Living in a sauna...

This week went by incredibly quickly, mostly because it's been so insanely hot the last few days I barely got anything done. (Okay, not that hot by international standards, but that hot by humid, German, no air-conditioner, not-used-to-it, living-on-the-top-floor-of-old-badly-isolated-building standards) It finally started raining an hour or so ago, so hopefully I'll catch a decent night of sleep. Saunas are not a good place to sleep in ;)

The worst part is that the heat fucks with my eating patterns. I eat (a small) breakfast when it's still reasonably cool, and then have to force myself to even eat fruit or something else "summery" until it cools down in the evening. And while that might be an effective way to get rid of winter chub, it's not exactly healthy (considering I eat massive carby dinners, possibly scratch the chub-loss aspect ;) ). So basically my body is sulking half the day because it doesn't get enough energy (and it's hot), and then turns into a hyperactive six-year-old on candy once it's pumped up on rice & veg, and that six-year-old really doesn't want to go to sleep. That all the grocery stores seem to be continuously out of chillies and salad doesn't help. *sigh

Tomorrow I get to spend two hours in a tiny lecture hall with a giant lecture hall with 150 students and no air conditioning. My uni chose a great time to remodel the main lecture building. Woot.

To jump on the QOTD bandwagon, What do you eat when it's bloody hot outside?

OPM

There are quite a bit of famous international Filipino singers but i'm not sure that they write their own music. And honestly I don't listen to any OPM (Original Pinoy Music) so I have no Idea what to put here. But I have been to a few gigs and here are the bands that I actually enjoyed enough to remember their names.

Urbandub is from Cebu which is another metropolitan island here in the Philippines. This band is actually pretty famous here in our country. I saw this band because I was invited by my friend to watch their gig and they opened for this band.

Here is another band that I heard and actually bought an album of. Their music is just so easy to listen to and they add a little bit of the filipino sound to their music. The Rinka Collective. This isn't my favorite song of theirs but I couldn't find the one I liked in youtube.

Here's another musician who adds a bit of our native sound to her music. Finally someone who sings in our native tongue. Cynthia Alexander is one of the few current folk singers we have here in the Philippines. I love to watch her perform. The album version doesn't give justice to her live performances.

I never actually leisurely listen to any of these songs but  after watching them live, if they had a gig or concert, I would actually go out of my way to watch them.

QOTD: do you guys sing or play any instruments?

Hear from you guys soon

RUBENIV

Good "morning" Nerdy Bunch it's Monday!

So I don't know what you know about Canadian music. It is entirely possible that your idea of Canadian music is that is all Celine all the time.

NOT TRUE my friends, there is also Nickleback and Avril Lavigne. sigh.

To be fair there are also some big name classic rockers who are from Canada, like The Guess Who and Rush.

Also Neil Young who I am very distantly related to. None of those are really artists I listen to with the exception of the above song which will inexplicably get stuck in my head on a regular basis.

So who do I listen to that's Canadian? Well I listened to the Bare Naked Ladies quite a bit whe I was younger and this song still makes me smile.

I don't love the Arcade Fire like some of my friends do but I think they are worth mentioning. This spring my friend threw a graduation party. When this song came on everyone (minus me and like four other people) came down to her living room and sang along to it. It was actually super creepy.

This song has the tendancy to get stuck in my head whenever I don't want to get up in the morning.

The Wooden Sky are from Toronto and I love the sort of slow folky music the play. I also have a lot of good memories tied up with their album "If I don't come home you'll know I'm gone" so here is a couple of songs by them. I would just post one but I couldn't decide.

This is a little sample of some Canadian music. It is limited to stuff I actually listen to so it's not the most broad sample, I could have hunted down something french, or celtic influenced from the East Coast but let's face it I don't really listen to that stuff and I don't want this blog to become a Mask of Lies.

I'm loving listening to all the diffent music being posted. Misspronounced, hi good to hear from you again *waves*. that is all.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

*pokes head out from under mountain of paper*

Ohai.

So, I feel terrible for not keeping up with the blogs; life, both scholastic and personal, has been rather hectic in the past month or so and I have just not had the inspiration, nor the inclination, to write a post. Add that to the bout of flu that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks as soon as my exam finished, plus the fact that the Game of Thrones books that just arrived in the mail are beckoning, and you've got a recipe for uber procrastination. Anyway, the point is that I'm here and am now writing a post :D


So, music in my home country. Australia has pretty strong musical influences from England and America; we do have a pretty good bunch of home-grown artists who have been successful internationally (Kylie Minogue, AC/DC, etc). But most of you will know about those guys already, so I'm going to tell you about the great indigenous music that we have here.

I'll start with the two great Aboriginal rock bands from the 90s: Warumpi Band and Yothu Yindi. Warumpi Band actually did the original version of "My Island Home", made more famous by Christine Anu.

Bet you didn't know that!

Yothu Yindi were a little less pop, a little more rock, and their indigenous roots were more pronounced. They were a little more political, too.

More traditionally, you probably know about the more famous indigenous musical instrument, the didgeridoo. Though I don't listen to it much, I like the tone and the sounds that can be produced from what is ostensibly a long hollow stick.

The level of musical and rhythmic skill involved in playing the didgeridoo is astounding. It requires mastery of circular breathing (basically, producing one long and unbroken note by a crazily hard breathing technique) and rhythm, as well as being able to produce vocal tones while creating the vibrations through the actual instrument. It'd be like asking a trumpet player to hum a completely different tune while playing.

Anyway, that's enough from me; hope I entertained/educated you guys at least a little. See you 'round! :3

Ze Boogie Times

Much like Enika, I don’t really like many of the musical performers of my country. A large portion of it, especially the so called summer hits, is such utter bull crap that I sometimes wish I could cut my ears off with a spoon and feed them to a monkey. You'd think that was an exaggeration but the more I think about it, the more possible the scenario seems. However, there are some performers I do have a soft spot for - thank sanity/deity of choice.

One of those artists is Nightwish. The band that basically created the so called operatic symphonic metal genre. I listened to them all the time before the lead singer of the original Nightwish, Tarja Turunen, was kicked off the band. Haven't listened to the new one after I realized how much lousier it is without Turunen. I don't think there is even comparison between the new vocalist and her. I could rant about this for a long time but I think I will leave that out and just link to some videos already:

Sleeping Sun - Nightwish | Over The Hills And Far Away (cover) - Nightwish

Oh god, watching those sent me to such a nostalgia trip. Both of them are slightly bad quality but I couldn't really find better ones so, eh.

Another artist I have loved for a long time is Kaija Koo. I practically grew listening to her music so no wonder really.

What she is often categorized in is a genre we call iskelmä. What it's described as in wikipedia is pop-like music directed to older people (German equivalent according to wiki is schlager), often telling about love and life. I suppose this is a rather fitting description, though rather vague and doesn't really cover everything. Some of Kaija Koo's songs do fit in this definition of the category but some do cross over to pop and even to soft rock. I reckon she's in iskelmä category because her most well known song, Kuka keksi rakkauden (Who Invented Love), is rather iskelmä-ish: easy listening, tells about love etc. Here are a couple of her older songs:

Kuka keksi rakkauden - Kaija Koo | Tuulikello (Wind chime) - Kaija Koo

It's likely she sounds crappy in the ears of many but hey, I have an undying love for her stuff. The nostalgia alone is keeping me glued onto her. She still makes new stuff, which I'm glad of. Say what you will about her songs and music but her voice is awesome.

The last performer group I'm going to list is Apocalyptica, which is definitely among my favorites. They are a group of cello players who, after gaining a background in classical music, pretty much began their career by playing Metallica covers (My favorite out of those is their cover of Nothing Else Matters).

I even went to their concert not too long ago (Early last year). They were performing in the city I live in and the tickets were cheap, so I decided to buy them for mom and I. It was a good concert, not too many people in the audience, and they introduced music from their new album.

Nothing Else Matters (cover) - Apocalyptica | I Don't Care - Apocalyptica

They've collaborated with a large variety of Finnish and international artists, from HIM to the singer of Flyleaf, so they do have a lot of variation in what sort of pieces they make. Most of the time, however, I think they are at their best when they are working on their own. What can I say? I love instrumental music and cello is one of the most beautiful instruments there is, in my humble opinion.

I think that's enough of this stuff. I could mention a couple of others but meh, I reckon this is sufficient as it is. :D

(I figure I should try out that QOTD Ruben keeps doing so: What was your favorite lullaby or children's song when you were little? I think mine was Tuu tuu tupakkarulla - which I can't find a good version of but it was sung to this traditional Kalevala melody- or possibly Hyvin hiljaa)

World Music Day Week.

While I was checking twitter for the umpteenth time today (yesterday...), procrastinating trying to come up with a theme for this week, I found out that today (yesterday...) is World Music Day. So I thought "ah well, that's a theme there" and figured we could all share some music from our countries. Great idea, wasn't it?

Only then I realized that I don't actually listen to German music. I could spontaneously name at least seven countries on three continents whose musical output I like and consume more than Germany's. Our music scene is sadly overrun by sleep-inducing "indie" bands, who I can't get into no matter how good the lyrics are. There are a few mediocre rock bands, and mediocre other bands, but very few that suite my (admittedly somewhat odd) taste, and even fewer I'd actually recommend to others.

But ah well, here goes. Three current(ish) German bands I actually listen to.

To reaffirm stereotypes, let's start with a Lederhosen-wearing brass band ;). Considering I'm not from Lederhosen-country, and hence somewhat despise those stereotypes, you can bet these guys are really good for me to include them :P. I think they're all classically trained, but play everything from updated Bavarian brass, to Balkan, to reggae (as Oly Popoly and the Holy Moly Fistfucking Band, playing songs like "I like the battyman", because they're awesome), to rock to... other stuff. They also happen to be hilarious.

LaBrassBanda - Des Konnst Glam

To crush stereotypes, Dancehall (or variations thereof) is a huge over here, mostly thanks to these guys. They have a knack for writing songs you just can't not dance to (I've just had a little bedroom dance party while looking for videos).

Seeed - Music Monks

And finally my favourite, sadly incredibly unsuccessful, singer, Thom.. He was the frontman of one of the best German rock bands of the 90s, but his solo efforts never quite took off (I think he's mostly doing soundtrack work nowadays). I stumbled over him 'cause I got the CD for teh cheap and the cover looked like I might like the music. It ended up being completely different than what I had expected, but it is still one of the most mesmerizing albums I ever encountered.

Thom. - Love is Real (with a video that drives home just how quickly topical content becomes outdated)

thom. - Love Is Real on MUZU.

... and that gives you an entirely wrong picture of what kind of music I listen to, but...

ANYWAYS. Your turn, share a few songs from your country with us, will you? (Preferably stuff you listen to, not stuff you feel like you ought to recommend).

What to do?!?

Hi guys...

I have a dilemma. What do you do when you know someone likes you but you don't like them back?

I've never thought that I would be in the position of the prey (sorry but this may come out as a double standard) but I am feeling really trapped and spent that the predator might just bite me in the neck and swallow me whole.

I just want this week to be done and over with.

Hear from you guys soon

RUBEN IV