Não se faz.

É que não se faz mesmo!

Como é que eu alguma vez poderia escolher??

Não consigo votar, pronto.

The Smiths vs. The Cure.

É que não passa na cabeça de ninguém!!

This morning, on my way to work, I was catching up on my (huge) podcast queue and I happened to listen to the whole of the “Poetry Intros” episode of the Contrast Podcast.

What an amazing episode! Seriously, I don’t know if it was the theme that brought out a different mood in the contributors, or if it was just one of those lucky coincidences, but most of the songs are really, really good (some better than others and a really varied mix —as it should be, this being the Contrast Podcast).

It is one of the rare times when I feel the urge to keep a podcast around to listen to it again.

And all of this reminds me that I haven’t contributed in a long, long time and I’ve already missed a few very good themes. Nest week’s theme is “Change”. I just can’t miss that one!

No sábado passado (27 de Setembro) fui assistir ao Requiem de Mozart, no fórum Lisboa.

O único problema é que o concerto foi cancelado e “substituido” por um outro concerto de guitarra clássica.
Ora não é que eu não aprecie guitarra clássica, mas convenhamos que não é bem a mesma coisa, por isso vim-me embora e voltei para a festa de aniversário da minha amiga, que tinha abandonado pelo concerto.

Vergonhosamente tenho de admitir que nunca tinha assistido ao vivo a esta peça. Ainda não foi desta. Continuarei a tentar!

Serve este post semi-fútil para demonstrar a minha (r)existência na blogosfera. :-)

Last night, for the first time ever, I played side B of the “Seventh Sojourn” LP.

I’ve known this record for ages and I’ve heard side A countless times, but whenever that side finishes playing and I go over to the record player to flip the record over, I always think “well… let me just listen to this side one more time, and then I’ll listen to side B” and instead I’ll play that same side again. And this process is repeated until it is too late and I have to stop listening altogether and go do something else (usually sleep).

Why does this happen? I have no clue, all I know is that ever since I’ve listened to this record for the first time I loved it so much that I just had to listen to it over and over again —always on the same side!
Yes, this is really weird and I can’t really explain it, and it only happens with this particular record, but there you have it. As time went by the habit became so ingrained that I now regard it as an amusing oddity and think nothing more of it.

Anyway, yesterday I left it up to a friend to choose a record to spin while we were all chatting before dinner was ready and, lo and behold, he chose this one! Which was thrilling because when side A finished playing I got up, went over to the record player and flipped it over to side B. Yay!

Now if only we hadn’t been so engrossed in conversation I could have actually listened to it… Alas, as it was, side B of “Seventh Sojourn” was played in my turntable, but I didn’t really listen to it.

Oh well, baby steps. I’ll get there eventually.

So now that the season for the music festivals is over (for me, at least, because there’s still plenty out there to be enjoyed by those who can. The bastards!) ;-) here are my notes on it.

I attended both the second part of the Super Bock Super Rock festival (the part in Lisbon) and the Optimus Alive!08 festival. One particular evening I attended both of them. The stupidity of scheduling them both in Lisbon and on the same dates hasn’t yet ceased to amaze me (yes, I now all about the commercial interests at stake but no one can convince me that the pie wouldn’t be bigger for both of them if they did it in another way).

Anyway, on the 10th of July I went to the Alive! festival in the afternoon and stuck around until after the Rage Against the Machine concert and then took off to Super Bock Super Rock, where I still got to listen to Digitalism for some half-hour and then caught Tiesto’s full set (my main goal for going there).

Other than that anomaly, everything went really smoothly. I was devastated that Nouvelle Vague canceled (it’s the freaking third time I fail to see them live. Come on! Someone’s got it in for me for sure. A friend of mine told never to try and go to a Nouvelle Vague concert with her again because she would really like to see them and it seems it is impossible to do so when I’m around. It broke my heart!) ;-) but as far as Cansei de Ser Sexy is concerned I couldn’t care less that they didn’t do the show.

In the end, then, this is what I took from the festivals.

What I liked (and already knew I did)

• Iron Maiden - UP THE IRONS! (not much else to say, read it here);

• Vampire Weekend - They sound just as good on stage as they do on record and they put on a decent show. Can’t wait for their second album to either fall completely in love with them or to forget them;

• Rage Against The Machine - You want to know what dynamite is? This is it!

• The Gossip - What can I say? I liked them last year and I loved them this year. For this I was definitely front-and-center, where the action was;

• Ben Harper - I’m a fan, so there’s not much I can tell that won’t sound like fanboy-ish praise. It was good. As it should be and it always is (this was my third concert). Dig it;

What I discovered and was a good surprise

• Hercules and Love Affair - Good beats, very interesting sound. A friend-of-a-friend told me they sound even better with Anthony (of the “Anthony and the Johnsons” fame), but they were not with him there and I still liked them. A must-check, for sure;

• Tiesto - voted best DJ in the world six years in a row…
  Well, I don’t know about that (I was really expecting something outstanding because of this factoid —what, I don’t really know), it didn’t blow me away all that much but it was still a very good set, it kept me dancing until the very end.
  But that ending was really weird, I guess he either had to stop because it was time (he stopped at 05h30 which was the time he was supposed to, but he began an hour later than scheduled) or else something went wrong, but either way that ending didn’t feel natural at all.
  Maybe electronic dance music really isn’t my strong suit. I liked it a lot, mind you, but this guy, being “the best in the world” left me wondering how bad the others can be… :-)

• John Butler Trio - A great surprise indeed. I didn’t know these guys at all but they played an extra-long concert (to make up for part of Nouvelle Vague’s absence) and I was left with the will to go and check out more of their stuff on record;

• Xavier Rudd - Another total stranger to me, I loved his music from the first moment. It is nothing short of amazing how he can transmit such calm and serenity with all of his songs, even the ones which have really high rhythmic beats.
  Very tribal in it’s essence, very “balanced”, very good;

• Róisín Murphy - I never knew Moloko to begin with, so the description I was given (“she was Moloko’s singer”) didn’t tell me much at all.
  Well, it turns out this lady is amazing on stage. She sings and dances like nobody’s business.
  Left me breathless —and that’s from all the jumping and dancing, it had nothing to do with the t-shirt. OK, almost nothing. Well…

• Donavon Frankenreiter - I already expected it to be a good concert, given the descriptions of his music I’d heard and read, but I’d never really listened to this guy. Turns out it was indeed a good concert with some very nice and smooth music;

What I didn’t particularly like

• Gogol Bordello - They might be dynamite on stage, but I just can’t bring myself to enjoy the music enough to get up there, front and center and get into the mood to jump around like a madman to their songs. “This is not about you, it’s just me”;

• Neil Young - I really tried to like his concert but I just couldn’t get into it for some reason. It wasn’t at all like Bob Dylan, mind you (read below), and he did end up with an amazing version of the Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” (which I would love to get my hands on a recording of), but in general the show just didn’t do anything for me;

What really sucked

• Nouvelle Vague canceled;

• The amazing whirlwinds of dust through almost all of the Alive! left all of us with sand and dust ingrained into our hair and clothes;

• Bob Dylan - I’m so sorry, but I can’t be charitable here. Such a great artist as him (in his day) should get a clue and stop milking it when it gets as depressing as this.

Porque é adequado. Porque tem de ser. Porque ainda dói (e já não devia).

E… E porque sim.

Mas isto é para apreciar com toda a teatralidade, o dramatismo e o “flair” do Freddie, nada das versões dos Platters ou Roy Orbison ou afins, hein!

Oh yes I’m the great pretender
Pretending I’m doing well
My need is such I pretend too much
I’m lonely but no one can tell

Oh yes I’m the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game but to my real shame
You’ve left me to dream all alone

Too real is this feeling of make believe
Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal

Ooh ooh yes I’m the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be what I’m not (you see)
I’m wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you’re still around

Yeah
Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal

Oh yes I’m the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be what I’m not you see
I’m wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you’re
Pretending that you’re still around

Yesterday Bobby McFerrin gave a concert in Lisboa, at the Coliseu.

It was a “solo” concert, which consisted mainly of the man and his microphone. And it was enough to blow me away (along with the rest of the audience). If you’ve ever seen the videos of other concerts by Bobby (most notably his Bach pieces) you have an idea of what it was like.

We had mostly jazz tunes, but also the occasional classical piece, all sung by the man himself.

Except when it wasn’t just him (I did put the word solo in quotes up there,) and he got the whole audience to sing with him, or the time when he got some 30 people on stage with him and he conducted them into an impromptu choir. Or when he asked someone to come up to the stage and dance to his singing. Oh and I mustn’t forget about his foray into the crowd, fetching volunteers to sing some simple pattern to act as a basis for his improvisations.
He also had a guest guitar player which, when compared with all the rest of the evening, pales a lot (even though his performance was extremely good).

It was an incredible evening, that’s for sure and the feeling I got was that everyone felt a real connection with the show and felt themselves as making part of it at some stage or another, which is something I think is quite rare. Even when he went down into the crowd to look for (quite a few) volunteers to do the small skits with, people (mostly) participated with sheer joy, instead of shying away.

As for his vocal qualities, well, there’s not much I can say here that hasn’t been stated time and again by people who know his music. The sheer vocal range he has, the impeccable sense of timing and rhythm, the joy of his singing… People don’t call him a musical genius for nothing (and I’m not even alluding to all of his many accomplishments in so many fields of music!)
And the man has a sense of humor. He sure does!

Truly a unique experience.

If you have the chance to catch Bobby playing —or rather, singing— live I heartily recommend you grab it without hesitation. I know I will, if ever the chance comes again.

It was yesterday, the second date of the 2008 tour of Portishead and I was there.

I had never seen them perform live, so I guess I can say I’ve been waiting… more than 10 years for this!

And despite all the anticipation I had built up regarding this concert it still blew my socks off!

The new album is very different from anything they’d done in the past and somewhat “weird”, but it does work very well when played live; but the best part, by far, was that they chose to play lots and lots of the old stuff intertwined with the new songs. And everybody there knew those songs and was having an extremely good time!

While I can’t say for sure yet (it is still March, after all), I do believe this will be a strong contender for “concert of the year” (on my book, at least). It will undoubtedly make it into the top-5 at the very least.

So I have some (god-awful) pictures I took with my cell phone and they’re up at the usual place.

Also, if you read Portuguese, there was this guy there with us who also wrote about it on his blog.

Today was yet another one of those days. There was this one song that felt strangely compelling and which I just couldn’t stop listening to.

This time around the choice… well no, not a choice really, you don’t choose these things, but I digress… The song in question, then, is Amen Omen by Ben Harper.

I really don’t think the song needs any explanation, the lyrics —which I transcribe below— are pretty obvious.
Today, for some reason, it just felt right that I listened to it over and again.

what started as a whisper
slowly turned into a scream
searching for an answer
where the question is unseen
i don’t know where you came from
and i don’t know where you’ve gone
old friends become old strangers
between the darkness and the dawn

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

i still hear you saying
all of life is a chance
and is sweetest
when at a glance
but i live a hundred
lifetimes in a day
but i die a little
in every breath that i take

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

i listen to a whisper
slowly drift away
silence is the loudest
parting word you never say
i put your world
into my veins
now a voiceless sympathy
is all that remains

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

Once upon a time (roughly one year ago) this was the soundtrack to my life. But regardless of ever having experienced anything like this, I think anyone can surely appreciate the beauty of these words.

I am not a huge fan of reading artist’s biographies and suchlike. Or at least I wasn’t. But this has been changing somewhat, as I’ve been finding out a few very interesting ones to… well, read or listen to or even watch. This is an account of my most recent forays into the realms of biographies and life-story recounting of a few musicians.

Elvis Costello

Yesterday, while searching through the iTunes store for a complete version of Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” (of which I only had an admittedly rough version, which didn’t include the guitar-and-vocals introduction), I found out that he had put out a podcast a while ago (around June-August of last year) in preparation for the release of the (then new) “My Aim Is True” package.

The subject of this time-limited podcast was the first ten years of his carrer and although I’m not a huge fan of his earlier work, I decided to download the ten episodes which I then listened to today, as I drove to and from work. They are short, at roughly 10-15 minutes each, and consist of him describing various aspects of his life, song-writing process and career steps in the “early days”.

Setting aside the fact that this is an obvious publicity stunt for the new release I mentioned, and taking into account the fact that I, as I’ve said before, am not that much of a fan of his earlier work, I did find it extremely interesting getting to know more about the man, the road he travelled to get where he is today and all the stories behind his songs and albums.

Just as a small teaser (for something which is getting to be nearly a year-old… nice going, Nuno), hearing people like Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and The Clash mentioned together as influences is always fun and there’s that mostly interesting statement about how we have to blame Bob Dylan and Johnny Mitchell for so many bad songs that came out of that era (if this shocks you, as well it should, please bear in mind that I’ve taken it woefully out of context —the phrase “emotionally incontinent” is uttered! Do check it out).
Finding out that the wonderful trumpet solo on “Ship Building” was played by none other than Chet Baker —and that it was mostly improvised, at that— was another good example of how interesting this series is.

Joy Division

Elvis is just one example of an interesting life-story, though, and another good one is the film “Control”, which I recently saw and liked a lot.

My knowledge of Joy Division’s music is not that far in depth and as far as Ian Curtis’ and the rest of the boys’ lives, well, that’s cursory at best.
In truth the film proved to be my major source of knowledge about them and Matie actually stumped me with the comment she left on my blog post about the film.

So now I have an item on my to-do list about reading up on the Joy Division story a bit more in-depth and, of course, New Order’s too. That should prove to be quite interesting, I expect.

Philip Glass

Then there’s the case of Philip Glass, whose book on composing and producing the three operas —”Einstein on the Beach”, “Satyagraha” and “Akhnaten“— was my faithful breakfast companion for a while.

I obviously didn’t get to see any of these (even if I had wanted to at the time, I don’t think that they would have been particularly suitable for toddlers) :-) but the fact is that I would have loved to have done so and I like the music of all three of the operas through and through (which serves to further my interest in their stories, insomuch as the recordings that are available are faithful to the original renditions which, according to the book, they are… mostly).

The fact that I loved those scores before having read the book made me realise how important it is to know the story behind them, because now, not only do I love the music, but I also understand it a whole lot better and benefit from listening to it all the more due to that fact.

Contemporary Artists - The mp3 Blogs

So I think I found yet another hobby. Which is great except that I am (as most of us are in these day and age) flooded with information and barely know where to turn to when I get a little time to dedicate to it.

This gets particularly acute when we consider contemporary (and mostly new) artists, which also have their stories and about whom I like to read before (actually while) listening to their new music. Call it their as-it-happens biography.
Whenever I get the time to do some exploring I am faced the hard task of deciding which new music I’m going to listen to (and, consequently, which artists I try to get to know at least a little bit about).

It is hard, though, selecting just a few pieces from everything that’s being produced out there and that is why I like to turn to a few trusted mp3/music blogs, most of which I’ve already listed a while ago. The fact that most of them cherry-pick only a few songs from each new album and provide some background on the song and/or artists, along with a terse commentary on each song, is a god-sent for people like me and I do find I’m discovering lots of great new music, that I wouldn’t be otherwise, because of these blogs.

Of course the fact that many record labels don’t get this type of site and don’t allow them to put up the mp3 files is just plain bad business decision-making on their part, but that’s a subject for a different post.

So there you have it from the old school to the brand new, music gets a whole new meaning when I not only enjoy it per-se, but also understand it’s story and the tales behind it.
In some cases I provide this “context” myself as is the case with many a record I listened to to exhaustion on my teens (and that’s all the context I’ll ever need in those cases) ;-) but in other instances it is very interesting and even rewarding to know the “oficial” stories behind the songs/albums/bands.

Update: I just realized that my current favorite mp3 blog is not on the list which is something I just couldn’t let be, now cloud I?
It’s name is the very lyrical “I Guess I’m Floating” and you may find it here. Happy hunting!

Two potentially great shows are coming up this week, and this time I already have tickets. Hah!

So this week I’m attending:

• Au Revoir Simone at Santiago Alquimista;
• Nouvelle Vague at Aula Magna.

I’ll probably have something to tell about these shows afterwards, so keep watching this space.

Obsessively playing in repeat-mode for the whole morning is the exquisite Come Back To Camden, by that most tortured of geniuses, Morrissey.

The whole You Are The Quarry album is close to utter brilliance, but some songs stand out from among the others. In fact this one is, for me, the quintessential Morrissey song. A gut-wrenching ballad about a poor soul who has lost all hope of love (and, therefore, of happiness) and is resigned to remember that which he has lost “for evermore”.

This kind of song could easily get away from the singer and turn into some sort of Celine Dion-like piece of overly-sentimental garbage, but not with Morrissey, oh no. As usual, he pulls it off in great style and is able to bring all of those poor, wretched, tortured soul kinds of feelings to bear and make it all work like a charm. This, to me, is Morrissey at his finest.

And then there’s also the fact that lines such as “Drinking tea with the taste of the Thames, Sullenly on a chair on the pavement” or “Under slate grey Victorian sky” fill me with such a sweet sense of nostalgia that I cannot help but feel a desperate longing to get back to dear old London (so yes, the song is incredibly effective as far as I’m concerned, I do feel like going back to Camden. And no, I’m not English and I’ve never lived there). :-)

And now I do hope you forgive me the futility (you will, this is my weblog, remember?), but I really feel like transcribing the lyrics of this soul-tearing ballad.

There is something I wanted to tell you,
It’s so funny you’ll kill yourself laughing
But then I, I look around,
And I remember that I am alone,
Alone.
For evermore

The tile yard all along the railings,
Up a discoloured dark brown staircase
Here you’ll find, despair and I,
Calling to you with what’s left of my heart,
My heart,
For evermore

Drinking tea with the taste of the Thames,
Sullenly on a chair on the pavement
Here you’ll find, my thoughts and I,
And here is the very last plea from my heart
My heart.
For evermore

Where taxi drivers never stop talking
Under slate grey Victorian sky,
Here you will find, despair and I
And here I am every last inch of me is yours,
Yours,
For evermore

Your leg came to rest against mine,
Then you lounged with knees up and apart
And me and my heart, we knew,
We just knew,
For evermore

Where taxi drivers never stop talking,
Under slate grey Victorian sky
Here you’ll find, my heart and I,
And still we say come back,
Come back to Camden

And I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good

Isn’t it just amazing that we have songs like this in our lives?

During a brief excursion on my reference sites to find out what was going on this week, I came across a few things that piqued my interest (there’s a lot more going on all over Lisbon and elsewhere, this is just what caught my attention). I’ll probably not attend everything but I will try (and if I miss anything it probably means I had something better to do anyway). :-)

Wednesday there is the customary jazz session at Lux and this week the Santos/Melo Quartet will be playing there. I’ve never heard them play before and unless I can get an idea of their sound before then I’ll probably skip this one. (They’ll also be playing at the Hot Clube the previous night, but I do prefer going to Lux as the Hot Club is just too damn smoky for me. Yes, I know a jazz club is supposed to be smoky, but I really don’t like being forced to smoke other people’s cigarrettes in order to be able to listen to good music.)

Thursday Elle will be performing at OndaJazz. I’d never heard of the band before, but listening to the samples at their MySpace page I got the feeling I’ll probably enjoy it a lot (especially the cover geek in me. And the female-smooth-jazz-voice geek.)

Then, on Saturday, Bernardo Sasseti will be playing at Culturgest in what I think is probably the most unmissable event this week (although I was just about to miss it because of a birthday dinner of a friend, which got moved —thankfully!— to Friday!)

And finally, on Sunday afternoon there will be a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie at Jardim da Estrela, which is part of the Pleno Out Jazz series of concerts. I’m not sure who is playing this tribute, but then I already have an appointment at this time so unless it falls through I’ll probably miss it too. No biggie, though, I’ll just play my Gillespie records at home and pretend I’m at the park. Maybe… :-)

And that’s about it. As I said in the beginning, there’s lots more going on right now and this is but a small selection of candidates for my musical week. Lets see how it turns out in the end.

Just last week (Wednesday in fact) I discovered that Massive Attack were playing at the Coliseu. I don’t quite know how this could have slipped under my radar until the last minute, but I’m not complaining: I got to attend the show and had a rather enjoyable evening and that’s what counts.

I like Massive Attack quite a lot —in fact I own almost all of their albums— but I can’t say I love them. I like the way they sound but I do find it a bit… tiring after a while.

Having said that, I’m a sucker for live music and this is a reference group in my personal music history and background, so I didn’t think twice about going and boy, did it pay off!

As in most cases (where good music and good bands are concerned), I found them to be way better live than in studio.
They weren’t able to pull off a huge sound quality on this particular performance (I guess that kind of music requires a setup that must be ruinous to consider on concerts on such small venues), but even so the sound was really powerful and I think it worked great.
Also, the mood they created was really great even if, strangely enough, this was one of the few concerts I ever attended in Portugal where the crowd was not hugely responsive during the show. But then this kind of music does lend itself more to introspective listening than to heavy dancing or screaming, so all in all I think it went down rather well.
It was also a good thing that they played lots of songs from their older albums and had guests from their previous line-ups —Elizabeth Fraser (yes, her from the Cocteau Twins!) and Horace Andy— to sing a few chosen songs. I’m actually not sure what the current line-up of the band is, so there may have been more guest musicians in there.

So, in short, I had a really good time at the concert and it has definitely rekindled my fondness for the band.

It’s like I was saying a while ago to a friend, I’m still from an age when a band was either good live or it wasn’t a band at all, and Massive Attack passed the live test with flying colours.
Should they ever come back to Portugal, I’m definitely going to see them again!

Update:

I edited this post because I found out that it wasn’t Shara Nelson singing with the band, it was Deborah Miller. Still, the thought remains: what … a … voice!

Just a quick note to mention that after a break of almost 8 months, I’ve finally released a new episode of the Undercover Songs Podcast.

Episode 33 is up at the site and while it is not the most inspired one to date, I still think it is quite decent.

Check it out!