery. It was like a running circle of emotions.






I am happy that I choose to attend the show in Munich, next day in Prague Marillion has perform less songs...

The Invisible Man stroke me:

I haven't changed
I swear I haven't changed....

And you see H, illuminated face, eyes bright with madness, screaming:

I will scream again
"I am perfectly sane"
"I am perfectly sane".

Yeah, right, "sane"! Amazing!

Then "Man Of Thousand Faces" from my favourite album "This Strange Engine".








When they said "Good night" and left the scene, the hall was about to be ruined :) They came back to perform the encore, and H said "Yeah, I remember Marbles. But you managed to beat it somehow!"
Great.

Belen Maya and her flamenco

"Belen Maya's company" presented "Dibujos" (Pictures) in the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. It was amazing - I like flamenco a lot.
It was an interesting set of different pieces of music and dance. The music is by the flamenco guitarist Jose Luis Rodriguez, who was playing the guitar in "Dibujos".
Belen uses traditional, classic flamenco dance altogether with modern influences. It was like a dialogue between the guitar and her dance. And it made me sit and stare, with no moves, it grasped my attention. Flamenco is always very powerful, like a huge bird, majestic eagle who starts beating his wings at the edge of a high cliff. You see the sea waves below him, the enormous sky above him, the free space between them, and you feel his desire. Sometimes to stay, sometimes to fly calmly, sometimes to fly fast and risky. And most of the times all this at the same time.
The quality of the pictures is very poor, it was hard to take good ones with my camera.



La Tremendida, the singer:

M like Music

It seems that the month of May will be full of M-Music: Marillion in Munich, George Michael on Monday, Belen Maya yesterday, Iron Maiden next Monday... coincidence?
Before writing something about Marillion in Munich experience, I'll write about George (not Harrison, unfortunately).
The concert in Sofia, Lokomotiv stadium, on Monday was the sixth of his "25 Live" tour. He celebrates 25 years on stage and said in the beginning: "I'll try hard to thank you for supporting me for 25 years". And he did. It was amazing. I never was a fan, I know some of his hits because they are played on the radio and so on and I went to the concert just of "scientific" interest and as a journalist. But it was stunning. Huge scene with giant screen crossing it horizontally and reaching the front rows, the Circle of Faith (I think no one had such a scene in Bulgaria before), all the lights, videos, colours. It was proof of brilliant professional work, on one hand, and on the other - George's voice was at its best and he sang the songs just like studio record - amazing! I was charmed and thrilled. I didn't stop dancing during the upbeat tracks and just sat down quietly, deeply moved during "Jesus To a Child, Ticking, Praying For Time...
The concert was also supporting our nurses in Lybia and the last song - Freedom, almost made me feel like William Wallace ;) Seeing all those 20 000 people around me shouting "Freedom"!
Yes, absolutely perfect concert of an absolutely perfect artist.
The organization of the event was very good, especially having in mind the heavy rain that fell minutes before the start of the show. The promoter covered the grass on the stadium with some kind of plastic and nobody got wet and muddy. Unfortunately the stadium is in the suburbs, I, of course, live in the opposite suburb, there is no public transport after midnight and around the stadium everything was absolutely disgusting - mud, whole lakes and swamps to cross - a real adventure. And the traffic jam - at midnight in the capital city there is a traffic jam because of a concert... At least it was better than the situation after Depeche Mode's show, attended by 45 000!
I am very worried about Iron Maiden's concert next Monday. Very, very worried...
Here some pieces of the amazing night:
"Father Figure", stunning video on the screen (this is shot in Denmark):

Wonderful song, especially with this vision - "Praying For Time", Denmark again:

The same song in Sofia, different aspect:


The beginning of the concert, in Denmark, here in Sofia it was dark when it started - very beautiful.
And the magnificent Elton John's song "Ticking":

Especially for a very good friend of mine:

"M" like Marillion, Munich, music...

This week I'll fly to Munich. On Wednesday morning. And if everything goes right, I'll attend Marillion's show there. Still cannot let myself believe in it.
I'll have to leave my two cats and one dog to my brother's care for a week. That'll be interesting.
But what I wanted to say - I'm about to complaining. Just finished two album reviews - Tori Amos's and Maximo Park's. It was OK, nothing great but quite impressive. Now I have to write an article about a band called "The Rosebuds". They sound so ordinary - I mean in the field of writing about them. After writing about the weird "Decemberists" and the majestic "Grindeman" now I must compose a text out of the blue, no, out of the grey - they met, they signed with a major indie label, they are happy. I cross my fingers I'll find something teasing eventually.
That was complaining.
Now, something good. Finally I intend to watch Beatles' Anthology. Believe it or not, I haven't watched it so far. Me, the huge Beatles fan, *smirk*.
Raxo, don't say a word. Everything with its right time ;) And thanks for writing here (I miss the smileys...)

It's St George's day here. And as my name comes from George, I celebrate. It's good, most people remember my name day, because it's a national holiday too, but few people know my birthday.

I spent the afternoon at my grandparents', eating lamb (tradition!) and drinking old alcohol drinks, not to say ancient. My grandpa keeps them for years - today's wine was from 1972, for instance. And there were so many horses in the green sad field outside. Most of the people in the village are relatives of ours but I still cannot manage to make someone give me a horse to ride. So I'll have to go riding here, in the big city. Modern times...

Speaking (writing) of which, in a minute ago I wrote to my brother, who is in the next room, to turn the volume up, because I heard the beginning of "High Hopes". Not that I couldn't shout and he couldn't hear me through the door, but technologies are much better...

I don't want to do the lot of work I had and I want to learn my Finnish grammar instead, but I cannot because of all the work that had to be done. So I'd better start with doing something useful...

Magical Music Tour

Oookay! So, it's March. MY MONTH! I waited for it for so long... and now I know it's going to end very, very soon. It always is. Everybody knows, dreaming is better than the dream itself. But never mind, I'll dream of summer afterwards :)
So let me share something with you - I'm listening to Yes's "Relayer" for a whole week now and I'm going deeper and deeper... I love it! I can say I'm happy. Some years or months ago I couldn't listen to such music without being left worried and insecure about how I do not understand it. But fortunately I am very persistent when I take a decision and the decision I took was to try as hard as I can to break through it. I didn't know much about progressive rock and anything about jazz for example. And I wanted to know, to understand, to feel - because my firm belief is that people can be taught. Even in art, in music, in whatever. If they desire. And not pushed away with words such: "Oh, if you can't already feel it, forget about it, it couldn't be described, it's impossible to be explained. You just don't have the heart for this". Excuse me! It's nonsense.
So... I was reading, listening, listening, reading, listening and now I feel like I succeeded to push aside a big rock that was blocking the opening of a cave and now I'm standing in a stream of sunlight. I'm certainly not a progressive rock expert but at least this music talks to me now.
Next step - I'm attacking "Faithless". It must be hard...
Now let me give you a piece of blue sky shining between thick clouds...

it runs high

to reach pure beauty

Et si je t'aime, prends garde a toi!

Last night I and two girlfriends we went to see "Carmen" at the Sofia Opera.
I know that the National Opera is not very good (and the National Ballet is straightforwardly a real disaster) but we don't have any other chance to listen to operas so there we went.
Carmen is my favourite opera ever. I have seen it many times and I love the music. In my opinion the art of opera combines music and theatre so I pay attention to the acting skills of the singers. Carmen wasn't good. She didn't look well, she wasn't beautiful, I didn't like her voice and she just didn't make me believe in the kind of love she feels. So I was disappointed. Not to mention strange decor and costume ideas (who thought it's good to combine red, orange and pink??), poor ballet-dancers, fat Don Jose... Escamillo was great - both look and voice. Michaella sang quite good but I just can't stand this character.
One advantage is that compared to other National Operas our is very cheap. And as said above I want to see not only hear the opera (this means I'm not keen on buying opera CDs. At least not much.) So I have no choice for the moment.
We usually go out Saturday evening - theatre and then dinner. sometimes piano bar afterwards. Hopefully the music of Carmen is so brilliant that we went out in good mood. But next time we're going to try to see some musical. Hair for example. I have the feeling I'll need iron nerves...