ON stage, you see them bringing the house down as they rock the house with their eardrum-popping music. But off stage, they are your ordinary people like you and me.
Vocalist Henry Allen of Filipino rock band Faspitch, for one, says he and his bandmates play computer game Warcraft for pastime.
“We’re a geeky band. We grew up playing computers,” added Faspitch bassist Trevor Bicknell.
ADMIT it. Your musical taste is largely influenced by friends or at least people close to you. And you often want to share it with everyone or at least to those who share your taste. That is essentially the idea behind Blip.fm.
“Music discovery is social,” says Jeff Yasuda, CEO and co-founder of Blip.fm, a tab service originally under the Fuzz.com website. (Actually, Yasuda’s card reads Founder and CEO of Fuzz Artists Inc.,’ which is an independent music label).
Calling himself a former “bean counter” (read Investment Banker) and a VC (venture capitalist), Yasuda and his co-founder Brian Venneman set up Blip.fm out of their love for music — of course, they believe there’s business in the social aspect of music discovery now that you have the Internet as your platform.
“I’ve been in a band since I was 13 years old,” says Yasuda as we talked in his music-filled room that he calls his office. Everywhere you look, there is music. There’s an exclusive photo of Pearl Jam’s frontman Eddie Vedder wearing a wig and a rather funny and amusing photo of Yasuda and his funky band and a lone fan listening.
Yasuda has a vast collection of music posters of various concerts and known musicians, which gives away his own musical taste. Of course, his first guitar was hanging on one wall, reminding him about his roots. He describes Blip.fm and Fuzz as his second baby — the first is a cute child whose photos are also on his desk.
LONDON — Despite their personal problems, Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse remain a favorite with fans and lead the nominations for best act at this year’s MTV Europe Music Awards, it was announced Monday.
Singer Beyonce is also up for an award and is expected to perform at the November 6 event in Liverpool, northwest England.
The 27-year-old former member of Destiny’s Child is competing against Alicia Keys, Chris Brown, Kanye West and Lil Wayne in the ‘ultimate urban’ category, one of 10 awards at the event voted for by music fans.
In the ‘best act of 2008′ category, Spears will be up against soul singer Winehouse, who has struggled with drugs and alcohol, as well as Coldplay, Leona Lewis and Rihanna.
Manila’s sonic hatcheries crack out the incubators at Club Dredd at Eastwood City for the third Electrostatic Sound Conference held September 24. Manila sound art musicians along with a guest Australian artist played their compositions and shared their music to their followers and to new crowds. The event, spearheaded by New Media Arts Manila, was held to support the musician’s friend who was shot several weeks ago.
“Sound art is an abstraction on what we usually considered music with rhythm, melody and harmony elements. You take away those elements and you come up with sounds that you organize to form the art,” said Singapore-based guest artist Darren Moore. “It encompasses an area of music that may not be mainstream in genre, but with a definite following.”
“OK pa ba kayo dyan?” This was one of the very rare moments Ely Buendia spoke onstage (and this was midway through the first set). It would have been the perfect question to ask him: Was he still fine? His calm demeanor onstage all throughout the first 15 songs belied the unstable mental and physical state he was in. We didn’t know his mother just died 2 days ago and we did not know how extremely pressured they were to push through with the concert with just less than a week’s preparations.
Here’s the video of that night’s events:
Ten minutes before Lally Buendia (Ely’s sister) went onstage to announce that the show has to be cut short, our friend Di said she was feeling weird about something.
“Kinakabahan ako. Ewan ko basta kinakabahan ako,” she said over and over again that I almost strangled her. I jokingly told her she’s not going to get raped on our way back to Quezon City and to told her to stop. But to our great shock, the unthinkable happened — there are no more 2nd and 3rd sets. Ely had to be rushed to the hospital due to severe “emotional and physical stress.” Raimund took the stage first, his voice a bit shaky it sounded like he’s going to break down any minute. He handed the mic over to Buddy and Ely’s sister for the formal announcement that would break all of our hearts. It took a while for the disbelief to subside. We left the field after an hour of debate and “pagmumura.”
