Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

I love jazz and I love this song.

Melody, by Molly Johnson

It’s so easy here with you
Like a walk in the park just before dark
Always so easy here with you
Like sun on my face, a bright summer day

You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go I still hear music constantly
You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you’re gone you’re haunting, yeah you’re taunting me

As summer slips to fall, yes, it does
Seems no time’s past at all, not at all
As summer slips to fall and then it snows
Then I watch you go, watch you go

You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go I still hear music constantly
You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go you’re haunting, yeah (yeah) taunting me

I got a feeling ‘bout you
It might be nothing new
But time slips by, I hardly try
So don’t be sad
I won’t be blue
‘Cause love will follow, love will follow, follow you

You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go I’ll still hear music constantly
You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go you’re haunting, yeah you’re taunting me

You’re like a sweet smelling breeze
Sneaking up on me
And when you go you’re haunting, yeah you’re taunting me
You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go I still hear music constantly

You’re like a melody
That follows me
And when you go you’re haunting, yeah you’re taunting me

More from Molly Johnson.

Wow, I am impressed. I went to The Eagles "Long Road out of Eden" concert at the Rotterdam Ahoy venue last night with my buddy Sander, and I sure enjoyed it. What an awesome concert! The guys played for 3 hours and it was just so cool. I tried to shoot some video's with my crappy phone but I found that YouTube already has loads of video's from the 2 concerts they gave (April 1st and 3rd). We were standing about 30-40 yards from the stage on the right side where we had a perfectly good view. The sound was good, the audience was good and the band rocked: what else could you want?

The boys played all their greatest hits (Lyin' Eyes, Heartache Tonight, Boys of Summer, Take it Easy, Dirty Laundry) but also thoroughly enjoyed doing their new hits from their Long Road out of Eden album. They ended the evening in style with "Desperado".




- The Eagles Lyrics

It's a well-known fact that the music industry does a poor job of protecting their artists from self-destruction. They seem more eager to make money than to protect the person behind the money. A good example is Amy Winehouse, the English soul, jazz, and R&B singer and songwriter. She is about to hit rock-bottom which is a shame for such a talented person. Winehouse is a textbook example of a troubled artist, she dropped out of school, and first started experimenting with drugs at a young age. Nevertheless her success is really big: she won 2008 Grammy Awards in the categories of 'Record of the Year', 'Song of the Year', and 'Best Female Pop Vocal Performance' for the single "Rehab", while her album "Back to Black" won in the 'Record of the Year' award and a nomination for 'Album of the Year'. Producer Mark Ronson's work with her won the award in the Producer of the Year Non-Classical category. The singer also earned a Grammy in the 'Best New Artist' category. She performed You Know I’m No Good and Rehab at the awards ceremony on February 10, 2008 via satellite, as her visa approval came through too late for her to travel to the US as a result of her drug past.

As you can see from the After & Before photo above, drugs are definately not making you more attractive. I hope Amy Winehouse somehow finds a way to get het act together so we do not have read her obituary on the Internet later this year.

Better say "Yes" to rehab, Amy!

Guess where I'm going in April

Just got back from a Maceo Parker concert in the Paradiso venue in Amsterdam. Man, that guy can play! Soul, funk, jazz; it all sounds good. My friend Sander called me Monday night and asked if I would like to go there with him. Although I have a busy week I decided to go with him. We first had a dinner at this cool place called "Wagamamma". I really enjoyed it. What was extra cool: famous Dutch saxplayer Candy Dulfer came along for a surprise cameo during Maceo's concert. Damn, she rocks! I shot some video as well with my mobile phone, but it sucks balls, so I just found another clip at YouTube from someone that was standing right in front of the stage. Enjoy!

Maceo Park & Candy Dulfer

As most of you know by now, I have my own online radiostation called iLounge which is dedicated to lounge music and other relaxing tracks. In case you do not know what "lounge" is, you can now listen to a sample of my favourite lounge tracks right here on my blog courtesy of last Last.fm. In fact it should be playing as soon as this page opens. There is also a RSS widget on my page here that shows what I have played lately, but now you can also listen to it. I think Last.fm is really cool and gives you loads of options to share your musical taste with other people. Right below is my own player with tracks that I play regularly, and below it is my "neighborhood player". I can highly recommend Last.fm if you're a music enthusiast. It will show you loads of other music based on your taste that you might enjoy as well. So have fun and don't forget to tune in to iLounge!

In a suprise announcement, today at 1pm London time (GMT, 2pm CET), EMI CEO Eric Nicoli and Apple CEO Steve Jobs will hold a forty minute press conference. Although no information about the press conference has been made public (other than “to hear about an exciting new digital offering.”), analysts believe that this may be an announcement about EMI ending its DRM for the iTunes Store. It is no secret that Steve Jobs is opposed to DRM, as was made public by him in a statement earlier this year. EMI is the third largest music label after Universal and Sony.

Rumour has it that The Wall Street Journal has the scoop: The WSJ reports that the two are set to announce that a significant portion of EMI’s catalog will be sold online without any DRM. That would really be a breakthrough as most users hate DRM because it ties them hand and feet to either a specific platform or medium. The fact that their music now might be free of DRM might boost online sales for Apple's iTunes Store even more.

UPDATE:
The cat is out of the bag: EMI CEO Eric Nicoli and Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the two companies are officially offering EMI’s digital catalog DRM-free on iTunes; however this comes at a price. As to be expected the record company was not going to 'sell out' their rights completely and it seems that they came up with a compromise:

EMI will offer all songs from its digital catalog without DRM but they will be sold at $1.29 per song, $0.30 more per song than the current price. In return for this songs will be encoded at 256kbps AAC (current is 128kbps). Entire album purchases will stay at the same price, but have the higher audio quality and will be DRM free.

EMI music videos will be available DRM free with no change in price. Customers who purchased tracks previously can upgrade to DRM free tracks for $0.30 per track.

Jobs says they are trying to do similar deals with other labels, and expects that 50% of all of their tracks sold will be DRM free by end of year.

So there you have it: not exactly the end of DRM but a clever compromise. According to sources Apple is trying to make similar deals with the other big labels. Apple CEO Steve Jobs even expects that by the end of 2007 50% of all of their tracks sold, will be DRM free.

See the official pressrelease.