Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

A few years ago, I was invited to Australia on a business trip. This was the first time I am flying on a business class. I was looking for things to do and found this Boz Scaggs album on the music section. Whoa! I knew that this is a great album but I never listened to it in a complete album. This is a no brainer choice. Put the headphone and listen to the whole album. Travelling just got nicer.   Thanks for the great album.

In a WhatsApp group discussion, we were talking about Def Leppard. One thing led to another, I found out that most of my friends stopped listening to Def Leppard after the Slang album. Not sure why. Yes, Def Leppard older albums are great albums, but they also have good songs in latter albums. I decided to create a (play)list of Def Leppard from their newer albums. Taste is something you cannot argue. Thus, my list may not be what you like, but at least it is an attempt to keep people who may have the same taste but did not know that there are good songs in newer Def Leppard albums. So here is the list ... (From time to time, I am going to update this.) Love (the Sparkle Lounge album) Unbelievable (from X) Let me be the one (from X) Take What You Want (from Diamond Star Halos)

I used to use Rhythmbox for my music player on my Linux desktop (currently it's a Linuxmint flavor). Then, for some reasons, Rhythmbox quits randomly. At first, I tolerated it, but after a while I was annoyed. Time to switch. I switched to Banshee. And now Banshee is having the same problem, random quits. Time to switch, again! Aaarrrggghhh ... There are several music players for Linux, but one feature that I need in my music player is the ability to scrobble to Last.fm . That's all. Long time ago, I tried Songbird and liked it. Unfortunately, they stopped supporting Linux. Oh well. Fortunately, there is a fork. It's called Nightingale . And now, I am using it. It looks great (beautiful) and the most important thing ... I hope it does not crash randomly. Keep my fingers crossed. And start populating it with songs ... chirping ...

I was adding songs into my music player. This time I am using Banshee on my Linux desktop computer. One thing that brings to my attention is that I've got songs unordered. Looking carefully, it is the annoying "the". Some of the songs in my collection has the word "The" as part of the artist (band) name. Some don't. An example would be "The Beatles". They ended up in different list; "The Beatles" and just "Beatles". Aaarrrggghhh. So annoying. One of the problems with English, I suppose. (On a side note. What is the correct name of the band, "The Beatles" I suppose?) Oh, by the way, iTunes recognizes this and ignores the "The" when sorting the artists. Good job! (And I have just realized that Nightingale also knows the The. yayyy)

as date marked we have planned for the worst it's armageddon as time approached speculation arises it's the end but folks, we have assumed control it's the beginning of a new journye we have assumed control we have assumed control ... control ... control ... control [21-12-2012 - inspired by Kerry Yackoboski 's posting on his Facebook]

This morning I was dusting off my old collections. I found this Sally Oldfield - Water Bearer album. Interesting. This was her 1978 album, I think. So I gave it a spin. Lovely. Listening to old progressive rock music is just like reading old English literature. Interesting in a strange manner.

I've been using last.fm to keep track my music (listening) habbit . It has a great statistics. Love it soo much. But things have been like that for ages. There's no new thing. Recently, there are several applications that can keep track of your life by asking you to "check in" manually or automatically. The interesting thing is that they reward you for checking in. For example, in getglue you'll get stickers after several checkins. In other places you get points, rewards, or ranks. This is missing in last.fm. Last.fm could update their site by providing ranks (people who use last.fm frequently) or group people with the same interest(s) - say if they have more than 90% match - in a special group. They can even rename their group to a cooler name. This way we can find people with the same interest and perhaps learn new artists or bands from the rest of the group. Lots of ideas are still available if last.fm is interested. Or, maybe last.fm is a dying service?...

Here is my wish list: Phillip sings Sting song(s). He has that kind of "attitude" in his voice that fits Sting's song. Elise sings Carpenters song(s). She has that clean (actually rasp) voice. It would be interesting when she sings a Carpenter song (Karen's clean voice is just unbelievable). Joshua sings James Brown's songs(s). I love that gospel in his voice. That's all for now. I'll update it again. I know. My wish list is kinda crazy, but that's how I picture them singing.

Last night our band played in Beatles Night at Cafe Dacosta. We played nine songs only. I wish we could play more, but we didn't have time to practise. Oh well. Next time perhaps? In the mean time I am wondering if anybody took some pictures ...

[effects are in the bag] These were the gears Luqman dan I took to our gig yesterday.

In the "old age", meaning music was available on records or cassettes, you could play a music backwards. It's not an easy thing to do, but doable. You play the media, physically, backwards. There are stories that you can hear certain kind of messages, weird ones, if you play certain song backwards. I don't know whether it's true or not, but certainly it is interesting. Now everything is available in digital format. Songs are (mostly) in MP3 format. Now, the question is ... is it possible to play a digital song backwards? It should be possible, right? All you have to do is write a simple program to do it? :) [the answer: use audacity. now, let's find some interesting songs ... :) any recommended ones?]

Our band, BandIT, is active again. Gigs are in waiting in line. It's time for us to practice again. Lots of hard work, but we enjoy doing it. We play cover songs. What we want to play is classic and progressive rock, but sometimes we play pop songs as well. Just to make sure that the audience stay put :) [taken from February 2010 practice - Garin is missing in the picture]

Last night was my first gig this year. It was tiring … We had to play for more than a dozen songs. My shoulder is still in pain this morning. But, it was fun. Let’s see how many gigs will I have this year … Hopefully a lot ...

I watch American Idol and enjoying the show. Most of the time. So, I watched the 2009 Finale. I was surprised with the finale. It was excellent. The thing that surprises me is the guests. I could not believe they were able to bring many stars, such as Black Eyed Peas, Cindy Lauper, Keith Urban, Lionel Ritchie, Rod Stewart, Santana, Kiss, and ... Queen! Whoaaa... I love rock music. A long time ago I even went to a Kiss concert, when I was in Canada. ha ha ha. So, I loved it when Adam Lambert sang with Kiss. When he started singing "Beth", I said to myself; are they going to bring Kiss? Sure enough, the answer is yes! I could imagine Adam singing with Kiss, though. If it's not Kiss, I'd say Aerosmith would be a good choice for Adam. In my opinion, Danny Gokey has the best vocal. Adam Lamber has the best performance. He is a star. And Kris Allen has the most commercial pop vocal today. My son said that these days people like Jason Mraz and the like. So Kris Allen was luc...

I am looking for a simple MIDI sequencer, something that looks like "Band in a Box" (a product that I had a long time ago). Preferably a free one. The idea is that I can select a rhythm pattern (say, rock, pop, jazz, or variations of them) and then I can enter chords by typing their name (say, "C" or "Dm" or "CM7" and so on). After that I can play the composition. Actually, I need this for my guitar practice. I have melodies in my head that I need to practice. Or I have some ideas (melodies) that I want to try and make modifications of them. To do so I need a rhythm that I can play over and over again. After that, I also need a program that can convert (render) the MIDI sequences to MP3. Any suggestions?

Actually I have written a more complete review (including lots of pictures) in my other blog, but unfortunately it's in Bahasa Indonesia. Just in case you're interested, head down to http://rahard.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/toto-live-bandung/ In short ... it was a greaaat... show! My nephew told me about the show around one month before the show. He's a Toto (more specifically Lukather) fan. I am a Toto fan also. I remembered during my undergrad school I had a band and in our first gig, we played "Hold The Line". Ha. I bought two VIP tickets for me and my wife. It was Rp 200 thousands (or US$10) a piece. Very reasonable price! Thank you, thank you, thank you. A week before the day, a friend gave VVIP tickets to me. I took them and gave my tickets to a friend who came from Jakarta with his wife, just to see Toto. (Look guys, that's how popular you are.) On the D-day I went to the venue with my wife. We were supposed to have special seats in the VVIP, in he Telkom...

I wrote it elsewhere, but I think I should post it here too. I just got a new guitar, my 4th guitar. It's a Gibson Les Paul-look like. It's actually a Greg Bennett guitar. In the store I was toying between two guitars. One is a Fender strat-like and the other one is this. Finally, I decided to take this guitar just because I want to experiment with the humbucker pickup. My other guitar, a Yamaha, has single coil pickup. I was told that single coil pickup is good for clean sound and it does. But my playing style (and sound) is more suitable to this guitar. We'll see how it goes. I am going to give it a try in a gig next month. Welcome, my new guitar.

I love jogging. This morning ... it was (and still is) a beatiful day. Sunny but not hot. I jogged with my wife around our neighboring environment. Boy, it was beautiful. I guess it is the same feeling for those who live in big cities (say, Jakarta) and go out a mountain are (like Puncak). But it's better. ha! I took my iPod with collection songs from Jadis (mostly from their "More than meets the eyes"). I am excited, thrilled. If you saw me, you'll think I am a crazy person. Jumping around while jogging. I don't care. I was picturing myself on a stage, playing their songs. During the rockin' beat (like in "G 13") I would jump around following the bass beat. Ah, what a wonderful feeling. Free ... yipee ... I've go to master this song and play it in a gig. I just have to find others who happen to like Jadis.

I cannot get over this song, " La La (Means I Love You) ". There are many versions, but the one that I like is Swing Out Sister's version. In my other blog, I have been musing over this song multiple times. Ah ... what one can do? I could never say "I Love You". All I could say is "La La La" ... So, to my family ... "La La La". You know that I love you all! Here's a picture taken years ago, when my kids were still ... well, kids. They're bigger, even taller than me.

Going through my old cassette tapes, I found this old gem. London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Choral Society play some classic rock songs. The title of the album, sure enough, "Classic Rock". Take a look at my tape. It's almost 30 years-old! It's actually my uncle's tape who lived in our house during part of his university live. I believe he bought it in 1978 or so. At that time, all of Indonesian tapes are copies made from vinyl records. Intellectual property rights was not an issue back then. So the label of the tape is actually a local label. The "cover art" is actually a photo, cut to the size. As time goes on, it "melted" and sticked into the plastic cover. Maybe it's the humidity that made it worse? I don't know. I can't barely read the text in the bottom. The quality of the tape is good actually. I can still listen to it, but I rarely played cassette tapes these days. I can only do that in my car. I listen to music through ...