The other day, I arrived at work and noticed "Day-O" (or however the heck you spell it) by the Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring. Oohh...new song. I asked Jody (my boss) if he had made a new CD and he replied, "Yes, I did! That's because no one could understand your music! Some old lady came up to me once and asked, 'What is this???" Defiantly, I said, "I don't understand all my music.I just think it sounds good." After that, Jody admitted that to be fair, he added one French song to the new CD. Ha!
I have one coworker who never fails to say how much she hates French music. Supposedly, it's because she hates listening to something she can't understand but for some reason, she's perfectly fine when something's sung in Spanish or Italian.
Like I said, I don't understand every foreign song I fall in love with but some of their approaches to certain genres and some of the tunes foreign artists/bands come up with are far catchier than the mainstream coming out of North American radio.
It's really a damn shame that albums don't make it to the Billboards or Canadian Soundscans just because they're sung in different tongues.
Below is a list of non-English artists/songs worth checking out.
Mickey 3d (mickey3d.com) - A French band with one of the most original sounds out there...particularly their middle eastern influences which can be heard in songs such as "Yalil". My favourite songs include "La Mort du Peuple" (The Death of the People), "Les Mots" (Words), and "Le France a Peur" (France is Scared).
André - I came across the video to "Station Balnéaire" when I was watching MusiquePlus in Montreal. I've just recently tried finding his other songs and I really liked "Comptoir Postal" and "Tsigane et Sara".
Juli - "Perfekte Welle" is FAR better than most pop crap playing on the radio here at home. And I don't understand German at all!
Xavier Naidoo - Again, I wish I could understand German because I absolutely love his song "Was Wir Alleine Nicht Shaffen"! I haven't been this into an R&B song in so long! "Bevor Du Gehst" is also another notable song, in my opinion.
Le Vibrazioni - This Italian band was introduced to me by a friend. They play rock music bordering on pop which I tend not to like but the falsettos get me everytime. "Raggio di Sole" and "Dedicato a Te" are some of those inner conflicts for me.
Sandwich - While doing research for a final sociology paper last semester, I came across this article talking about Korean and Russian rock. This all of a sudden got me curious to find some Filipino rock as I really know next to nothing about it except for the classic Freddy Aguilar who's best known for his song "Anak" (Child) and The Eraserheads who were huge in the Philippines in the 80s and 90s (I had tried listening to the E-heads in junior high but just couldn't get into them...I recently tried listening to them again and have come to appreciate their music more). Anyway, the guy who used to play drums in the E-heads, Raimund Marasigan, is now the lead vocalist of Sandwich. They have some rather interesting tunes including "DVD X", "Sugod", and "Walang Kadala-dala"
Friday, January 19, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
Winter, go away
To travel in a snowstorm sucks but to work during one...not so much.
So yesterday (err..2 days ago), I was running late for school - I decided to drive to Southgate and then hop on a bus headed to the university. Bad idea.
There was what looked like a blanket of death shadowing the entire Whitemud freeway. The worst part of the Whitemud in such a snowstorm isn't even the Whitemud itself but just trying to enter it. There happened to be an accident by the intersection I was trying to make a turn in to get into the Whitemud so I was stuck on this one street for 15 minutes.
Eventually, I get on the Whitemud and I can't even see the car ahead of me. Just its taillights. Yes...I feel totally safe driving in this condition. Anyway, I made it alive to Southgate, hopped on a bus and ended up being half an hour late for French.
Two and a half hours later, I'm done classes and waiting for the bus to head over back to Southgate. The road by SUB loves to make people slip. The scariest being when this guy riding a bike by this bus suddenly slipped and fell off just when the bus was no where near being able to stop. The biker was only half a ruler length away from being run over. Even the bus driver admitted that if the guy hadn't gotten back up when he did, he would have ran him over. So lesson here is: don't ride a bike when the roads are made out of icy snow much less, in that said condition beside a motor vehicle!
Unfortunately, I had my own little scare on the way home. I almost got into an accident when I couldn't stop at a red light and this other van was turning. I was literally 2 seconds away from crashing into it. Fortunately, that's when I managed to stop and back up. No doubt, that moment was just as frightening, if not more, than seeing a biker almost get run over.
It was completely dead at work today. My boss gave me and my coworker a bunch of stuff to do which was good. After my boss left, there were probably only 4 or 5 people who bought something.
Thank God for being able to bring our own music to work (no more Christmas music!). I managed to get my coworker into Pilate and Hawksley Workman. We also had a long talk about music. I always got the impression that she only listened to hip hop and r&b so it was kinda interesting to discover that she grew up listening to rock music. We happened to have both gone to certain shows such as Our Lady Peace (back in gr. 11 and which we agreed, rocked) and Sum 41 (same year, she loved it while I thought it was one of the worst concerts I had ever been to). What's even more bizarre is when I found out we shared the same birthday! She's only 3 hours older than me. Coincidence like that just never ceases to amaze me.
Anyway, work was so dead we ended up copying Quiznos and closing 2 hours early. Probably one of the few (but more than welcome) blessings a snowstorm brings.
So yesterday (err..2 days ago), I was running late for school - I decided to drive to Southgate and then hop on a bus headed to the university. Bad idea.
There was what looked like a blanket of death shadowing the entire Whitemud freeway. The worst part of the Whitemud in such a snowstorm isn't even the Whitemud itself but just trying to enter it. There happened to be an accident by the intersection I was trying to make a turn in to get into the Whitemud so I was stuck on this one street for 15 minutes.
Eventually, I get on the Whitemud and I can't even see the car ahead of me. Just its taillights. Yes...I feel totally safe driving in this condition. Anyway, I made it alive to Southgate, hopped on a bus and ended up being half an hour late for French.
Two and a half hours later, I'm done classes and waiting for the bus to head over back to Southgate. The road by SUB loves to make people slip. The scariest being when this guy riding a bike by this bus suddenly slipped and fell off just when the bus was no where near being able to stop. The biker was only half a ruler length away from being run over. Even the bus driver admitted that if the guy hadn't gotten back up when he did, he would have ran him over. So lesson here is: don't ride a bike when the roads are made out of icy snow much less, in that said condition beside a motor vehicle!
Unfortunately, I had my own little scare on the way home. I almost got into an accident when I couldn't stop at a red light and this other van was turning. I was literally 2 seconds away from crashing into it. Fortunately, that's when I managed to stop and back up. No doubt, that moment was just as frightening, if not more, than seeing a biker almost get run over.
It was completely dead at work today. My boss gave me and my coworker a bunch of stuff to do which was good. After my boss left, there were probably only 4 or 5 people who bought something.
Thank God for being able to bring our own music to work (no more Christmas music!). I managed to get my coworker into Pilate and Hawksley Workman. We also had a long talk about music. I always got the impression that she only listened to hip hop and r&b so it was kinda interesting to discover that she grew up listening to rock music. We happened to have both gone to certain shows such as Our Lady Peace (back in gr. 11 and which we agreed, rocked) and Sum 41 (same year, she loved it while I thought it was one of the worst concerts I had ever been to). What's even more bizarre is when I found out we shared the same birthday! She's only 3 hours older than me. Coincidence like that just never ceases to amaze me.
Anyway, work was so dead we ended up copying Quiznos and closing 2 hours early. Probably one of the few (but more than welcome) blessings a snowstorm brings.
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