Peter Hammill, live in Romania (2014) - Video

ArtMania Festival, Brukenthal Palace. 7th august 2014, Peter Hammill, live in Sibiu, Romania. Enjoy! :)

Flashback: Meeting Yngwie Malmsteen in Romania (12.05.2015)

12 May 2015. Sunny day. Beautiful day. Tuesday. Bad luck. :)
I arranged for an interview with Yngwie Malmsteen. The local promoter agreed, the Artist agreed, the manager agreed. Everything was well. Or... so I thought. :)
If there is one thing that I hate the most in this world, is waiting. And I waited for almost two hours to meet Yngwie Malmsteen. When he finally came, his manager said he is too tired so... bye-bye interview for me. Now... that was frustrating! Instead, I got the chance to take a picture with him so that I will never forget this meeting. Well, I guess it's better than nothing!

Flashback: Morrissey in Romania (14.10.2015)

One of the highlights of 2015. You can read the concert review here: http://thisleftfeelsrightablogaboutmusic.blogspot.ro/2015/11/my-first-morrissey-concert-bucharest.html

If i want to whistle, I whistle

Sunset in Bucharest, Romania, 17.02.2016

You say that the day
Just never arrives
And it's never seemed so far away
Still I know it's gonna happen someday
To you
Please wait
Don't lose faith

Music industry failed

Grammy Awards 2016

When Nature comes to life...

My friends in the garden... :)

Foggy day...

Bucharest, Romania

Michael Graves (ex-Misfits) - Descending Angel

Michael Graves (ex-Misfits) sings „Descending Angel” (during Marky Ramone's Blitzkrieg concert in Bucharest - 9.04.2012).
Enjoy!

Looking for a way out

Peter Hammill, live in Sibiu (Romania, 7.08.2014).

A Sunday morning song

Art work by Horațiu Mălăele, actor.

Song by Morrissey, taken from the album „World Peace Is None Of Your Business” (2014).

On (dead) musicians and the music industry

A text written by Răzvan Albu, a young musician from Romania (this is his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1530409957251679&id=1528674144091927)



2015 ended and 2016 kicked off in tune with the last 7-8 years: after wishing everyone a Happy New Year, media outlets resumed their favorite topics on financial/material losses and petty squabbles; “it’s worse than ever,” “hear ye, hear ye, Chinese stock market crashes,” “oh no, 95-year old multi-billionaire fucks underage girl,” and so on. Three days later, on January 4, I was done getting my share of pollution, terrorist and heartbreak-related news, and ready to get back to work. Nothing much has changed.

To be honest, I never really paid attention to the a.m. news, other than a scratch on the surface. I know just enough to be able to have routine conversations with colleagues passionate about such topics, without sounding like a complete idiot. “Socializing” is what it’s called, right?

I remain passionate about music. I read about it a lot, listen to it a lot and record sporadically. A while back I’d just blast some classic Motörhead and the bad news would fade away. Sometimes I’d be in the mood for Ziggy Stardust (in its entirety, not just the title track) and other times I’d watch Weiland’s unplugged concert with STP. Oh wait, these guys are dead. They all died between December 3, 2015 and January 10, 2016. But that’s ok. Young, fresh artists will catch up with them. 20 years from now Justin Bieber will be older and wiser and Lady GaGa will have completed her transformation into a Mercury/Bowie/Jagger hybrid; Maroon 5 still uses guitars; not to mention Rihanna, Beyonce and all these other gifted singers whose vocal range and technique far surpasses that of their predecessors. It’s not that bad, right?
Wrong, so fucking wrong.

Call me old-fashioned or whatever. Sure, our grandparents were shocked when Elvis and the Beatles took over the reins from Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra. The Sex Pistols and The Clash brushed Led Zeppelin aside (screw the overstatement) and brought civil unrest to England. For a while, Nirvana turned Guns N’ Roses into a pathetic gathering of little boys, and so on. It’s my time to get older, isn’t it? Not yet. Hopefully you already see the difference between then and now. If you don’t, let me spell it out for you: like them or not, the artists mentioned above are huge. Even after they fell from the charts, they remained icons and cult figures. Bowie’s last show took place on June 25, 2004 – that’s almost 12 years ago. He lost none of his relevance in the meantime and could’ve EASILY filled any stadium in the world a day before his passing without relying on labels, YouTube videos or ads. Word of mouth would’ve been sufficient and if you don’t believe me, I couldn’t care less.

Take Sia and Ellie Goulding off the charts for a year and no one will give a shit where they are or what they’re doing. Maroon 5 practically disappeared after scoring their biggest hit – that’s how much they mattered. Name *one* relevant artist that emerged since 2000. Ok, now name another five. Repeat the same exercise for the ’60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, hell, up to the mid-‘90s, and you’ll stay awake for most of the night. The “glorious then” vs. “inconsequential now” is a fact, yet people get fed the same crap – idiotic music with moronic lyrics, sung to perfection. Nobody pays attention to what’s playing, it’s just eye candy, music for driving and talking on the iPhone at the same time. Don’t get me started on the TV “talent shows” where boys and girls with attitude belch out high notes until their faces turn red, then hug their opponents when they’re kicked out of the contest because “it’s fair-play.” Hey, how about that time when Ozzy Osbourne kissed Bruce Dickinson on the cheek because Iron Maiden ranked higher than Black Sabbath on Billboard? Or remember when Ray Charles cried like a baby in front of Stevie Wonder because Superstition was such a good song? Me neither, because it never fucking happened.

The current state of affairs in music has nothing to do with lack of creativity; rather, it’s a consequence of the “music business” aka the idea that music’s only purpose is to create monetary profit for someone other than the artist. Nowadays people helming radio stations and record labels are businessmen/women, not music listeners with an affinity for good tunes. They could be bank managers, brokers, whatever, but just so happen to work in the “music business.” The problem is, they still have more money than 15-year old guitar prodigies who aren’t pretty or popular at school and will never play guitar outside of their basement. With money-grabbing animals at the helm of the “music business,” try to do anything other than music covers, TV contests or whatever is “fresh” in the mainstream at the time and you’re irrelevant. It’s not that people couldn’t make great music anymore. But who cares about the chubby, hairless bassist that smell of computer servers and writes prog-rock about his suicide 5 years from now? It’s no longer marketable nowadays. Robert Fripp? Gimme a break, label officials would laugh their asses off at him for writing “sounds” instead of choruses about how much money they make and how hot their girlfriends are. How do you sell “fat bassist” when that kid from The Voice has such fine clothes, chiseled features and sings The Show Must Go On slightly off-key? People no longer seem to understand that Bowie’s bad teeth didn’t matter. Long are the days when labels invested in artists with no money-back guarantee, simply because they sounded good and said something relevant.

These days, mainstream music has nothing to do with how *I* feel. It’s getting harder and harder to dig underground and find something that still moves me, musically. The few artists who could still say something to the likes of me are probably getting hungry as well… and a little bit of La Bamba may just bring them enough money to buy a house and a car – if they’re lucky.

This brings me to my favorite part, the part when I swear at (almost) everyone I know in the music industry. I have of a couple of these “professionals” in my Facebook list as well, but to be honest I can’t recall their names because they matter to me as much as Selena Gomez. I added them or they added me and I pressed accept because their profile picture had vivid colors, so they must’ve been important. Well, anyway, here’s a big FUCK YOU, you idiotic, moronic pieces of shit who “teach” struggling musicians what to do in order to “succeed in the business.” Fuck you from the bottom of my heart for destroying everything that was ever good in music, for pushing aside people who express their feelings through 15-minute songs without choruses in exchange for “artists” willing to sing, “So gimme that ‘toot toot’ / Lemme give you that ‘beep beep’,” because it sells.

YOU do the same harm to people as media outlets who intoxicate everyone with tragic news on January 1. YOU are the reason why the only thing that matters in 2016 is a sad Guns N’ Roses reunion. YOU are the reason why David Gilmour tickets cost $500 and YOU are the reason why I might actually buy them, for fear that he’ll die as well before I get a chance to see him and everything left in the world will be Justin Bieber with French fries and a Big Mac. Fuck YOU, your artists and the sad little fuckers whom you manipulate and control. Fuck you all.

https://www.facebook.com/razvan.albu

Salvador Dali in a TV Show, 1952. Surreal!

Salvador Dali in a TV Show, 1952. Surreal!
Posted by Romanian Artworks on Friday, December 12, 2014

New street signs for Facebook users

:)