The best concert I've ever seen?
I saw a concert last Monday at the Fleche d'Or in Paris.
I saw a concert last Monday that may well have been the best concert I have ever seen. Certainly there have been bands - any one of the artists I used to obsess over as a teenager, in fact - where I was more excited just to be there seeing them live. But in terms of the sheer visceral, kick-in-the-guts power of the music and the raw emotion that was bouncing off the stage, I have never seen anything like it. As I wrote on the singer's MySpace page afterwards, I have never been so moved by music.
Who was this singer that moved me so? Her name is Nadj.
Listen to some of Nadj's music on MySpace (including a cover of Motorhead's Ace of Spades) and watch the live video of La Pilule to see what I mean.
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Tous photographes !
A photo of mine has been displayed as part of an exhibition at the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland entitled "We are all photographers now!"
The "installation view" they sent me, which you can see here, was taken at 12.59pm on Friday 23 March 2007.
How exciting! User-generated content has now even made it into what many think of as the stuffy world of museums.
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My new tumblelog
I'm experimenting with the quick-and-dirty posting style of a tumblelog over at horreo.org.
I'll continue posting longer entries here if I ever have to anything to say that can't be summed up in a pithy sentence or two.
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Music, maestro
On a day that sees business podcaster Neville Hobson rocking out, my own musical career also took a step forward as I signed the papers required to register one of my songs with the French performing rights society SACEM.
The song in question - You Could Be A Boy - can be heard on Electric Factory's obligatory MySpace page.
Don't worry, you won't hear me singing - I only wrote the lyrics!
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Holiday snaps: Galicia (Spain) and Oporto (Portugal)
I'm just back from spending a week visiting friends in Galicia, north-west Spain. We flew via Oporto, which is a lovely little town that I discovered for the first time - along with the delights of the francesinha.
Here are a few of my holiday photos until I get back into my blogging stride again.
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Steve Jobs: Thoughts on music
Steve Jobs tells record labels to get rid of DRM.
Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
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A beautiful revolution
I don't know what to say, other than that A beautiful revolution is the best blog I've stumbled across in a long time.
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I used to be unique
There I was, happy in the belief that the images in my Flickr photostream were a unique collection of my particular obsessions and a window onto my soul.
And then I found f-auto, who seems to take many similar shots. And a lot better than I do too.
Turns out I'm not so unique after all.
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The color Pourpre
You must listen to Pourpre.
I'm not saying that because, in my new guise as a would-be lyricist, I contributed maybe three or four words - literally - to the two tracks you can find on the band's MySpace page, and am looking forward to being able to help them out a bit more in the future.
No, I'm saying that because One Eyed Blind is quite simply one of the best songs I've heard in ages.
That's why you must listen to Pourpre.
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NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month
Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year?
Go on. Fifty thousand words in a month - that's nothing! It doesn't even had to be any good.
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Fancy a ticket to see Herman Dune at La Cigale?
Herman Dune are playing at La Cigale in Paris on Saturday 4 November, promoting their new album Giant, and Madame and I will be among those in attendance.
We bought our tickets from digital ticketing service Digitick (they sent me my tickets via WAP Push, no less) and, after completing the order, I discovered that they're currently giving away an additional ticket with every purchase, which may be a nice promotion, but also means we're left with a spare ticket.
If you'd like to take it off our hands (not literally, since it's stored on my phone and that means you'd have to walk in with us), make me an offer. We paid €19.80 for each of ours.
Update (01/11/06): Here's a bonus link - Herman Dune playing in a laundrette, just round the corner from where we used to live on Boulevard Voltaire.
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My name is Stuart, and I am funky
While I may earn my living as a technical marketing writer and occasional tech author, over the past few months I've started writing something else in addition to the web copy, technical brochures and press releases that make up my usual output.
I am now a lyricist too.
OK, so I've been writing songs on and off pretty much ever since I was a teenager, but earlier this year I finally decided to start taking it more seriously. I am now working with several different artists, including Paris-based electro-pop collective Electric Factory, folk/jazz singer EliotE (who's just about to take off to San Francisco for a few months) and a gang of Belgian indie upstarts called The Next who are so busy making music that they haven't had time to build a website ... even on MySpace.
I've even gone so far as to record some guide vocals to help these real singers get to grips with my words - but don't worry, I won't be inflicting my voice on the unsuspecting (undeserving?) public just yet.
Or will I?
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The Golden Calf - a translation in progress
Maciej Cegłowski is a man of many talents.
One project he is currently involved in is the volunteer translation of The Golden Calf, which he and his co-translator Peter V. Gadjokov describe as follows:
This is the homepage for a draft translation of Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf, a Soviet comic novel about con men in pursuit of an underground millionaire and his suitcase full of hard currency.
Seventy years after its publication, The Golden Calf remains a cult classic among Russian readers, but it is out of print in English translation. This will be the first time in nearly forty years that The Golden Calf will be available to English speaking readers.
They have a long way to go - they're on Chapter 7 of a total of 36 - but this is a project that's definitely worth following.
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Cross-cultural fertilisation and the death of distance
You know you're living in the 21st century - and all that means in terms of cross-cultural fertilisation and the death of distance - when a Scottish boy in Paris (that would be me) is sitting listening to a Japanese woman singing baile funk (that would be Tigarah).
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Got things done
As Mr Torres announces on our book blog, we have now completed our work on the Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista.
Phew!
And for my next trick...?
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Blog de Lucia Etxebarria
The first Spanish novelist I remember truly loving for what she wrote, as opposed to those worthy works we were made to read as part of our studies (some of which I secretly enjoyed too, but still held a grudge against because we were forced to read them), was Lucia Extebarría.
When I read her first novel Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas, I discovered to my delight that contemporary Spanish writers could write in a way that was modern and fun to read (unlike, say, Miguel de Unamuno, who I also appreciated but who could hardly be described as "fun"). Quite why this surprised me is a mystery, but there you have it.
I'm sure you can imagine my pleasure, then, on learning recently from Octavio Rojas that Lucía now has a blog, the imaginiatively titled Blog de Lucia Etxebarria, which now has a promiment position on my must-read-every-day blogroll.
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Dundee My Dundee
Today, my home town of Dundee, Scotland is nothing like the place you can see in this bleak YouTube video, Dundee My Dundee by the Scrotum Poles, but I do remember it being like that when I was growing up.
Nice music too! There's more here.
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Birthday music
Today is my birthday.
I was given three new CDs:
For what it's worth, they're all excellent - even Charlotte Gainsbourg!
I was also treated to a beautiful rendition of "Joyeux Anniversaire" from across the courtyard by our wonderful neighbours, including my daughter's four-year-old chum Tudy (who may well be making his Internet debut in this post). Trugarez!
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A little bit of this and a little bit of that
I'm cleaning out my bookmarks.
- The Rise of Crowdsourcing: "Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D".
- Hello, world!: "A visual code for Google Earth"
- MyTunesRSS: "MyTunesRSS is an application for accessing your iTunes library from any computer connected through a network."
- Paris Inconnu: Walks through the parts of Paris tourists don't normally see
- "School in France is different"
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Devine Art - a global microbrand in the budding?
I am lucky enough to own a minimalist landscape painting by Scottish artist Martin Devine.
As I was reading Martin's more or less quarterly newsletter the other day, I got to thinking that perhaps he should consider starting a blog. He already embraces the web, selling much of his work on eBay, and a blog could be a way for him to engage still further with people who are interested in what he does. While I realise that what I am suggesting may sound as if I am sullying Martin's art by linking it so closely to commerce, the fact remains that paintings are a product like any another, and a business like Martin's seems to be crying out to become a global microbrand.
Of course, the fact that his work is so great is no bad thing either.
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