what music now?

Matisse's remake of Cindi Lauper's She Bop is an outstanding example of the high quality music that is coming out of Greece these days. Also, Call Me, Call Me shows their talent in creating original quality alternative music...all from their album Toys Up

Transistor is a slightly darker band whose song Living was featured in Dimitris Papaspyropoulos' Blessed and Cursed compilation. Their new CD, Things You Miss When You Blink is out of Shift Records and contains their above-mentioned hit as well as a number of well crafted songs.

Both of the bands above sing in English whereas Joanna Drigo sings in both English and Greek in her new CD, Καποιες Ωρες Γεννιουντε τα Ονειρα loosely translated as Some Hours the Dreams are Born. Her voice resembles slightly that of A Girl Called Eddy in some songs like Vicky (in two versions on the CD, Greek and English). Another influence is PJ Harvey and she has covered her song, Rid of Me. Αλλεργια Στης Δεσμευσεις, or Allergy to Commitments is another of the highlights in this CD.

new Jem CD!

Down to Earth is the name of the long-awaited, some may say hotly anticipated, second full release by Jem. Good first impressions. A number of tracks such as "Keep on Walking", "It's Amazing", "On Top of The World", "And So I Pray" keep the CD going, while "Aciid" shows Jem's earlier influences such as Basement Jaxx and Tom Tom Club.

I'll have a more in-depth review in a bit. In the meantime, you can catch a live glimpse of Jen at imeem

price gouging?

The price of unleaded gasoline for October delivery at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) on Thursday, 11 September 2008 was trading at $2.670/gal. The price of premium gasoline that I fill up with was at $3.67 at this particular Sunoco station on Route 9. The price of unleaded gasoline at the NYMEX for October delivery on Friday, when the threat from Ike to the coast of Texas and the refineries and chemical plants region was getting worse, ended the day trading 6 cents higher at $2.72. At the pumps, meanwhile, premium gasoline was about $3.89. Fair enough, so far. However, today (or more specifically tonight), unleaded gasoline is trading about 10 cents lower at $2.62/gal while at the pumps premium gas is being sold for over $4.00/gal. Short supply maybe? Price gouging maybe? What do you think?

new blog layout, new post...

It has been quite a while but I think it's time I started posting again. For now, let's just say that I'm just peeking through the curtained window to see what's going on out there and very, very soon I will follow up with news, books, music, movies, reviews and other random postings. I hope you join me.

Respect!

when there's nothing left to burn...

...you have to set yourself on fire...

Thus starts Stars' CD from last year, "Set Yourself On Fire". The line is taken from the song "Your Ex-Lover is Dead", which contains another line that always floor me when I hear it: "This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin". It must be the haunting quality of Amy Millan's (guitarist and singer) delivery. There are a number of outstanding songs in the CD such as "The Big Fight", an interplay between lead singer Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan recounting a breakup (something we all can relate to), "One More Night" and "Ageless Beauty". Not your average rocker, like their fellow Canadians Arcade Fire, but rather one of last year's top electro-pop bands combining synths, strumming guitars and romantic duet vocals to produce a rather eclectic sound.

some of the time...

"Some of the time the future comes right round to haunt me / Some of the time the future comes round just to see / that all is as it should be / all is there to remind me, we've got to wait and see / We've got to let it be,"

I wish I could remember where I heard these lyrics and the reason I put them here. Now I have to sit down and contemplate the reason. I think I'll need a strong drink for that. It was sometime in February and I was listening to some new - at the time - music.

There isn't much to say about new music so far this year - few noteworthy releases such as Arctic Monkeys, Belle and Sebastian, Beth Orton and a new collection by Greek DJ Dimitris Papaspyropoulos come to mind. I will post their reviews shortly. Mainly I've been listening again to some CDs released late last year.

Going back to those lyrics posted above, I get a sense of optimism out of them. A hopeful sense that no matter what the future will bring, in the end everything will be alright. It may be youthful naivite that is prompting the singer to sing these lyrics, or maybe some form of resignation to the notion that the future (whatever it is) it will always bring what it's supposed to and we cannot change that.

chasing you...

Love,
I spent so many sleepless nights for you,
I spent so many days chasing you,
Trying to find a way to reach you.

Love,
My hair was dark like the night when first
I laid eyes on you as we crossed paths, but
Now has slowly turned to salt and pepper.

Love,
My hair is more salt than pepper these days,
And still I chase after you in hidden pathways.
Across the continents and over the seas.

this piece of earth...

...virtual earth actually, was left unattended and almost uncared for for a while now. But who can blame its caretaker, for the soil grew solid, frozen as the once familiar winter made its presence known again. Maybe with a little care this can change and something will grow again.

I decided to take a trip the week of Christmas, visit old stomping grounds where I used to live at once. There are so many people I haven't seen after the day I made that fateful decision to become part of the brain drain. That's an affliction that not too long ago had been very hard on my once-adopted home country, Canada. Highly qualified graduates, post graduates, and experienced professionals embarked on a trip to test the waters south of the border. In a sense they heard the siren call of the greenback, less taxation, more freedom, and whatever else is supposed to come from south of the 49th parallel. Oh yeah, and the warmer weather...I am not certain of the statistics now, but I am sure the exodus continues.

There was a small detour on the way to Toronto by way of Atlanta, stopping there to meet old friends, friends that I have missed since moving to Boston eight months ago. Friendship is something that endures the passage of time and the difficulties of life. And it is a wonderful feeling you experience meeting someone you haven't seen for a while, reconnecting, and continuing almost from where you left of. I was lucky to have enjoyed such a feeling twice - in Atlanta and Toronto.

...

for your listening pleasure...

...you can listen to some of the artists reviewed and previewed on Bohemian Hearts at the AuralSpaces radio blog . You can also find the link under the Open All Night section. Enjoy!

Jem in Boston...

Jem came to Boston on Wednesday November 9 for a show at the famed Paradise Club. In case you don't know who she is, Jem comes from Wales, is very talented and her debut CD, Finally Woken shows that this singer/songwritter is more than another Dido or Beth Orton. Instead, her songs are combinations of sizzling electric guitars, trip hop reggae and heartfelt ballads that stir the soul.



At her live show, the last in the U.S. this year, even though evidently tired from the tour, Jem brought her songs to life to the delight of the audience. Some of best songs were "24", "Come on Closer", "Save Me", "Wish I", "Missing You", a tribute to a dead friend,

...All the wonderful memories
just make me fall apart
And it feels like somebody's
stabbed me in my heart
...
I wish this could be
a happy song
But my happiness disappeared
the moment you were gone

a rousing rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama" during the band intro, and my personal favourite, "Falling for You", a song about the heartaches associated with allowing oneself to fall in love, the subsequent and almost always guaranteed breakups, and the inevitable unwillingness to wanting to fall in love again:

...It's true I've become a skeptic
How many couples really love
Just wish I had a crystal ball
To show me, if it's worth it all

Coz I can feel it, baby
I feel like I'm falling for you
But I'm scared to, let go
I'm scared coz my heart has been hurt so
...
And I've got to be sure
Coz it's been so long
And I cannot take the pain again
If it all goes wrong



Love, Peace and Understanding...

what music now?

Some of these CDs (The Shortwave Set, Ivy) came out earlier in the year and as we are nearing the end of 2005, it's good to go back, listen again and review some of them.

1. The Shortwave Set - The Debt Collection
   This is not your average white band. Instead it's a group of three friends from Deptford on of London's artsy neighbourhoods, who have created easily one of the best and innovative CDs this year. Just listen to the magnificent "Is It Any Wonder". How can you best describe this music? Urban electro-folk? Perhaps. Maybe we just call it inventive pop. Whatever you call it, I don't think you'll easily find a voice evoking such feeling of longing and love as Swedish singer and guitarist Ulrika Bjorsne does on the achingly sublime "Repeat To Fade". The music comes courtesy of, according to the band, Greenwich Market's junk-shop broken instruments, acoustic guitars, found sounds, all collaged together with a sampler. It's not as if these musicians are not talented on their own. On the contrary, The Debt Collection is full of strong and talented songwriting such as the songs mentioned earlier, as well as "Roadside", "Head To Fill", "Figures of '62", and the closing "Yr. Room". Even though The Debt Collection was released in the summer, it will definitely keep you warm during winter.
   
   
2. Ivy - In the Clear
   Wonderful pop music featuring Paris-born Dominique Durand and some fine guitar and fellow band members Andy Chase, Adam Schlesinger as well as guest appearances from Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha and Fountains of Wayne's Jody Porter. Ivy became known to wider audiences with the song This Is The Day from the movie There's Something About Mary. This is the band's fifth release finding them in the familiar trip-hoppy, uplifting and romantic environment they have meticulously crafted over the previous releases. "Keep Moving" must be one of the best pop songs of 2005 together with Royksopp's "Only This Moment". How can someone resist Durand's melancholic smooth vocals, with just enough of that French accent?
   
   Other standout tracks include "Thinking About You", "Tess Don't Tell", "Four In The Morning", and the St. Etienne-, even 60s-influenced "Cornerns Of Your Mind" with its longing lyrics of the isolation that relationships often harbour, "and it only goes to show/there are worlds I'll never know/ there are rooms I'll never find/ in the corners of your mind". The CD closes with "Feel So Free" featuring former Girls Against Boys frontman Scott McLoud on vocals with Durand.
   
   
3. Paul Weller - As Is Now
   The latest release by the once-frontman of The Jam finds him at his best. Paul Weller continues to write well-crafted songs with the same intesity as he did 30 years ago for the Jam and for the more jazzy Style Council. "Blink and You'll Miss It" is a great example of the white-soul pop only Weller can write. "Come On/Let's Go" features fast and louder guitars last heard on Jam's In The City. "Here's The Good News" has an almost-cabaret quality to it with its plonking piano and trombone. The piano ballad "Pan" will transport you back to the Style Council days, although in my opinion, it does not come close to the majestic "Paris Match". With the sunny tempo of "I Want To Make It Alright", Paul Weller has written a touching love song of incredible honesty and maturity, complete with a great jazzy guitar part. Definitely a CD that will be playing at home and car often over the next few months.
   
   
4. Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley - Welcome to Jamrock
   Damian is the youngest of Bob Marley's sons and he is proving to be as aggressively political as his immortal father was. This third CD comes after the 2001 Grammy winner Halfway Tree which was referring to the intersection of Hope Road and Three Mile leading to the ghettos on one side and to the uptown, "posh" areas of Kingston on the other, and serves the same socially conscious missives. "Out in the streets they call it murder!" proclaims Ine Kamoze (through the sample) and Marley serves a polemic in "Welcome to Jamrock" about the inequalities of modern life, the wasted education, basic as it may be, and the trickery of politicians. The rest of the CD is a great mix of reggae, dancehall, and hip hop, featuring samples from Bob Marley on many songs such as "All Night", "Move", and "Pimpa's Paradise". This last song is a remake of Bob's original from the Uprising record, and Damian has done a great job in updating the story of drugs dealing and prostitution.
   
   "There For You", "The Master Has Come Back", "Beautiful", "Hey Girl", and "Road to Zion" are worth more than just one listen.
   
   

thoughts from the front...

distances
wilted flowers from a forgotten feast
stare at me from the vase,
and i stare back
what do you use as a measure for this gap?
the distance from here to the moon,
the miles between two cities,
the countless pebbles of an autumn's empty beach,
the space between your body facing away from mine,
even as you lie next to me?

ticking away...

...the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

An apt description of how drab life can be at times, especially when you lose sight of your objectives. Just leave it to Pink Floyd to come up with one of the best songs describing that process, with Time.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

In my not so eloquent words, we are confronted with choices early on in our lives, and the paths we choose determine who we turn into. These choices become our fate in a sense. And the only way to make sure our choices become our fate is to embrace them in one huge, fearless gulp of air that will make the gods of fate ashamed.

Strive to be better at being human, instead of trying to be something you can never be sure of. Working, talking, arguing, loving, living - just refuse to go stale!

Love and Peace

let the sunshine in...

I woke up Sunday morning to the sight of something I hadn’t seen for some time – sunlight pouring in through the window and waking me up. After seven days of constant rain this was indeed a welcomed event, even though the splitting headache of Saturday night’s debauchery was threatening to make me pass out.

words that touch the soul...

The stranger sang a theme,
From someone else's dream
The leaves began to fall
And no one spoke at all
But I can't seem to recall
When you came along
Ingenue,
I just don't know what to do



The tree-lined avenue
Begins to fade from view
Drowning past regrets
In tea and cigarettes
But I can't seem to forget
When you came along
Ingenue,
I just don't know what to do
(Life In Mono - Martin Virgo/John Barry)

what music now (fall edition)?

In these early days of autumn the following CDs keep spinning away at home and car:

1. Metric - Live It Out
   This a transitional work for a Emily Haines' band as they shift away from synthesizer-based indie-pop (Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?), to guitar-rocking indie rock. Emily Haines has also been part of another great Canadian collective, Broken Social Scene
   
   
2. Elbow - Leaders of the Free World
   Very emotional and personal work for Elbow and not as rocky as previous releases (Cast of Thousands). I can't get that feeling that Guy Garvey comes off a little like Peter Gabriel. There are some great lyrics in here such as The Stops ("I'll miss you the way you miss the sea"), The Everthere ("If I loose a sequin here and there/ More salt than pepper in my hair/ Can I rely on you/ When all the songs are through/ To be for me the everthere"), or My Very Best ("And would you tell her/ Not to talk as if I died/ Though a tiny part just did"). Beautifully poetic.
   
   
3. Keep In Time: A Live Recording. Funky music from Ninja Tunes label to keep those dreary New England days warm. Think of P-Funk and George Clinton.
   

More later (Depeche Mode, etc.)

art for art's sake...

continuing and upcoming art exhibits around the world:


Jean-Michel Basquiat showcasing the art of a brilliant but tragic contemporary American artist. The Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston have also created a unique Basquiat-related website From Street to Studio: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. On view from November 20, 2005 to February 12, 2006 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.


Cezanne in Provence at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC between January 19 - May 7, 2006. This exhibit will mark the centenary of Cezanne's death. Not to be missed!

Also at the National Gallery of Art in DC, Dada, the "most comprehensive museum exhibition of Dada art ever mounted in the United States". Ends October 22, 2005.

If you are in NYC over the next 10 days, visit the Sean Kelly Gallery for Laurie Anderson's "The Waters Reglitterized", an exhibition of her latest installation, a recreation of dreams during her time on the road last year.

For those of you in Denmark of flying there between now and December 4, 2005, you can catch Matisse & a collection of exhibitions at the Statens Museum for Kunst. The exhibitions feature nine of Matisse's masterpieces created during a key period of his creativity, 1905-1918, three contemporary artists in interplay with his works, and eight international experts' take on Matisse's universe.


If you prefer a slightly warmer climate during the fall and early winter whilst in Europe, you could visit the National Museum of Contemporary Art for a look at Videographies - The early decades which includes post-formalist and post-minimalist works from the 60s through the 80s. These works of art "explore critically, contemplatively and poetically, human substance and essence within the network of its social, communicative, existential and transcultural relationships". Phew! I'm glad I didn't have to say that from memory.


Love, Peace and Understanding

if you could read my mind...

Dream 1 ("The Dream Cycle")
I wake up in the middle of the night
still clutching fading cobwebs of a dream,
a dream that should never have started,
but since it did, I wish it would stay forever.

I wake up in the middle of the night
still reeling from the sweet wine that was
this dream, still feeling drunk from such
sweet sensations, wondering whether to
chase away your countless pictures in my mind.

Am I still dreaming? I want to wake up
hoping your memory will be gone,
hoping that you'll be gone from my dreams
just like you were gone from my heart.

But I can't. The brilliance of your image
exhausts my heart, causing me pain
I long had forgotten, the sad sweetness
of a lament still echoing in my ears.

loping along at the usual pace...

Love. People in love and people out of it, people who say they've heard of it but will tell us they never think about it, people who claim to have lived through it but say never again, people who deny its existence and whose lives may or may not reflect that sentiment, people who would scale the highest summit to plant its flag, those who walk shadowy lanes in fear of it, those who probe those shadows in search of it, those who stroll hand in hand with it, those who shoot poisoned arrows at it, those who confuse love wth everything else, those who assert nearly all well-travelled roads lead to or from it, and then there is ViVa Straight, sometimes one and sometimes the other, and this is her story, the story upon which all other stories hang like clothing flung across a clothesline, the day windy, though skies are blue.

Post-modernist literature at its best!

More on this later...

au nord de notre vie...

...is the title of a record by a well-known (at least during the mid 1970s and early 1980s) Canadian progressive-folk band, Cano. It can be roughly translated as "our life in the north", or maybe "our northern life". And so, during the last week of August, 2005, I found myself in my northern life, my life in the north.

If you have never been to the Canadian East Coast or North Bay, or Algonquin Park in Northern Ontario, there is nothing that can prepare you for the stark beauty of that region. You can get a glimpse of the wind-shaped trees against the barren vistas and the rock formations carved by the visiting tides from the works of the seminal Canadian artists collectively known as the Group of Seven. These paintings capture the all-too real scenery better than any photograph can, capturing the spirit on the north, and the power hidding in these lands.



A week before Labour Day – actually that last weekend in August - I decided to drive up the coast of Maine and into New Brunswick, with the idea of crossing over, either by boat or by driving around, to Nova Scotia. I managed to get to New Brunswick after passing up couple of opportunities to get to Nova Scotia, the first at Bar Harbour, ME, which would have lasted about 4 hours, the other from St. John, NB and into Digby lasting about couple of hours.

Once I got to St. John I was unable to leave. I was running short of time and there were so many places to visit and see. A trip to Nova Scotia would have required another week at the least to do it justice.

I hope the photographs below, alongside some of the Group of Seven paintings, display, even though poorly, the powerfull beauty of the Great North. One can only imagine the emotions such scenery evoked in these artists to allow them to express their wonder through their eyes.