Throwback Thursdays: Concerts

Yes, yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon and posting a Throwback Thursday entry. The idea of Throwback Thursday is to post a photo from a long time ago and post it in social media websites. Seeing people posting "old" photos inspired me to look into my archive of photos. I decided to compile photos taken from concerts I've been to.

One Fine Crafternoon

Second craft workshop, woot woot! Thanks to Eula's heads up I got to join the fabric rubber-cut crafternoon by Alessa last Sunday, March 17.

The Nocturnals

It's 2 am and I'm playing Grace Potter & the Nocturnals in the background while my sisters and I are doing our own stuff in the study.

Daisy: What are we listening to ba?
Me: Uhm, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals.
Daisy: Ah, just like us - nocturnals.
Me: Hahaha!

A7X Experience

I think it was around three or four years ago that Jex and I were talking about how awesome it would be to be able to watch Avenged Sevenfold live. We became fans of the band by discovering "Bat Country" from a Devil May Cry AMV. After being able to "play" their songs on Rock Band 2 Jex became a fan of The Rev because he was the better drummer on game between the two of us. I became a fan just because they made awesome music. Unfortunately, The Rev died even before we even heard of rumors that the band was touring to Asia. Jex and I were sad because we'll never get the chance to watch him play with Avenged Sevenfold live.

A few months ago I saw some tweets on my feed about Avenged Sevenfold coming to Manila for a concert. I went crazy. I told Jex "WE HAVE TO WATCH. IT'S A ONCE IN A LIFETIME EXPERIENCE!" The only other time I reacted that wild to an upcoming concert was for the 30 Seconds to Mars concert last year (which we watched!) There was no argument needed really. We were watching the concert!

Walk Off the Earth

I love discovering new artists through YouTube. I was introduced to Walk Off the Earth because Jex's brother showed us the video of their cover of "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye. They did an awesome job with the song, but what makes their rendition more interesting is that they performed it with just one guitar. That's five people on one guitar. Don't believe me? Watch the video.

Karmin

From http://karminmusic.com/bio/

Being in the Philippines limits one's exposure to different types of music and artists if you just rely on mainstream radio and local TV channels. Thankfully we have several stations who try to shake up the radio airwaves by playing non-mainstream music as well as cable TV. And, of course, there's the internet. I've discovered so many new (to me) artists by just scrounging around the internet - specifically YouTube.

A few weeks ago my sister introduced me to Karmin. She showed me their cover of "Super Bass" by Nicki Minaj on YouTube and I was pretty much hooked.

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 13 – A song that is a guilty pleasure

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

What an interesting theme, haha! First thing that popped into my mind was this song.

In 2002 t.A.T.u., a Russian female duo, broke into the mainstream with the song "All the Things She Said". It was really catchy and an instant hit, having constant airplay for a while. The controversy regarding the duo's sexuality (they were rumored to be lesbians. Rumored? Confirmed? I'm not really sure actually) also helped boost their popularity.

The duo was formed by Ivan Shapovalov in 1999 by holding auditions for teen female vocalists. The duo was originally named "Тату" (Tatu), which is short for "Та любит Ту (Ta lyubit Tu)" meaning "She loves her". They used the name t.A.T.u. for their English album because there was already an Australian band called Tatu.

While researching on the band and the song I found out that the Russian version of the song is entitled "Ya Soshla S Uma". Of course, I can't understand the lyrics since they're in Russian, but it's worth a listen.

I also like t.A.T.u.'s version of "How Soon Is Now?", another guilty pleasure song of mine.

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 12 – A song from a band you hate

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

I can think of bands I don't like that much but I honestly cannot think of a band that I hate. Why waste effort on actively hating a band when you can just ignore them, change the station when you hear their song on the radio, or change the channel when you see their music video on TV? But, seriously, I can't think of a band I hate. That's it. No song post for today. Bye!

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 10 – A song that makes you fall asleep

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

If I'm sleepy enough I can easily fall asleep to any music. I can even fall asleep while listening to rock or heavy metal music.

There was a time when I had a tension headache every single day. I was used to sleeping late and I hated waking up early, and it took a toll on me. It felt like I had a heavy ball of nerves tightly packed in the middle of my forehead, in between my eyes and just right above my nose. It was tolerable but got really annoying, especially when I had to work, so I researched on tension headaches and how to relieve them. One of the "treatments" I tried was listening to relaxing music before and during sleeping as well as while I working. I found that it was effective when I listened to instrumental music so my brain wouldn't get distracted with lyrics, especially if I've become familiar or memorized them.

In my quest for instrumental relaxation I discovered Kitarō, a Japanese musician, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. His songs are amazing and listening to them kind of takes you to another place.

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 09 – A song that you can dance to

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

Technically, I can dance to any song out there, but I can't promise that the dancing would be very good for all songs, haha.

Anyway, for this day's theme, I'm picking "Re-Rewind" by Artful Dodger featuring Craig David. It's so old school, I know, but I love this song. I remember dancing to this back when I was in high school. I still remember some of the choreography that we had for our performance, too.

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 07 – A song that reminds you of a certainevent

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

Man, was this theme difficult. I chose "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga because whenever I hear it I think of our company year-end party last 2009. I sang a rock cover of this song during the party with my band mates.

Yes, that's me, on stage performing "Paparazzi"

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 05 – A song that reminds you of someone

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

When everybody else is getting out of bed
I'm usually getting in it
I'm not in it to win it
I'm in it for you

♥ =)

P.S.

Sorry about the late post. Apparently, I am not much of a blogger on weekends and holidays.

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 04 – A song that makes you sad

>> 30-Day Song Challenge <<

One of the few chick flicks I watched in the cinema was P.S. I Love You. I saw the trailer and I got convinced. Plus Gerard Butler was in it...and Lisa Kudrow. So, yeah, I wanted to watch it.

This song wasn't new to me before watching the movie, I had already heard it played on the radio. But, when they used it as background music to one of the scenes in the movie I couldn't help it, tears just started streaming down my face while watching!

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 02 – Your least favorite song

>> The 30-Day Song Challenge <<

It was a bit challenging thinking of a song I really disliked. It's pretty rare for me to say that I dislike a certain song because I usually just consider it as "not my type" instead. But I was able to identify 2 songs for today's theme. The first is "Apologize" by OneRepublic and the second is "Sorry 2004" by Ruben Studdard.

The first time I heard "Apologize" playing on the radio it sounded fine until I heard the chorus - "It's too late to apologize. It's too late." It just sounded so wrong, for me, because I don't think it's ever too late to apologize. So there, I don't like the idea of the song, but the infinite times I've heard it on the radio made the song grow on me. I don't dislike it as much anymore, but I still disagree with the idea of the song.

Similarly, I don't agree with the idea of "Sorry 2004". Okay...I just realized that both of these songs I'm talking about are about saying sorry, haha, weird. Anyway, at first listen you'll just hear a guy apologizing for all the wrong things he's done. So, what's wrong with that? The reason why I really dislike this song is because he apologizes in advanced if ever he messes up again in the future. Wtf!?

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 01 – Your favorite song

>> The 30-Day Song Challenge <<

It's difficult to choose a favorite song, especially since new songs come out almost everyday. At one point in my life "Brown Eyes" by Destiny's Child was my favorite song. "Stellar" by Incubus was another favorite, as well as "Aozora no Namida" from the Blood+ anime.

I chose this song as my favorite song because it was the first thing that popped into my mind. The song, by itself, is already awesome, but additional awesomeness is added when you watch the music video.

The energy that the song has is just amazing. One part of the video struck me was when the girl said:

"Some people believe in God, I believe in music.
Some people pray, I turn up the radio."

30-Day Song Challenge

I've seen several Facebook friends doing this and it seemed interesting enough when I first encountered it, but I was too lazy to start my own list. Basically, the idea is to choose a song, for 30 days, matching the theme or topic assigned for each day. It's a pretty easy task, I hope, and will help in adding more activity to my blog.

My 30-day song challenge starts today!

If you're going to start or are already doing your own 30-day song challenge, comment below and tell me so I can take a peek at your list, too.

Here's the list of themes:

• Day 01 – Your favorite song
• Day 02 – Your least favorite song
• Day 03 – A song that makes you happy
• Day 04 – A song that makes you sad
• Day 05 – A song that reminds you of someone
• Day 06 – A song that reminds of you of somewhere
• Day 07 – A song that reminds you of a certain event
• Day 08 – A song that you know all the words to
• Day 09 – A song that you can dance to
• Day 10 – A song that makes you fall asleep
• Day 11 – A song from your favorite band
• Day 12 – A song from a band you hate
• Day 13 – A song that is a guilty pleasure
• Day 14 – A song that no one would expect you to love
• Day 15 – A song that describes you
• Day 16 – A song that you used to love but now hate
• Day 17 – A song that you hear often on the radio
• Day 18 – A song that you wish you heard on the radio
• Day 19 – A song from your favorite album
• Day 20 – A song that you listen to when you’re angry
• Day 21 – A song that you listen to when you’re happy
• Day 22 – A song that you listen to when you’re sad
• Day 23 – A song that you want to play at your wedding
• Day 24 – A song that you want to play at your funeral
• Day 25 – A song that makes you laugh
• Day 26 – A song that you can play on an instrument
• Day 27 – A song that you wish you could play
• Day 28 – A song that makes you feel guilty
• Day 29 – A song from your childhood
• Day 30 – Your favorite song at this time last year

Windows Command Prompt

I can get pretty OC when I'm in the mood. Since giving Jex his new Creative X-Fi2 for his birthday I've been trying to organize my music collection. Folder structure, filename formatting, album art - these are some things I've been thinking about in my quest for file organization.

For those who are curious, I use Mp3tag to modify the tags of my mp3 files. I used to use Helium Music Manager, but it was too bulky for my purposes, and buggy, too. I only wanted a tag editor and Helium was a full-featured music player and manager, so I uninstalled it.

I like how simple Mp3tag's interface is and how quick and easy it is to edit tags and rename files. Only recently did I discover that the explorer context menu can be enabled upon installation. Having a context menu in Windows explorer makes it so much easier to selectively manage your files, instead of waiting for a long time for your whole music library to load in Mp3tag.

The biggest issue I encountered was managing album art. It's not that difficult managing the album art using Mp3tag. You can set album art via files on your computer or from online sources, like Amazon. For some reason, though, even when I already manually set the album art of some files another image shows as the album art. And this same image is also what is displayed as the album art of other files. It was really annoying so I researched and found that I can get rid of the problem by deleting all the hidden image files, possibly, being referred to by the files for album art. Good, I like starting with a clean slate. So...how do I do that for each and every folder in my music collection without going crazy?

The answer: Google. Nah, actually the answer is the Windows command prompt. But Google was still part of how I created the solution because I suck at memorizing attribute syntax.

Mood Music

I'm a music person. I won't say that I can't live without music, because I'm pretty sure I can, but I don't think it would be a pleasant life.

During my morning and evening commute to and from work I usually just set my mp3 player to shuffle all songs. I do this when I'm too lazy to think of what I specifically want to listen to (which is most of the time). Also, it's so I get to listen to the rest of the songs on my player, which I don't get to listen to a lot or have forgotten about.

There are times when I just select certain albums and listen to them over and over. Some of my loop albums include:

• Hey Monday's "Hold On Tight"
• Owl City's "Ocean Eyes"
• Incubus' "S.C.I.E.N.C.E."
• Incubus' "Make Yourself"
• Sara Bareilles' "Little Voice"
• 30 Seconds to Mars' "This Is War"

Sometimes I listen to just one song over and over. Yes, that's right, I listen to one song on loop for hours like an addict. There are times it's because of a certain mood I'm in, like when I'm stressed over work. Most of the time, though, it's just random songs.