Struggling for life

Argentinean famous singer Gustavo Cerati is hospitalized in Caracas, Venezuela due to a brain stroke last Saturday. Soda Stereo’s lead singer had the episode after a concert part of his “Fuerza Natural” tour in Caracas, where his blood pressure increased causing his hospitalization. After two days, he got worse and had to go through a surgery to release the pressure from his brain. Fortunately the procedure was successful and Cerati is now under critical state where he shows some problems of speech and facial paralysis. There is not clear information about the possibility of permanent damage, but we all hope he can recover quickly and get back into his life.

I think that this is a very delicate situation for his fans and music in general, because Gustavo Cerati has been an excellent musician, contributing with his amazing songs and huge talent.

Cerati was born on 1959 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and gained world-wide recognition with his rock band “Soda Stereo” in the 90’s. In 1996 Soda stopped playing music and Cerati started several other projects, including his solo project, Roken, Colores Santos and Plan V, and even though these projects were successful, people missed Soda, and in 2007 it came back again to play their final tour. After this was finished, every member of the band returned to their careers, including Cerati who continued his solo career and released new albums and tours.

Here are some of his songs:
"Música Ligera"
"Persiana Americana"
"Cuando pase el temblor"
"Crimen"
"Ella uso mi cabeza como un revólver"

He has won four “Latin Grammy”, three “MTV Video Music Awards”, eleven “Carlos Gardel Awards” and many more.

His is an example of a brilliant and unique music career that has, and will continue to inspire many. I hope that his will recover and continue to share his amazing music with the rest of the world.

FIFA World Cup 2010 Concert!

On June 11 of 2010 people throughout the world will experience an amazing combination of my two personal biggest passions: Soccer and music!

The Kick-off Celebration Concert will be held the night before the official start of the cup on the Orlando Stadium, Johannesburg at 8:00 p.m, local time. It will count with great national and international performers, as well as several legendary soccer players.

It also makes me really proud to inform that 2 out of the 12 artists are colombian! Yes, I'm talking about Shakira and Juanes, who will share the stage with 10 other amazing bands:

Alicia Keys
Amadou & Mariam
Angelique Kidjo
Black Eyed Peas
BLK JKS
John Legend
The Parlotones
Tinariwen
Vieux Farka Touré
Vusi Mahlasela 

The concert will be organizd by Kevin Wall (Emmy winner producer) and his company "Control Room"  who had also participated in the world's biggest concert "Live Earth" 2007, which included 150 performers on all the continents through 24 hours.

When asked about the KCC, Wall said:

“We believe sports and music transcend cultural, language and geographic barriers, and through the official FIFA World Cup Kick–off Celebration Concert, Control Room will present the sights and sounds of unity and celebration for an unforgettable, must-see experience,”

 And offcourse this concert has a good purpose. It is a fund-raising concert to help the "20 Centres for 2010" campaign, which intends to build 20 helthcare, education and soccer centers across Africa.

I am looking foward for this event and the cup itself.  Only 45 days to go...

Video: http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/concert/index.html

Michael Jackson: An Unsolved Mystery

Even though it's been almost over a year after "King of Pop", Michael Jackson passed away, conditions about his death haven't been clearly established yet. Many different hypotheses have come across the court, but the main one is that his doctor, Conrad Murray, "accidentaly" killed him by administrating a fatal combination of drugs. Other rumours about his death are that it was a murder planned by its record company, in order to bring back Michael's fever to the fans. Anyways, this is not a very logical accussation because if the company wanted to win money from his death, they wouldn't have killed him before his final concert "This is it", which would have collected a lot of cash.

But recently, a new hypothesis has emerged, and has caused conmotion in MJ's family and fans. This new theory was presented to court by Dr. Murray, in which he established that MJ killed himself by taking a lethal dose of a drug called Propofol. The doctor argues that he gave MJ a small dose of the drug, but later MJ injected the entire bottle after feeling frustated. Then, the doctor tried to resuscitate the star, but it was too late. MJ's lawyer claim that this is a false accusation because Dr. Murray stopped the CPR team before they entered the scene to hide the Propofol bottles, according to Alberto Alvarez (one of Jackson's bodyguards)

In response to Murray's statement, Joe Jackson (MJ father) replied:

'I don't believe it. It's not true. Why would he ,Murray, hide all the bottles if such a story were true?"

"The report shows the story is not true. This really upsets me to hear this."

Let's just hope that they find what truly happened, and that the culprits pay for this crime.

John Mayer

So today I entered my blog while thinking of an idea to write a post about. I was looking for different music releases, or band news, when all of the sudden my mixpod automatically started playing "Why Georgia" by John Mayer and then inspiration struck me. Considering the fact that John Mayer is my favorite musician, I decided to write a post about him, his career and achievements. So here we go...

He was born on 1977 in Conneticut. Later on he attended Berklee College of Music (my dream college!), but left it to record his first two albums. In 2003 (with only 26 years) he won his first Grammy award for his song "Your body is a wonderland".
To this day he has won 7 Grammy awards and many others, recorded 4 albums and done hundreds of concerts.

He is my favorite musician because of his unique skills in composing, singing and guitar playing. I also enjoy his different musical styles that go from rock and pop to funk and blues. But the thing I like the most about him is his live performaces, because on stage he proves his talent and amazes the audience. My favorite John Mayer's concert is "Where the light is" (2008)

Altough all of his songs are great, the best 10 songs are:
1. Daughters
2. Stop This Train
3. Neon
4. I Don't Need No Doctor
5. Gravity
6. Why Georgia
7. Vultures
8. Belief
9. Who says
10. Friends, Lovers or Nothing

Lily Allen: Singer or Fashionista?

I guess the situation shouldn't be to choose only one. I mean, people could be musicians and designers at the same time, like Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, Fergie, Bono (U2), Justin Timberlake etc... But it seems like Lily Allen has already selected only one of them. And, unfortunately, it wasn't music.

Her decision of leaving music to create a vintage project called "Lucy in Disguise" with her sister, was influenced by the abuse of illegal file sharing (music downloads). Allen claims that it is a lack of respect to a musicians job, since their work is being stolen, so she decided to cancel her record contracts and play only concerts until the end of the year:

"Just so you know, I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record. I do however remain a fan of new music, so this is not some selfish crusade"

She also mentioned that illegal music downloading doesn't provide any type of economical benefit for the artist, so that her carrer wasn't been economically sustainable for her:

"The days of me making money from recording music have been and gone as far as I'm concerned, so I don't (at this point) stand to profit from legislation, except future purchases of previously recorded material (which won't be much)" 

Because of this reasons, she started a campaign against file sharing in her, now deleted, own blog (yes, even Lily Allen has one!) called "It's Not Alright".

In my opinion, I think that technology has changed lives in many ways, one of them being the copyrights violations. Illegal downloads have definetely changed they way we looked at music, but the only solution is not to try to stop it, cause it just won't happen, but to take advantage of it, and benefit from it. For example by distributing songs in the internet, to promote the band and gain popularity, or to please fans, like Coldplay did with their single "Violet Hill" which was free to download from their official website for one week.

All I have to say is that I think we should take advantage of the difficulties and move on, instead of being stuck and quit.

References:
- http://www.spinner.com/2009/09/24/lily-allen-says-she-wont-make-another-record/
- http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/02/lily_allen_1.html

R.I.P to F.O.B?

Rock band Fall Out Boy has officialy splitted up since the beggining of this month. It began as a "temporary break" last November, but it turned into a definitive separation  when bassits Pete Wentz announced on his Twitter that he wouldn't return to the band: "A hiatus is forever until you get lonely or old. I don't plan on either. Can't imagine playing in FOB again. As a band we grew apart. Letting go of this giant part of my life has been hard."

After his comment, the other memebers of the band expressed his opinions about the topic, and concluded thet the band was permantently over: "I'm not in Fall Out Boy right now." Patrick Stump (singer), drummer Andy Hurley wrote: "I quit too.", and guitarrist Joe Trohman said "I just did interviews with Span Magazine, Rabbling Stone and Blunder about how much quitting I done. (sic)"

 

About the source of the breakout not much is known. Altough certain comments of the members give the idea that they were getting tired of each other, and wanted to develop their own musical carrer: "I'm really not worried about Fall Out Boy. I'm so psyched about where I'm at right now, recording this solo album." Patrick Stump

The end of this great band is a very bad new for many people and the music world. But, as there is almost no possibility of  puting it back together, all we have to do is look foward for the members solo projects, and hope that they are as good as the original FOB music.

Top 5 FOB songs:

1) Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

2) Dance, Dance

3) This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race

4) I Don't Care

5) A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More "Touch Me"

                                

References:

- http://www.imnotobsessed.com/2010/02/03/fall-out-boy-splits

- http://www.mtv.co.uk/artists/fall-out-boy/news/176475-fall-out-boy-split

Guns N' Roses in Colombia?

It is confirmed! Guns N' Roses is coming to Bogotá on March 30th. Well not exactly the entire Guns N' Roses crew. Only Axl Rose (lead singer) with new band memebers. This concert is part of a latinoamerican tour of the band that includes Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brasil and Venezuela.

They will perform on the Jaime Duque park and the tickets are: $300.000 "Guns", $250.000 "Roses" and 100.000 "Rock and Roll". March is a month filled with concerts (Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand and Metallica) so you better start saving for this amazing shows!

Top lists of good music...

Here is the Top 25 greatest classic rock bands of all times according to http://www.about.com/

1. The Beatles
2. Pink Floyd
3. The Who
4. Rolling Stones
5. Led Zeppelin
6. Eagles
7. Grateful Dead
8. Jefferson Airplane
9. The Doors
10. Moody Blues
11. Fleetwood Mac
12. AC/DC
13. Boston
14. Cream
15. Def Leppard
16. The Byrds
17. Aerosmith
18. Santana
19. Blood Sweat & Tears
20. Van Halen .
21. ZZ Top
22. Genesis
23. Allman Brothers
24. Journey
25. Traffic

And this is the list of the Top 25 greatest solo artists

1. Paul McCartney.
2. Elton John
3. John Lennon.
4. Bruce Springsteen.
5. Eric Clapton
6. George Harrison
7. Rod Stewart.
8. Bob Dylan
9. Jimi Hendrix
10. Janis Joplin
11. David Bowie
12. Peter Gabriel
13. Alice Cooper
14. Pat Benatar
15. Eddie Money
16. Bob Seger
17. Robert Plant
18. Frank Zappa
19. Ted Nugent
20. Peter Frampton
21. John Mellencamp
22. Tom Petty
23. Elvis Costello
24. Joe Cocker
25. Lou Reed

I hope that these lists will guide your way through good classical rock music.

Steve Tyler leaving Aerosmith?

Since the begining of year, rumours about Steve Tyler (lead singer) leaving the band have been spread. Everything started last October 30th, after a performance on Abu Dhabi, when Steve stopped returning phone calls to his parters. Due to his lack of communication, the members of the band knew nothing about him, until Joe Perry (guitarrist) saw online that Steve was going to leave the group:

“Steven quit as far as I can tell. I don’t know any more than you do about it. I got off the plane two nights ago. I saw online that Steven said that he was going to leave the band. I don’t know for how long, indefinitely or whatever. Other than that, I don’t know,” he tells The Las Vegas Sun.

After that breaking news, the band decided to move on and look for a new lead singer, causing conmotion and anger in their fans, who believe that Steve Tyler is a very important part of Aerosmith, and that his departure, meant the end of the band.


Fortunately, during the Joe Perry Project's (a solo project of Joe Perry) concert in New York, Tyler appeared on stage and assured his fans that he was not leaving the band: “I just want New York to know, I am not leaving Aerosmith” and then said “Joe Perry, you are a man of many colors. But I, motherf@#$%r, am the rainbow!”

After this declaration, Tyler's rumours faded, but didn't entirely dissapeared. Altough Steve assured his position on the band, the group has been presenting frequent internal problems between Perry and Tyler. For example, Perry prefers to record a new album with a "bluesy" style, while Tyler prefers an album that includes the band's greatest hits, like "I Don´t Wanna Miss a Thing". This difference in opinion may lead the members of the band to a disscussion, or worse, separation.

Lets just hope that the band gets through those inconveniences, and continue to create and share their unique music with the rest of the world.

Video of Joe Perry Project show in New York:



References:

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/11/11/steven-tyler-im-not-leaving-aerosmith-joins-joe-perry-project-at-new-york-concert/
http://www.popcrunch.com/steven-tyler-quits-aerosmith/

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