PeaceT(b)lo(g)

This post has been written and published on the day my frato DarioB celebrates his B-day. Some of you, who don’t live in Vienna, will watch it the day after (that is 1st June, Austrian holiday) and some other ones will watch it on Tuesday 2nd of June. That means this post is a special one.

Not only special because done for Dario and because it lasts 3 days, but also because today we speak about a band that I don’t like too much but Dario does. Today we talk about the Scars on Broadway.

This American rock band is made of two components from the sband “System of a Down” (Daron Malakian – does play everything but drums – and John Dolmayan, the drums player) which split some years ago. During their live performances the duo were joined by other musicians. They released just one album, containing some tracks that remind me of the last two albums of the S.O.A.D, that is “Mesmerize” and “Hyopnotize”.

Their sound is rock, somehow prog, somehow (trash/black/doom) metal, Armenian, somehow too similar to the S.O.A.D.’s one. Is this good?! I’m 99.9% that two of you, my favorite readers will not like that, but it’s fine.

Today we listen to the song “Insane”:

Happy Birthday, brodmo
Domenico

And, as it happens to all the good things, also the Pearl Jam’s week is about to end today. It was a long trip through the first 5 albums from this wonderful band from Seattle. We could have also talked about the other CDs they released, the infinite list of live shows (that includes those bootlegs officially released by the band itself) but we have other music to listen to, other genres, other songs, other emotions to share.

Today we talk about the CD “Yield”.

This CD has been seen as the return of the band to rock sound, without giving too much attention to the previous experimental attempts. Just a mention to the packaging (that for PJ’s albums has been always quite taken care of). The album’s cover art shows an empty road underneath a blue sky with a yield sign on the right-hand side of the road. The inside cover depicts the yield sign in the middle of the ocean. Regarding the liner notes art, there is a yield sign hidden in every picture in the booklet. At the 1999 Grammy Awards, Yield received a nomination for Best Recording Package.

The song for today is “Given To Fly”. Simply wonderful:

Enjoy your weekend.
Domenico

Fourth day of the Pearl Jam’s week. Today we talk about the album “No Code”.

This album reminds me about the one and only Pearl Jam’s concert I attended. It was in Rome and it was simply awesome. It was in Palaghiaccio (where a few months later I did go to attend the Rage Against The Machine’s one) and the whole arena was one moving and singing soul, with a lot of hands in the air and only one voice leading, the voice of Eddie Vedder.

This album is quite rock and there are some songs that still got the feeling of innovation from the previous “Vitology”, while there are others more intimate and sweet. Anyhow, it’s always Pearl Jam’ sound and you could recognize it from 1000 km far.

Today I want to share with you one of my favorite PJ songs, that is “Sometimes”. This song gives me goose skin every time I listen to it:

The other song for today is “Present Tense”, played at the Ed Sullivan Theater:

Domenico

Midweek for the Pearl Jam’s one. Today they say the weather should move back to the usual cold Vienna’s. On one side, it’s so good to enjoy the sun when out from office but on the other hand it’s so bad to be in the office for almost the whole day while there is such a great sun outside. In the end, whatever will happen I’ll be fine with that.

Today we talk about the third album from Pearl Jam, that is “Vitalogy”.

This is their most experimental one, where you find together with wonderful ballads and pure rock songs some weird songs that you can appreciate only after more than 3-4 consecutive time you listen to them (especially if you consider it was 1994 when this CD was released). Great lyrics, as always, for a sad and quite introspective work. The album was initially released only on vinyl and I had to wait a little bit to get it on CD. Then, I found the booklet from this CD a work of art itself.

From Vitalogy we got this time (at least) three songs. The first one is the great “Betterman”, played live from the same concert as for yesterday:

The second song is the wonderful “Tremor Christ”:

The last one is the moving “Immortality”:

Domenico

Still tired from the trip to Italy that allowed me to meet my friend Piero and his lovely family, I’m trying to catch up with things left beyond… at work, at home, more or less everywhere.

Meanwhile, let’s go for the second day of the Pearl Jam’s week.

Today we talk about the second album of the band. After the surprise that cam with “Ten”, the band released the CD “Vs.” This CD sounds stronger and incredibly more rock and raw. At that time I was playing with my band and we were into the Pearl Jam mood and took a couple of songs from this CD to play them acoustic. That’s why I will take two songs from the album and will propose to you.

Both songs are played live because this band’s live performances are such an experience.

The first song is the wonderful “Daughter”:

While the second one is great “Rearview mirror” that gives me so much energy every time I listen to it:

Domenico

And here we go. Back from Italy. Back from visiting my second brother Piero and his happy family. Back from the long (but still short) trip. Back to Vienna. While I look forward for the next one on the list, I start what Milica requested so far, that is a full week of Pearl Jam!

Now, for the ones that want to know something about Pearl Jam, see the post Lot of memories…

For the rest of you, let’s start with the first song, taken from the wonderful first album “Ten”, which has been recently re-published. The song is the wonderful “Release”. This song is born to be played live. The atmosphere is just simply wonderful. Every time I listen to it, I have goose skin. This version is from a concert in the Arena di Verona. Acoustically perfect:

Domenico

08:36 AM: I start today’s post due to lack of time.
08:37 AM: Gosh, don’t know yet what to post today… well, hip-hop…no we had too much… reggae…same thing…
08:38 AM: well, we could go back to the ’80s… maybe not…then, some rock?! In the end, rock never dies.
08:38 AM: Yes. Let’s put some rock. Let’s talk about Guns ‘n’ Roses.
08:41 AM: From the web: “Guns N’ Roses are an influential American hard rock band founded in Los Angeles in 1985. They are often credited with bringing rock n’ roll back into the mainstream during the late 1980s, resurrecting the styles of bands such as Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones during a time when hair metal and glam rock had been dominating the airwaves.

They have released six studio albums, Appetite for Destruction in 1987, Gn’r Lies (re-issue of the self-released ‘Live Like a Suicide’ EP, plus four newly recorded acoustic songs) in 1988, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II in 1991, The Spaghetti Incident? (Covers album) in 1993, and, after fifteen years and several lineup changes with only one member of the original lineup remaining, Chinese Democracy in 2008. They also released one “Live” EP in 1986, which was a collection of 5 songs that the band had been playing since their first rehearsal with an audience track added to make the demos seem live, titled Live Like A Suicide.

The band is often referred to as “the world’s most dangerous band” due to their volatile live shows. Stemming from the LA rock & roll underground in 1986, the band signified a shift in rock from slick hair-metal back to gritty, dirty, street-smart rock & roll. The ugly lyrics matched the sleaze of the music—driven by heavy blues licks—covering misogyny, violence, city life, sex, liquor, and hard drugs. They also, however, had a tendency to show sensitivity and a desire to break free from the city. Subsequent albums revealed an influence from bands in the vein of The Rolling Stones and Queen.”

08:41 AM: G’n'R to me are memory of a great summer spent in Calabria, with Fabio, Francesco, Stefano, Salvio e Antonio.
08:42 AM: Gotta go for a coffee with Max. Let’s play the rock with this:

Domenico

Vienna is hot
Vienna is green
Vienna is white
Vienna is red
Vienna is outside
Vienna is friends
Vienna is almost 6
Vienna is kaeserkrainer
Vienna is Hoermarkt’s icecream
Vienna is you
Vienna is part of me.

Today I’m particularly in love with the city where I live in since such a long time. The point is that feeling came out this morning when I was listening to the live concert of Francesco De Gregori and Lucio Dalla, “Banana Republic”. Sometimes my brain takes such shortcuts!

I don’t want to talk about the two artists above, but just want to share with you one of their songs, that is “Cosa Sara’”:

Domenico

Today we start a very short week for me, because I’ll be off from Thursday onward. On one end, that implies I’m short in time for all the things I should do. On the other end, that means I’ll stop at the point where I will arrive on mid-week… that’s it.

Today I want to share with you an interesting new band that seems to have had a discrete success on the festival of 1st of May. They are the Bud Spencer Blues Explosion.

This duo, guitar-voice and drums plays some dirty blues, very low-fi and with a bit of garage-rock. They’re around since a couple of years, coming from Rome and being playing in several important national and international festivals.

I found the song “Blues di Merda” and I share the video with you:

Domenico

Today I’m in the happy mood, due to the weekend starting in a few hours! On top of that, yesterday had a full-day-headache, due to the very bad weather but today should be better (hopefully!). Yesterday I talked with Spyros (a colleague of mine that I think is very much into music) and he brought me back in time by simply asking me “Do you know anything about a CD named Sun City“?
That sentence rang a bell in my brain and reminded me of the ’80s when the specific song, played by Artists United Against Apartheid came along, replacing the commercial “We Are The World” crap with something much better.

I remember the initiator of this initiative was Little Steven (guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band) who was able to involve dozens of musicians to work on the project. Among the other, there were  Peter Gabriel, members of U2, Springsteen himself, Hall and Oates, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Run DMC, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne and Keith Richards.

I found the following about Sun City itself:
“Sun City is a large casino resort in the north-west of South Africa. During the apartheid years it was located in ‘independent’ state of Bophuthatswana, a phoney political construct that enabled white South Africans to visit a casino, gamble and attend strip shows, even though these activities were illegal within South Africa itself. Although the United Nations had placed a cultural ban on artists touring or performing in South Africa, many notable American and European acts ignored this and received large sums to perform at Sun City’s massive auditorium. Amongst those to defy the ban included Linda Ronstadt, Queen, Laura Branigan, Rod Stewart, Julio Iglesias – and, ironically, black singers such as Ray Charles, Dionne Warwick and Boney M.”

So, let’s listen to this song while we wait for the weekend to start:

Domenico