This week I went to a gig of the The Baseballs in Amsterdam with my friend. For the ones that don’t know the band, it’s basically a German three-man band that cover popular hits in a rock’n'roll fashion. Their most well-known song so far is their edition of Rihanna’s Umbrella, which was also the song that got me interested in them.

I was a tiny bit sceptical before going to the concert, wondering if they could pull of those vocals live too, but there was definitely no need. The three guys sing AWESOME live, they have a great band and there was a lot of humour in the show as well. For example with one of the songs they threw bottles of bubble blowers into the audience, telling them not to put it in their pockets but to make bubbles, and said, with a horrible pun: “don’t stop blowing until I say so.” They also invited a few girls up on stage to sing one line in Katy Perry’s Hot’n'Cold. Unfortunately a large part of the audience surrounding us seemed rather dead for most of the gig. Actually I think it’s a quite a feat to stay still on their music!

Anyway, here’s some music for my friend Cynthia who has no idea who they are, maybe the US has something against German copy-cats of ‘their’ music?

First is Chasing Cars, original by Snow Patrol (original here) and the second one is a live clip from their rendition of the song Torn, it’s one of their gentlest songs. I know it mostly as a song by Natalie Imbruglia but I just discovered that her version is a cover too, so here‘s a link to the original-original.

Conclusion: next time they come near I’ll definitely go and see The Baseballs live again!

This Odeon was built at the Acropolis of Athens in the year 161 by the nobleman Herodes Atticus in memory of his wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla.The theatre was used as a music venue. Nowadays it is still used for such purposes, and one of my favorite artists, Stamatis Spanoudakis, will again perform at the Odeon in September.

Because my mom and I are crazy fans (there is really no other way to call ourselves this time, lol), we bought ourselves tickets to the show on September 9th and booked a trip to Athens. I’m really excited about it, especially to think I’ll be sitting on a seat people have been sitting on nearly 2000 years ago, too.

So in case you’re curious as to why we’re making such a large trip for this artist, here are a few YouTube videos of his songs. His music is a bit of a mix between classical music, contemporary music and traditional Greek influences. He performs live rarely and the previous time was a show in Beijing for the Olympics in 2008.

The following two tracks are from his album Alexandros (The myth of the East, the dream of the West), which was the first one I listened to. The album was once described as a “soundtrack of a movie that was never made,” but it’s not hard for me to imagine scenes from Alexander the Great when I’m listening to these songs. The first song, Hephaestion, is a music video, but the second one is a live recording of his performance at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1998.

A soundtrack he did compose though, was the soundtrack for the movie Nyfes (Brides) which came out in 2004. It’s a gorgeous, very emotional and touching piece of music. The second one, Klemena filia, also comes from the Nyfes soundtrack and features (female) vocals.

Here’s a list of the concerts I’ve been to since 2003 (or at least the ones I can remember 8D). The links lead to live reports I’ve written for JaME, 3voor12 Friesland (Dutch) or my blog.

I’m afraid my list of bands I want to see live is even longer…

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Today I was reminded by my friend that the new hosting year is coming up and realized that I haven’t posted anything in my blog for ages. Oops!

So let me tell you about a gig I went to recently. This March, British singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt performed an acoustic show at the Leeuwenbergh church in Utrecht. It was part of a series of acoustic themed concerts organized by Dutch actress Carice van Houten. It’s funny, she’s been acting in Hollywood movies together with celebrities such as Tom Cruise, but she kindly helped us to find our seats.

During that week my friend from the UK was staying with me. We have basically zero in common when it comes to music, but surprisingly we both like him so we went together. The concert was really awesome, Ed played a mix of new songs from his Lustre album and also older ones. After the gig my friend was cheeky enough to go and ask Ed Harcourt for an autograph, so I got my ticket signed as well.

Here’s a song from one of his older albums, hadn’t heard it until the concert but it has turned into a favourite:

Originally I was supposed to meet my friend on Saturday evening, but when those plans fell through, I had a free Saturday evening. Only a few days before I had read on an ad that the Rootsriders with their Tribute2BobMarley show would be in a town nearby, so I decided to attend the show.

At first I was planning to go by myself, but when I was about to leave, I spoke to my friend on MSN and he was interested in joining me. So, I drove to Sneek, picked up my friend and we went to the venue, Het Bolwerk.

I saw Rootsriders live in 2007, when they did their Tribute2BobMarley theatre tour. It was a really great concert, though what surprised me was the amount of older people. Sure, Bob Marley’s music attracts people from all sorts of backgrounds and ages, plus the man himself would have been 65 by now if he had still been alive. I just hadn’t expected to see people of 80 years old there. Also on this night was the audience older than at an average night at the Bolwerk (or so I think). There were more 40+ than 30- people so to speak. I realized later that this is probably the same crowd that shows up at a concert of UB40, but not a random underground reggae artist. Oh well…

Anyway, the show started with the opening act by Laurrhie Brouns. She played about four shows, must say I have regained my faith in opening acts again, hehe. Ashwin Jaydee also did a few songs and then several band members from Rootsriders covered Bob Marley songs before the Rootsriders started for real with front man Junior.

I had seen them before so I knew what to expect, and they did not disappoint. Other than his long dreads and outfit, vocalist Junior doesn’t really look like Mr. Marley much, but he definitely sounds like him. I think cover acts are always a little tricky because you’re always going to be compared to the real thing, but I’m pretty sure that everyone present (around 300 people?) were convinced that he did a damn good job. Also his movements and dancing resembled Mr. Marley’s dancing without looking faked or forced at all. The other members of Rootsriders did a great job as well; they’re a bunch of really skilful musicians.

They played various well-known Mr. Marley songs, such as Who The Cap Fit, Give Thanks and Praises, Punky Reggae Party, Kinky Reggae, Concrete Jungle, Exodus, Three Little Birds, Mellow Mood, and of course No Woman No Cry. For the encore, Junior and the guitarist performed Redemption Song together and ended with Could You be Loved.

Above is their remix of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love.” Live they play the songs as close as possible to the originals but I really like this remix.

After the gig I bought their album, So Much More – Songs of Redemption, Part 2, which contains their owns songs and one cover of Is This Love. I’ve been listening to it all day and it’s a great album. So, I’m hoping they’ll be doing some shows with their own songs as well, I’ll definitely attend one of those though I’m afraid people care more for Bob Marley covers than the band behind it.

To be honest, I’m a bit of a racist when it comes to French things. I blame it on my experiences in France and my French classes in high school. A big exception (next to my friend Reyep :p) to this is the French composer Yann Tiersen. He’s far from a mainstream artist but somehow music fanatics that enjoy listening out of the box tend to know him because of his unique music.

He’s mostly known for the music he composed for the Amelie soundtrack, which is a true piece of art if you ask me. I like his choice of instruments and also how it’s rather minimalistic but with very intriguing melodies at the same time. Here’s a song from YouTube, the video is also from the Amelie movie:

So, when he came to my country I decided to buy tickets to see him live. I had heard that his previous concert in the Netherlands had been in a rock style, post-rock to be more specific so while I was hoping we’d get to hear his semi-classical songs, I was a little prepared for his other side… Unfortunately not everyone was.

On December 16 we went to Tivoli Oudegracht in Utrecht to see him live there. The concert was sold out and there were people at the venue’s door asking if we had any left-over tickets. Which we didn’t, of course.

The concert finally started with a horrible opening act, Christine Ott, whose music was pretty much… a huge amount of noise lacking anything vaguely resembling a melody. While she and her cellist played, the audience was talking continuously, obviously not impressed.

Then, it was finally time for Yann Tiersen’s show. Soon, it became clear that we wouldn’t be treated to a show in Amelie-style (or Le Phare, Les Retrouvailles, Good Bye Lenin! Soundtrack or C’était ici style) but we were in for a rock show. A post rock show even, because some tracks were rather monotone save for some very subtle rhythm and melody changes. Unfortunately, the sound of Tivoli Oudegracht wasn’t adjusted very well so this got lost in a sea of sound. The one thing which could be heard very clearly during the songs was the Ondes Martenot, an instrument that sounds like it’s screaming its guts out and resonated badly and it got on my nerves very quickly, unfortunately. Most of the songs were instrumental but when Yann or any of the band members would sing, their voices got lost in the music and you couldn’t even hear which language the song was in.

I heard that quite a lot of people left after a few songs because they came for his Amelie-sound only… I don’t blame them for having the wrong expectations, as far as I know he never released anything in his post-rock style on CD, so they were simply expecting to hear the same as the CDs they bought.

Anyway, despite the problems with the sound and the expected unexpected type of show, I enjoyed listening to most of the songs and I danced some on the heavier ones. A highlight of the evening was definitely the song Sur le fil, which is a solo piece for violin. Yann Tiersen really has some awesome violin skills, somehow I had always assumed that that it was a piece played by two violins instead of one! Here’s a video of it:

In the end, the concert was pretty great. I had been hoping for his Amelie style as well and whereas this was certainly not a bad concert, I think I rather be sure he’s going to do his usual style before going to one of his concerts again.