A-ha's farewell to Madrid

Couldn't make up my mind about whether to go to yesterday's gig or not (happens to me, get sort of jammed, same amount of pros and cons), so decided to enter a draw I came across on the net, leave it to fortune...and scored 2 tickets at the very last minute!!!. Really glad I went. More pics:

To cut a long story short, pros:
- Lighting, show production, gorgeous
- Music
- Magne's humor, specially his bit translating Morten's words to Spanish- hilarious. Morten's smile, wow (btw, he looked impossibly, spookily young on the screens, like in his 20s).

And cons:
-Venue, venue, venue: bad sound, lugubrious atmosphere...a real sabotage
-Setlist, basically the singles off each record... not fair.
-Rythm, the energy of the first set of songs suddenly sinks and never quite reaches the same level again.
-Morten's moves, weird. Specially when getting ready for the note holding in Summer moved on, looked like some kind of transformer about to unplug his torso...quality, not quantity.
-Last, but certainly not least their fan snubbing after the concert. Only Pal approached the people waiting, he spent like 1 minute behind the fence, slurring a few signatures, his sunglasses on, not looking up once. The other two got into their heavily tinted glasses Mercedes without a word. Honestly, how hard can it be to say a general hi to all the people waiting at the other side of a fence?.

Only other time I've won tickets to a concert was about a decade ago. It included airfare, hotel, limo picking us up at the airport -wohoo!- and Michael Douglas on the plane (that not included in the prize but it was at that time when he was courting Z Jones... He waited with everybody at the boarding room for quite a bit and acted very normal, seemed nice, curiously only a little girl approached him -enough, gossipy me). Concert was Madness at the Wembley Arena, around Christmas, which was rather cool because London looked lovely. Had little time and had already been to London a few times, visited Lord Leighton's house (highly recommend it, beautiful), etc . Walked around the city and the shops...fantastic. They don't do contests like that anymore...or I don't win them!

Tags: A-ha farewell tour, A-ha Madrid, A-ha vistalegre

Concierto Homenaje a Carlos Berlanga en Joy

-Post in Spanish, the rest of this blog's posts are in English-

Bueno, post en español que ya tocaba..

Poco que añadir a lo mucho que ya se ha dicho de anoche. Que fue una pena, una pena porque pudo ser muy especial. Pero irónicamente le faltó de lo que allí sobraba: ritmo y música. Una organización absurda, dosificando una canción cada cuarto de hora, empezando por temas lentos, después los más animados, luego los de en medio...el público andaba descolocado (razones técnicas? no lo veo. Y por qué tantos grupos se quedaron fuera?).

Lo mejor, eso si, las actuaciones: todos se lo tomaron en serio y se dieron de verdad. Bebe se plantó con un desafiante "A quién le importa" escenificado a lo Rocío Jurado, manos en cadera, mucho sentimiento y mucha raza. A más de uno debían de pitarle los oídos después de lo que se ha cuestionado su participación en el disco...(la verdad, de la versión del disco no digo lo mismo).

Alaska no defraudó y suyo fue el mejor remake de la noche, hizo pleno eligiendo su tema, y junto al resto de Fangoria cantó un "En el volcán" al que dio mucho brío y mucho de todo. Evidentemente esa noche su actuación era la más esperada a efectos de disección y la verdad es que dejó poco margen de comentario.

Las Nancys Rubias, divertidos, no sonaron nada mal.

Me perdí a Anni B Sweet, que ya había tocado cuando nos dejaron entrar (organización, eso no se hace!!).

Y de lo demás alguno soso soso, alguno más a la altura que otro, y algunos que me perdí porque ya al final echa una cuentas y estarse 40 minutos más para oír otras dos canciones y entre semana... al día siguiente el despertador no perdona.

No iba a ir al concierto porque aunque me apetecía mucho y que sea gratis es un lujo, eso de no saber si vas a ir para nada..no apetece. De hecho después de más de media hora en una cola larguísima seguíamos todos con la incógnita. Pero bueno, al final creo que entramos todos, y eso que la cola de vips y prensa era casi igual de larga que la nuestra. Foto de la cola, flecha donde estaba la entrada, para hacerse una idea...

He subido un par de videos a mi canal de youtube, pero el concierto se grabó entero con cámaras profesionales y seguro que está disponible pronto en el myspace de Vodafone secret shows, que lo de internet los de Vodafone lo llevan super (ya han subido un montón de fotos).

Yo solo vi una vez a Carlos Berlanga, hace muchos años. Un día me lo crucé por la calle, y cuando me quedé con cara de "ese es..", él en vez mirar para otro lado me sonrió. Anoche quedó claro que mucha gente le admira, de los antiguos y de los nuevos.

September babies and A-ha... and ink and BR and whatnot -like customizable music vids-

Congrats are in order for new mums Nerina Pallot and Emiliana Torrini, as both of them gave birth to boys this week!.

If that wasn't work enough, Emiliana's releasing a cd next month and Nerina has a cd recording in progress...a hell of a lot of energy they're gonna need...

Actually both of them have written songs for Kylie Minogue, hmm.

Have never had the chance to see Nerina live unfortunately but have been following her live broadcast "I don't want to go out" sessions which she does so generously for her fans (last one on the 23rd Aug!- she had to interrupt it because of.. stomach ache, ahem -she had not "gone public" with her pregnancy -must have been damn hard to go without telling). I did meet Emiliana briefly some time ago and she's such a lovely, lovely person, she even lent a hand with an old lost cause of mine.

So glad for them, had no idea they were even pregnant!.

In case someone is unfamiliar with the music of either, follow the link for a free download of a song of each from their official websites:

*Nerina: Heidi

*Emiliana: "Birds". Square at top right, bottom (join mailing list)

And this one's not had any babies but she's delivered some most impressive songs:

*Audra Mae's The river free download-

Other recent deliveries out there included PING, the supposedly ultrafantastic ultimate virtual music Itunes community that turned out to be quite the joke. There I was on its second day snooping around all excited thinking it's bye bye lastfm (nothing personal, it was great at the beginning, not anymore) when I came across the impressive amount of choice of... some 20 artists to follow!!. I couldn't believe it, but yeah, big powers can sc**w just as big -as per this article. Well, we still have Spotify.

On the other side of the spectrum, others are saying goodbye. A-ha are on their farewell tour and yes, I love these guys so I'm sad. Grew up listening to their songs, bought most of their records (I even have this LP my father brought me from a trip to Norway ages ago, with water splash embossed on it, a big treasure at the time, with songs like the wonderful "October") and their music along with many others' surely helped shape my synapses big time. Seems their last song will be "Butterfly, Butterfly (The last hurrah)", and an impressive most adequate song it is too (despite lines like "molecular cries" or" chrisalys dreams waiting on the fifth instar", even the butterfly itself,they always had these "quirky" lines here and there!...they pull it off somehow). A no less emotional video goes with it (I can see wrinkles! almost unheard of in these days video clips, brave, big kiss guys). "25. Very best of A-ha" is released these days.

The other day, serendipitously, I ended up watching an old video mix tape of mine. Guess who, among many others, was in it (actual pics of tv screen lol):

Ah! Post not over yet, this is one of those that start as two lines and end up a manuscript!. Was looking at the list of my recommended blogs and as expected some have sadly disappeared or stopped updating, but left them there just in case, and added a new one that looks promising, bookmarked on a video of a glass of water that's so restrained and good. Was googling for Brooke Waggoner after she popped up on KGRL (another one that sadly seems to be on its way to goodbye, so listen to it while you still can). May I say I have this food colour and egg dye (red yellow blue and green), never used it for food but to pour a few drops on water glasses now and then (don't drink it, yuk), does exactly that, amazing colours.

Post finished 14th Sept (hopefully).

PS One last thing (!). Since I'm writing, it's impossible not to mention that Blonde Redhead just released their new record "Penny Sparkle" , you can already listen to it in full on Spotify- And if you sign up on their website you'll get a free download off it, "Not getting there". Some people already trying to find out about the song's lyrics...not getting there haha (me neither).

Optimistic work, seems, with uplifting song titles like "My plants are dead", "Love or prison", "Everything is wrong" or the said "Not getting there". A beautiful track called "Spain" too, seems to fit. Despite being the optimistic self everybody knows me to be (thinking people can change, that some people are good despite continuous hard evidence against it, that in the end I'll get the hang of life and so on...the usual), I kinda love it.

PS2 This post is starting to be seriously annoying. Every time I'm done, another thing comes my way. OK, last: customizable music videos: never seen any before. You write your name, the recipient's, misc data like favourite food, etc., you upload a couple of pics (Capitol records states that no info will be sold or shared), hit play and there you are. Not exactly my nr 1 song but I was curious and it's a cute result, and an idea with big possibilities. The end?

15th...I keep adding...a propos of the opening theme (and the until now closing one too), found the loveliest also customizable thing on youtube, click here on the "New baby" one. Bound to make any parent smile.

Daisy Chapman at the Bristol Harbour Festival - BBC showcase

Really lucky that the first day of my UK holiday was to be spent in Bristol, by serendipity on precisely its Harbour Festival weekend, just in time for Daisy Chapman's 3 song taster at Millennium square. I had previously found out about it, didn't miss it.

The first song I ever listened to from her, the cover of "Our mutual friend" on her youtube, is such an impressive performance, flawless, dazzling:

To me one of the best voices out there. Those voice loops, she makes it look so easy, which it can't be. The small number of views is hard to understand, specially since this version is much better than the one on her album (and that a big chunk of those views is mine!). I can't say I connect with most of her songs though, but some like The green eyed are ace. Unfortunately she didn't play either that day. Sunday she was doing a longer gig but I had already moved to greener pastures... scarily narrow these English roads & crazy drivers btw!. But sad to have missed it.

Uploaded "Madame Geneva" and mini interview to my youtube channel.

Back from England now. Would like to post more pics of the Festival etc but have had major issues with computers & external hds (crashed, learned a lesson about keeping back up copies updated -DO!- and using outlook -DON'T!-), struggling with the new one at the moment, I'll get there.

Post finished on the 20th August-

PS It is always hard to write the next post after a post like the previous one. It feels weird to retake the regular posting, to go back to usual. But it's life, doesn't mean these things are forgotten. The NY Times recently published an article on Motherlode here, reflecting on the blog his wife has started to write after the accident. Coping with goodbyes, we all have to learn to. All kinds of goodbyes in life, some natural, some tragic like this one, some brutally unkind. We all take it our different ways, best we can, we have to.