Dejavu

For some reason I’m once again left without Internet and rely solely on my iPhone to blog. Living in an era where having connection to the cloud is as – or more – important than having any other service such as water and electricity, how can it be that on college campus the connection is unreliable to the point that it just comes and goes as if it had it’s own will. Well, it is how it is. I’m done with complaining as it makes no difference.

What i’m actually here to tell you is about Gustavo Cerati’s new album Fuerza Natural, which includes his new single “Dejavu”. One thing that I find amazing about Cerati is his capacity to reinvent himself over and over again yet keeping the essence of who he really is. He has such characteristic voice and his songs have this feeling to them that after rice seconds of listening there is no doubt that it’s him behind the mike. Not only is impressive that he is capable of doing this, but also how long he has been around doing this.

Once again with his new album Cerati has left me surprised and anxious for more. Check out the new single here

Hope you like it.

Filed under: Internet, Life, Music

Computer Headache

I think by now I should just stopped mentioning how much work I’ve had in the past weeks. Ok, I’ll complain once more, it’s a LOT. Even today, Sunday, when it is supposed my weekend break, I still have to grade tests, prepare classes and organize course materials. I spent most of the day doing this and just about when I was about to call it a day, my computer started to behave funny. It first said that it had no internet connection, although there was clearly other people connected to the wireless network.

The system started to feel slower and unresponsive at which moment I decided to restart the computer. When it came back on, nothing worked. Certain windows just wouldn’t open, I couldn’t connect to the internet and the Finder (Mac OSX‘s equivalent of Windows Explorer) was completely irresponsive. Restart again, and again, and again. I tried a bunch of commands done at restart that are sometimes recommended to troubleshoot macs. Nothing.

I was starting to freak out. All my work – and all the work of everyone else at this seminar – is stored in my computer. I had done a backup a week ago and was about to do one today. After around 2 hours of fighting with my laptop, I gave up. I though “Well, I’ll go tomorrow to the Apple store and hopefully they’ll fix it”. Went upstairs to my room and was about to go to sleep. I actually hadn’t even had the opportunity to blog today, so I thought of writing all of this in my iPhone – sort of a pain. I said to myself, I need to try one more time. I turned the laptop on I though “YOU HAVE TO WORK NOW”. For no real good reason, this time it worked. I have no idea what was different, or what caused it to behave so weirdly. The good thing is that I have now backed up everything. I will still bring it to be checked. Now, there is one even weirder thing. When I finally was able to operate my laptop normally again, I opened the trash folder and there was a directory called “Recovered Files”. Inside it was one file which I don’t remember ever throwing away. It was a song – I don’t have any music stored in my laptop. I don’t know how it got there, maybe some error while using Pandora, or something. It was labeled “FlashTmp”. I don’t even know the artist who plays it – if you know please send a comment telling me. Whatever, I just know that I have a really horrible headache and I want to get to sleep. It has been enough for today. Good night.

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Music, Technology, behave funny, Finder, gave up, laptop, magic, music file, nothing worked, restarted, trash, tried everything, troubleshoot, work

Improvise

Lately I have been overloaded with work and that makes day go by like nothing. Despite the fact that I do tons of things during the day, just now when I need to sit down and com e up with something interesting to say, it seems as if I did nothing. The routine of doing almost exactly the same every day overcomes my mind and I can’t really distinguish today from any other day of work.

What can I say, the days are still hot, the sun comes up from my window every morning, I have the same mystery meat for lunch, I don’t know, I can’t think of anything special or out of the ordinary to talk about. To spice up these dull days I leave you with Bobbie Mcferrin and Richard Bona.  Unlike me, they are improvising, avoiding the routine and creating something out of nowhere. Hope you like it.

Lately I have been overloaded with work and that makes days go by like nothing. Despite the fact that I do tons of things during the day, just now when I need to sit down and com e up with something interesting to say it seems as if I did nothing. The routine of doing almost exactly the same every day overcomes my mind and I can’t really distinguish today from any other day of work.

What can I say, the days are still hot, the sun comes up from my window every morning and I have the same mystery meat for lunch. I don’t know, I can’t think of anything special or out of the ordinary to talk about. For this reason I will spice up these dull days with the help of Bobby Mcferrin and Richard Bona.  Each one of them is individually an amazing musician. Bobby Mcferrin is claimed to be one of the best (if not THE best) vocalists in the world. Richard Bona on the other hand is an incredible bass player. Together they make an amazing duo and, unlike me, they are avoiding the routine and creating music out of nowhere. Hope you like it.

Filed under: Life, Music, Bobbie Mcferrin, improvise, make music, nothing special, overloaded with work, Richard Bona, routine

We’ll Always Remember the King of Pop

News reports of  catastrophic events, including the current conflict in Iran and the crash of the Air France flight 447, have cluttered the media for the last couple of weeks. Today however the media has switched focus to report the unexpected death of the King of Pop – Michael Jackson.

Whether it was for his music, his characteristic way of dancing or his eccentric lifestyle, it is safe to say that regardless of age, sex, race or nationality, we all know who he was. He is by far among the most influential figures of the entertainment business of the 20th century. To say it simply: He is the creators of Pop culture as we know it. We stand in ovation for his many contributions and may he rest in peace.

I leave you with one of his great songs: Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (For some reason the embedding of this video was disabled by request so you need to click the link).

Filed under: Music, Choreography, Dancing, Fashion, Media Coverage, Michael Jackson, Music, Pop, Pop Culture, The Jackson Five

‘Round the world with Daniel & Manuel

Yesterday a good friend and his brother had a gig in Cafe Luna: Daniel and Manuel Rivera, LIVE! directly from Puerto Rico! Instead of talking about the music (which was excellent), I want to talk a bit about Daniel Rivera and how he has made me reflect. To say it upfront, I believe he is a true genius. There is basically three things that he does in his life:

1. He plays virtually any musical instrument, among some of these are: the accordion, piano, oboe, ud, hulu zi, and many many more. What is even more impressive is the level at which he plays each of his instruments, not to mention he is also a great singer.

2. He learns new languages all the time: he can speak spanish, english, french, portuguese, greek, arabic, farsi, persian, and learning armenian, urdu and many other that I can’t remember now. (sidenote: he has somehow learned all of these languages and speaks them with almost no accent without ever going to a single class…). In a way learning all of these languages compliment his show. He plays music styles from all over the world and while doing that he can also sing the lyrics.

3. He makes small gigs in restaurants and brings such a cool atmosphere, making people dance, sing, etc. He makes people happy through his music. That’s genius. He is capable of transforming a small cafe in a Boston ‘summer’ (and cold) night, into a Latin/Puerto Rican party. He then uses whatever money he earns to buy even more instruments.

Besides all of that, he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever talked to, he knows tons of history, philosophy, linguistics, etc. However, at the bottom line he lives a simple life and he is happy with it. For me going to that gig was more than enjoying the music. It made me think about how, often, we try to try a bit of everything and are afraid of ‘missing out’ on something in life. If only we could learn a bit from Daniel, find our passion, stick with it and be happy. Wouldn’t that just be nice?

I leave you with Daniel & Manuel performing a song from the middle east:

Filed under: Life, Music, Accordion, genius, Happiness, Jazz, Languages, Music, Musical Instruments, Simplicity, Success, Ud

Thunder: Bass Guitar Destruction

Last thursday a group of friends and myself went to watch Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten in their joint show: Thunder presented at the House of Blues in Boston.

The place was pretty cool inside: not too big, good sound, ok food, beers, etc – the whole package. However, before commenting about the concert I must admit that I am definitely not within the audience at which this concert is aiming for (so take it as a disclaimer for what might be coming later in the post). Most of the people in there were clearly bass freaks, whereas me and my friends were just checking these bass legends out, but none of us is into playing bass itself at all. We were there just for the fun of it.

The first thing to notice about this concert is its weird format: There were three bass players simultaneously on stage!!! So, you wonder, how in the world do you manage to make such a concert? – I don’t know- but for one thing, it was definitely interesting to see what they were doing and it sounded pretty damn good.

Later in the concert they changed the format: Stanley Clarke switched to the acoustic bass and Marcus Miller went on to play the baritone sax while Victor Wooten kept on playing the electric bass. This part was my favorite, it was more chill than the rest and those songs are still stuck on my mind (you can check it out here).

In all, I really enjoyed the concert, it was a different experience from any other concerts I’ve been in, it was fun, great quality and at reasonable price (~$30). I must say though, that certain parts of it were a bit too much. I mean, the three of them are technically superb, but there was a point where it was just plain showing off rather than actual music – at least that’s how I see it – to the point it was sort of circus-like. Check out the video below and you’ll probably know what I’m talking about. Besides this, it was worthwhile, if you have the chance you should definitely check out these three beasts of the bass live.

Filed under: Music, Bass, Bass Guitar, Jazz, Marcus Miller, Music, Stanley Clarke, Thunder, Victor Wooten