I came upon some new music today. Great stuff too!

I found them by way of a band called Paris Combo, who I like very much. They were listed as a band that people who liked Paris Combo would like also. And it's true. If you like Paris Combo, you will like them.

The band is named after the singer-songwriter, Amelie-les-Crayons.

It's very light and airy feeling. I can't recommend it enough.


This is the album I was listening to earlier today.




And this is the band, pictured above, and a link to their site below.

Enjoy! Happy Sunday!

http://www.amelielescrayons.com/

Before I moved to Croatia, I had never heard of the Eurovision music contest. And I suspect most Americans have never heard of it.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Eurovision is a music contest in Europe. Each country selects who they want to send to represent them. And then there's an overall contest between European countries. But, by saying "Europe", it's stretching the boundaries a bit as Israel, Turkey and some other questionable countries are included. Nothing wrong with those countries, but to say that Israel is part of Europe is a bit strange. Anyway, it's sort of like American Idol is for Americans I guess. When you watch, you can then vote for whatever country but cannot vote for your own, either by text message or phone call.

We missed most of Tuesday's runoff but saw maybe 5 acts. And ALL of them were fucking horrible. There were around 20 on Tuesday and 20 on Thursday. 10 are selected each day to go forward to the Saturday final. We watched all of Thursday when Croatia had their turn.

It's sort of sad to watch because so much of the music is really horrible crap. Really, really horrible. Most of the countries choose some extremely cheesy dance music. And most of them sing in English. What the fuck? Latvia had their guys dressed up like fucking pirates singing about being pirates and in English. They're the new Village People! I suspect they'll have a gay dance hit in northern Europe. Lithuania had, by far, the worst music of the night. It was one guy singing. He looked like some weird sort of heavy metal Michael Bolton, singing a ballad called "Nomads in the Night", while accompanied by weird Joe Satriani type guitar. Finland was on Tuesday and had their usual speed metal sort of act. They were funny but at least it wasn't someone trying to be fucking Whitney Houston or something.

The competition takes place in Serbia, which I think is good. Last year Serbia won, though I didn't watch. From what I've heard, and what I've read, the Balkans countries banded together in voting and people were happy that Serbia won, even here in Croatia. I think this is good. Serbia's having a rough time at the moment, so anything that can get spirits up can't be so bad, eh?

Strangely enough, I actually like Croatia's entry. It's genuinely representative of some music from this country. Most other entries seem really western and seem just like crappy dance music that doesn't really represent the culture of the country they come from. They seem more to be pandering to what they think people want to hear and what might increase their chances of winning. Well fuck all of that. The Croatian entry really sounds good and sounds genuine. I've seen the old guy in the video playing music on the streets in the center of Zagreb, accompanied by an accordion player (locally called a harmonica). And he's great. In the act they played on stage, he was funny too. He was like this ancient Balkan rapper. During the act they had an old record player with the giant funnel for the speaker, that sort of thing (phonograph?). And at the end he went up and was scratching on it.

They were great. I suspect that they could even have a chance in the long run because really, on this crappy show they're a breath of fresh air.

We couldn't vote for Croatia, though. So we voted for Turkey. They had a halfway decent rock act. It wasn't the usual crappy dance music either and they sang in Turkish and had some real Turkish flavor mixed into the rock. So there you go.

Croatia and Turkey both made it to the final round on Saturday.

Here's the video for the Croatian act:



And here's the actual video from the Eurovision contest with the old guy scratching at the end:

I've been into Gypsy music for five or six years, but never really explored it too far. But lately I've found myself using iTunes more to randomly wander around and check out Gypsy and Klezmer music. I like the "people who bought this also checked out these guys" feature, whereby you can wander from band to band and listen to part of their song to see if it's worth buying or not.

With all that in mind, these are the guys I discovered yesterday.

Zagnut Orkestar

When I first heard them I thought they were from the Balkans. They sound partially like that. And their album is called "Sedam Mačaka", which is "Seven Cats" in Croatian. But, upon searching, I found they're from New York. They have elements of Klezmer, Gypsy, Jazz and other music in their songs. It's pretty nice stuff if you like any of that kind of music.