Pop Up Club n°7, The SoundHound of Summer 2011
You certainly already tried on your smartphone an app' like SoundHound. It can recognize for you in a few seconds a song you listen in a shop, a restaurant, etc. You just have to push on a button, and the software works for you, and serves links, videos & ways to buy the music... if you want.
I tested that stuff during this summer 2011. Here is the result of my "meetings" with songs & sounds, in south coast of France, in shops, restaurants, on the beach, etc.
More often I had reaction on pop & electro fields. Hope you'll enjoy this session with : The Kills (on remix), The Shoes, Le Sport, Cat Power, The Do & at last Scenario Rock (on Justice remix).
Funky paradox, from Sinclair to Les Traîne-Savates
These very last days, I can appreciate two sides of the same problem : difficulties for french guys to enter the funky side in music...
Fist instance is from famous singer Sinclair new hit "Ca tourne dans ma tête" : a mix and remake of what this singer is still able to produce for several years. One's could say "it's always the same song with him...". Not bad in a way, but without any surprise. That kind you can make in a major just to hope for a new cash machine.
Second instance is music from friends & people band Les Traîne-Savates, I had chance to meet them during a performing visit in Le Futuroscope near Poitiers : here is a more effective funk-rock, with passion & strenght, with envy. I let you discover that incredible sound and groove.
What can we learn from this ? Funky sound is not a declaration of war, but an attitude. It is not marketing but sincerity. Maybe we can dream about a show with Sinclair and Traîne-Savates mixed and singing together ?
Fall in love with Foals
First contact with this pop-rock band was through their music videos. Some special ones indeed, with brillant ideas & original designs. The more I hear & see them, the more I like this link to the past (new wave of the 80s) and link to more present days (indie).
Second contact was on the 25/11, last week in Paris, for their show at l'Elysée-Montmartre. And that was in fact the "real" contact. And a matter of big awakening to me, at the corner of strength & poetry, violence & soft touch, human & animal. The perfect tension between opposite sides. All what is well exposed in Yannis Philippakis attitude and for instance in "Blue Blood" : their last single they were just playing when I arrived in da place.
So, here under are some of my favorite Foals songs. Believe me : they are far better in live session. Go right now to see them as fast as you can, wherever it will be. It's pure, it's a fact.
Pop Up Club n°5, "The Freshy Guys"
I just tried that new method tonight, cause believe me I'm... a method man. I read the last "Les Inrockuptibles" magazine issue & picked up some band names inside it, without any other kind of deep analysis or view.
Then I surfed on YouTube, clicked here, there and found these 6 fine songs around my search. That could be titled by "the freshy style" touch. Hope you'll enjoy the set!
Phil Collins 2010, against all odds
I've yet spoken about Phil on this blog, that I met on a Disneyland Paris tour, in 2009. And I never thought I could speak about him again one day... I mean I know & understand he decided to take a rest for a long while : too many shows, too many songs, too much pressure...
So, what about his come back today, on the well said "Going back"? I've heard some samples of his new album, made with 60's songs of Motown. Hum... each time a singer makes this kind of stuff, you're certain he's on his last part of artistic time. Just look at Rod Stewart, of even R.I.P Robert Palmer...
They have in common to have been great & famous pop rock stars... all tired of their rocky position? Or unable to follow present styles & musics? Or unable to sing strong again, so forced to take the softy way? That's why they look into the 50's or the 60's? Maybe at last a real lack of inspiration, could be the more easy way to understand that way.
The next next?
Hope this come back will be possible & kind for a lot of people. But there's a little way this new album will drive to Music with major M an absolute & usefull new dimension.
Phil would have had to get back to his best master style : the bizarre, the strange mood, somewhere between strong rock & fine melodies, like on Genesis "Mama", on "In the air tonight" single... A new soft (for his voice) & cold way could have been written for him in 2010... So maybe for a next LP?
Pieter Hugo, the new sorcerer of bizarre
I do like this kind of contact. I was reading a news magazine this morning, in a waiting room, when I was shocked by a paper on Pieter Hugo. This south african photographer is a bit of a new sorcerer. A kind of strange guy, capable of mixing reality & fantastic, mankind & madness, lights & horror.
We are here in a kind of parallel universe, strange, frozen... and talking to our animal part. One of his work I like the most is the "Nollywood" serie, like this one pic we could call "the black demon & his wife" :
Looking at his photos, we are disturbed, forced to think about the lines, our lines... between good & bad, beauty & horror, joy & fear. A really great work & a really great eye.
Victoria and then Marisa
Everybody knows about the Victoria's Secret brand, for women lingerie. But these last days, one hit videos on YouTube show you can be a little more modern, in terms of cool e-marketing, for such a brand.
Marisa is the name, which is a larger brand for clothes, on this web adress : marisa.com.br. "Br" : you got it right, it deals with Brazil! And the company was not born last week : its first operations are on the 50's! Here is its history.
Here is a playlist to see you can't find the cool video buzz in a few seconds... And that you need to find the good way, commercials after commercials...