Yes, the mood has now changed significantly. After the snowy slopes in Zell Am See followed the sunny streets of Nice and Monte Carlo – a superb weekend which led to the discovery of an amazing part of Europe, some amazing landscapes and – most important – a very positive change of mood and spirit.

To keep it short – before the music starts – Nice is one of those romantic places which combines the beauty of the see and promenade with the small, crowded and full of life streets of the old part of town. An unique combination of colors and senses, it can lift your spirit easily.

Monte Carlo on the other way has the splendor of a high class location, where seeing a Ferrari on the street or dozens of yachts in the harbour its something common, as well as walking down a sunny street with orange trees.

It all combined in a weekend of relaxation, some – I hope – beautiful pictures. Also, a song which goes perfectlly with all of this – Joe Dassin – Le petit pain au chocolat.

Well, the nominees list has been published. You can find it here. The ceremony is to take place on February 11th, 2007.
Here are my 2 cents on who I’d vote for in each category:

• Record of the Year – even though I don’t think it is the best record of this year, I’d go for Mary J Blige – Without you. Actually, I really like this track and I definetely think it is the best out of the other nominated songs.
• Album of the Year – Definetely the Stadium Arcadium should take this one. There is no debate about it, it just rocks and all the others are quite crap.
• Song of the Year – This award goes to the songwriter and in my view the writer of Not Ready to Make Nice should take it.
• Best New Artist – Even if I don’t really like that over-romanced music, I’d go for James Blunt on this one.
• Best Female Pop Performance – Wow, I can’t believe KT Tunstall is nominated. Yes, she should take home the award.
• Best Male Pop Performance – Daniel Powter, with Bad Day…maybe.
• Best Pop Group – Even though most of the indie blogosphere would probably go for Death Cab for Cutie, I would stick to Black Eyed Peas on this one, even if “My Humps” was lower than expected.
• Best Pop Collaboration – I’d go for Mary J Blige & U2.
• Best Solo Rock Performance – I have a special attaraction for Tom Petty with Saving Grace
• Best Rock Group Performance – Again, R.H.C.P. with Dani California.
• Best Hard Rock Performance – I’d go for System of a Down.
• Best Metal Performance – Slayer, no doubt about it !
• Best Rock Instrumental Performance – again, a pretty straight one should go to David Gilmour.
• Best Rock Album – Again, I would go for Tom Petty.

And for the other categories I’m going to write something soon – to be continued…

Blender published a top 50 worst music artists of all time. As this is and should be considered as a highly subjective initiative, I would have some remarks to it:

I Agree with:
- Crash Test Dummies (no 28) – they didn’t impress with anything, released the Mmm Mmm Mmm … song which was quite lousy for a hit, even though heavily broadcasted in its age. Poor performance afterwards.
- Celine Dion (no 26) – regarded by many as a Diva, I was never keen on anything concerning her, specially the song for Titanic. Everything was too “predictive”, all the songs follow the same line. Boring.
- Creed (no 23) – Again, nothing of interest in that form of rock.
- Michael Bolton (no 3) – Sort of a masculine version of Celine Dion, he made a good impression on depressed young teens but his music is poor, with no innovation and no substance after all.
- Insane Clown Pose (no 1) – Actually, I never understood anything from that form of “music”, so they must be lame.

I do not agree with: here the list can get longer…

- Manowar (no 44) – actually, Manowar had their quite distinctive sound and played good music. DeMaio is a good bass-player and all of the guys are pretty technical with their instruments. Also, the vocals were good. They also managed to be the “loudest band in the world” in Guinness World Records hall of fame.
- The Doors (no 37) – Doors played an unique kind of music and they have to be appreciated for this. They also created and supported a large movement in the hippie groups and influenced a lot of other bands. The End has one of the best guitar solos ever, so this is another reason to appreciate them.
- Yngwie Malmsteen (no 14) – As they said in the ranking, he was big on solos but short on songs. Actually, I trink he was that big on solos, that the lower songs can be overseen and he should be ranked much better. After all, this is his purpose, to create some great guitar sounds.
- Mick Jagger (no 13) – I think his great merit is that he actually created a great band and managed to make it play excellent music for dozens of years. Very few managed to do this and for this he should be greatly appreciated.

Actually, I could add a lot of Romanian artists to “the worst list” and also a lot of pop-stars…actually, 90% of them. But again, it is a matter of taste :)

The RSS feed for Musicblog.ro is now fixed – you can subscribe and read the musicblog via RSS using this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/musicblog/MtJx.

Just finished watching the “First Descent” movie – something I’ve been really looking forward some days now, after seeing the trailer. Of course, the movie just amplified my already-high appetite for snowboarding as soon as possible.

I could not say it is an excellent movie per se – pretty dull as a movie if you are not a big snowboard fan, but it is good that it shows both some amazing scenes of snowboard in Alaska and it also takes you through the entire snowboarding history.

Definitely the best moment of the movie was Terje‘s first descent of the 7601 peak – an excellent accomplishment by the world’s best snowboarder. Truly amazing !

Therefore, also the track for today – Foo Fighters – Hell – the soundtrack song for that descent.

I am trying for some time to find a nice bookstore in Romania, preferably one that also has a good online store so that I can quickly search for what I want and order online – but I find it very hard to find one.

Recently I decided to try buybooks.ro, a site which appears listed in usor.ro as the second best in its category. I open the site, looks pretty good and simple. So I decide to browse and search for some business boks.

Browsing: The closest category I could find related to business books is called “Management, marketing, sales”. Ok, fair enough, let’s look. The first thing that strikes me is that the books are listed in an apparently random order…the criteria is not popularity, nor the author name. After browsing through some pages, I got it – their are ranked by price, from the most expensive to the cheapest ! Wow, this is an interesting ranking. Probably they thought that if they list the most expensive ones first people will buy those, so that they make more profit… but it’s so stupid ! Never in a bookstore I found this ranking, it’s just so unfriendly to usability.

Ok, could not find many interesting things in here, just a lot of mistakes – for example, the book of Ferdinand F Fournies – Employee’s psichology has as picture the cover of a Peter Drucker book. So, if I order it, what would I get ?? Fournies or Drucker :)
Search: Ok, browsing did not work, so let’s search for what I was interested in – “Gene Zelazny – Say it with charts“. As I expected the title of the book had been translated in Romanian in some stupid manner, I decided not to risk anything and search by the author. Search for Zelazny did not return any results, so browsing by author might have been better. Ups, another surprise – there is no letter Z in the authors list ! This is quite strange, but let’s see maybe it is starting with G, so I opened the list of authors starting with G. Well, here I really lost it. The list is fully messed up, the authors are falling into the G section sometimes by their first name – like George Bacovia, sometimes by their last name, like Goleman Daniel and sometimes their appear under various names, like having both G. Liiceanu and Gabriel Liiceanu !

Now, an online library is the last place where I would expect this to happen. I used to go to libraries pretty often and I know how strict they are with putting a book on the right shelf – in the right section and in the right author order. How could someone find something in this chaos?

Madalin, all due respect for usor.ro, but please take this site out of the 2nd place in Libraries, because there is nothing “usor” about this buying experience.

Seems that it’s too hard to find a decent bookstore in Romania, so I get back to Amazon. Just as a comparison, here is what they would return on a Gene Zelazny search.

Well, this was probably the last weekend in Vama Veche. I managed to arrive also this time and it was wonderful, overall, despite some initial problems.

Quite bad weather on Saturday, an excellent weather on Sunday – the sea was also warm – and overall quite a deserted resort. A lot of products missing from the shelves, B52, Expirat and others were already closed and there was no traditional reed-burning.

Also, not too may visitors, which gave an overall feeling of peace and calm. Lovely !

Here are some photos – low quality again – but, most important, this weekend’s track / obsession – Regina Spektor – On The Radio :)

Blogmusik.net is quite an interesting site that allows you to listen to a lot of tracks over the web. With a simple interface, similar to an iPod, you can search or browse for artists and listen to their tracks. Also, for registered users, you can create playlists.

What is quite interesting – and still remains a mistery – is their licensing model. There is no information about that on the site and you are not required to pay anything. Of course, you cannot download tracks either.

Works quite well via a regular connection, so go and check it out.

So, not much posting going on lately…this is mainly because of being busy at work, focusing more on the reminder to “read that pile of books” and doing … stuff :)

Still, I could not help noticing that I don’t feel much like changing that series of 20 or so tracks in Winamp which I am listening for some weeks now. Am I getting old / bored or is it just that latelythere haven’t been too many great releases ? And reaching for the old HDD full of excelent music just seams too much….

So, just for sharing, here are some of the powerplays of the last 20 days or so:

- E.M.I.L – Dub Shot – no download link, but go and search for it, it’s really worth it !
- Sergio Mendez – Mas Que Nada

- Bob Dylan – Hurricane

- Red Hot Chilli Peppers – On Mercury (thanks to A.)

- Outkast – Roses

- Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird – that guitar solo is fantastic

- Patrice – Up In My Room – (again, A.)

- The Roots – The Seed 2.0

- Regina Spektor – On The Radio

- Radiohead – Video Killed the Radiostar – yes, it is not the original version, but sounds excellent.

- and a lot of that Ray Charles album.

- Emily Haines – The Lottery – this is newly discovered and sounds great !

Finally, after some years since the last real vacation, I managed to decide to leave for some days. Of course, all the plans for this vacation have ben changed and changed and finally it seems I will be in some quiet and peacefull seaside retreat.

The plans for these 8 days or so are quite impressive: 4 books and dozens of business articles to read, about 2 Gb of music to review and some business plans to put in order and analyse thoroughly. Hope I will manage to do most of them while also getting some rest and relaxation.

And as all these activities require some nice music in the background, the playlist for this time is impressive. Here are some of the tracks which will keep me company through the days:

[mp3] Bob Dylan – Hurricane – One of the most powerful of Dylan’s protest songs, released in 1976 and inspired by the story of Rubin Carter and his trial.

[mp3] David Gilmour – On An Island – One of the most relaxing songs ever, this is meant to give me that state of bliss an island should inspire.

[mp3] Dido – Sand In My Shoes – Well, sand is for sure to be found there, so this track goes along pretty well. One of Dido’s best tracks, in my opinion.

[wma] Eliades Ochoa – Chan Chan – My favourite Buena Vista Social Club song. It is one of Compay’s last songs he composed and became an instand success after being released in 1987. Like this songs inspires, sifting sand on the beach is probably going to be one of the daily activities :)

[mp3] Erin Bode – Graceland – Along with David Gilmour’s On an Island, is one of the most relaxing songs, as I mentioned previously on this blog.

[wma] Gotan Project – Una Musica Brutal – this song has remained in my mind since hearing it the first time at 6 AM on a beach, with an incredibly strong coffee in my hand.

[mp3] Johnny Cash – Father and Son – Johnny Cash is one of my favourite artists and his music was a great partner some years ago, in the same resort. Therefore, he could not fail the playlist.

[mp3] Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird – Combining both an excellent guitar (I am a sucker for guitar, in general) and a great melody, this is one of the songs I would recommend to Andrei when discussing guitarists and their performance. Probably Van Halen’s Erruption and Pink Floyd’s Confortably Numb are going to come along, too.

[mp3] Sergio Mendez – Mas Que Nada – A recent addition, provides a great feeling of the Samba spirit. And Brazil is marked as a “not to miss” destination for the future years.

[mp3] The Cult – Painted on my Heart – I just like this song a lot, so he makes the playlist.

Well, this is about it. Some 24 hours till departure left, so let the music play.

Downloads above are just for sampling purposes, respect copyright and go buy the album, do not distribute.