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

Layer Cake

Yesterday I had the opportunity to watch this film. It was very good, the kind of film that is original, interesting and intensive up to the end. Like Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Drugs and dealers, some nice Serbs producing tons of extasy and killing people without batting an eyelid, some big bosses and so on. It is full of surprises and you donèt get bored. In the end I thought the director is going to ruin everythng with a happy end (don't think I don't like happy ends; I do! but in this case the happy end would suit the film not better than expensive jewel on blue jeans). Fortunately everything went on perfect.
Oh, and the beautiful blond cheek is present too. But for the best.

Behind the Name

I accidentally found this site where the meaning of many names can be found. My nickname "nousha" is the short form of the long and lovable Gerganousha, cute variation of my name used by my Grandma. But I found that:

NOUSHA
Gender: Feminine

Usage: Iranian

Means "sweet, pleasant" in Persian.

Well, what can I say *angel*

And when looking up for my real name, I'm pleased to see this site too confirms:

GERGANA
Gender: Feminine

Usage: Bulgarian

Other Scripts: Гергана (Bulgarian)

Bulgarian feminine form of GEORGE.

(Let's skip the fact that this in French would be "Georgette", really, I hate the thought of it, and concentrate on the fact that I'm proud my name's the feminine of George - due to many reasons. So, I am being proud *being, being*

*laaarge smile*

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