I know lots of musicians and am friends with many of them. Because of my own background as a harmonica player, most of them also play this instrument.

I have been observing how musicians cope with the new realities in the music business for a long time (www.techdirt.com is a great blog for copy right and business model discussion) and would like to share one example of smart promotion that I came across today.

Brendan Power, an unconventional harmonica player from New Zealand living in England has posted a video of the solos he played in the album "Back to back", recorded with another extraordinary harmonica player, PT Gazell, from Nashville. It is a 5 minute clip with splashes of the songs. In the background, the cover of the CD, it is about the music.

Brendan is giving his music (and PT's) away in a way that makes his fans happy and doesn't hurt anybody. Hopefully, people will hear the best parts of the album, like it and feel encouraged to buy it. And Brendan gives them two ways to do that: either through his website or through PT's. As the people at Techdirt say: give fans a reason to buy and they will do so.

http://www.brendan-power.com

http://www.ptgazell.com

And probably Brendan can do this because this is an independent CD, not linked to restrictive big label contracts.

 

One of the best concerts I went to. Ever.
Last Friday, near Bremen, thanks to a generous ride offer from Steve.

I have had several blogs over the past 6 years. Or, better said, different versions of the same blog with different aims at different times in different places and languages.
All started as a personal diary on the internet, in Portuguese, for myself and as an experiment. It later evolved as a link to my family and friends while I was abroad, semi-public (robots.txt: no follow).
The third step was to join an online collective of Brazilian creatives, www.nightripping.com. That was eventually closed down and refurbished to something else by Nix. It was the move from semi-private to 100% public, from a circle of insiders to a general public. Until this point, I was still writing in Portuguese.
The next big change came with my decision to do an MBA. The blog would continue to be an important communication channel with family and friends, but it was clear to me that my audience would change dramatically as soon as I started to connect with MBA colleagues from all over the world. I changed the language to English and focused more on my experience on the 3 different campi I visited: Warwick in England, Kingston in Canada and Mannheim here in Germany. I also set as a goal to publish information I hadn't found on the internet while researching for my MBA, so that I could help prospective MBA students with their choice and daily life. It is cool to see that already the third class of Mannheim MBAs is using some of the info I put together.
After the MBA my blog lost a bit of its purpose. I could write about my job search or my new employers, but writing about what you do in your job is more critical. I was still new at DHL and, later, at the consulting company. After that, my job search took a lot of energy and I spent weeks without posting.
But I want to change that now. I arrived in Hamburg on the first of July and know exactly what I want to post about. Hamburg is such a great city that it is not difficult to come up with ideas and texts. I renamed the blog, changed its skin and believe that the name says it all. I will write mainly about Hamburg.
I will write about Social Hamburg. And, for me, Social has two meanings. First, as a new in town guy, getting to know people and understanding the social dynamics of the city. Second, Social stands for communication, for social media, which is a field which interests me greatly and which is very important to me during this job search, as it is the main channel for me to find vacancies and also an area I want to work in.
And I will also write about Blues Hamburg, in the musical sense. As a blues harp player music is very important to me, especially music in the North American tradition: soul, funk, rock, jam bands, country, southern rock, blue grass, rock 'n' roll, jazz and, of course blues.
Let's see how this goes.

My friend Guilherme came visiting from Amsterdam and we took the opportunity to go to a Son of Dave concert at the Botanique, a cultural centre in downtown Brussels. The activities that they have there are impressive!
The show was very good and we had great fun, what SOD does as a one man band is indeed amazing. But it was also a concert without surprises, as I had seen several performances of his on youtube and elsewhere. Google for him, it is certainly worth it.

[I've googled for you:

official site

blog

wikipedia

myspace

planetharmonica review

telegraph article

videos, loads of them!]

From 081018 Son of Dave at the Botanique

For those who don't know him, SOD is a former member of the Crash Test Dummies and performs using simple percussion, his voice, harmonica and a loop box. And that's it. Really cool.
More pictures on Picasa, as usual:

081018 Son of Dave at the Botanique

Just delivered the last assignment for the GIM class 30 minutes ago.
That means that, apart from the Global Supply Chain Management assignment due on Monday, I am done with MBA classes.
I wish I could continue to have classes indefinetely. I like classes. I like to learn, to ask, to discuss. And I like the feeling of beeing worry-free, as the only thing you are supposed to do is pay attention.
ButI need to find a job and to write a thesis. So it is good to be finally able to concentrate on that from now on.
Pity that this last module was, in my humble opinion, way below the level of other modules, so it wasn't very enjoyable. And I was (am) sick.
They are having a reception with champagne and snacks in the next room, I should join them. But I think that my health won't allow me to drink or eat much. That also the reason I am missing out on the Hazmat Modine concert in Stuttgart in an hour. But I should be fine tomorrow.

Well, actually a bit more than a week, as the picture below was taken two Saturdays ago. I went with 2 other colleagues, one Canadian, one French, to a very small town somewhere in the wine lands around here to a wine and castle festival with some live music. The first band was bad, the second was ok. The festival was much smaller than I expected, but the Weinschorle (whine mixed with - little - sparkling water) was plentyful and cheap. The place was called Wachenheim.

Monday saw us rowing again, as well as Wednesday. I believe that I will be able to post better pictures later during the week, as I cannot take my camera in the boat. On Wednesday I tried to row a single boat for the first time and landed 3 times in the water. Of course. But it was warm, so that wasn't a problem.
Monday was also the day when I discovered that my locked bicycle was stolen from the locked bike garage in the locked apartment building. Really upsetting.

On Tuesday I went to an interesting networking event in Stuttgart organized by the BWcon institution, on the role of business angels in start-up financing.

Thursday was a busy day. Career strategy coaching session at the business school and soccer game watching with barbecue in the same location, in company of the students of the EMAT course. It was also the day I got my push scooter as a replacement for the stolen bike.

Germany won, everybody went to the Wasserturm to commemorate.

Saturday saw me taking the train to Idstein, for a Jazz Festival in a very picturesque town. Was really fun with good company. We even did a small rock climbing stunt which reminded me of Dee's blog: Venture to the top.

Barrelhouse Jazz Band in Idstein.

Sunday saw me for some hours in Mainz, and this is the only view I had from the impressive cathedral.

Today the last MBA course for our class and my sixt in Mannheim started: Global Information Management. It started slow with an analysis of Friedman's "The world is flat" text.
The afternoon was a bit more exciting, with a quick (and I mean quick: 1000 years in 1 hour) review of the world's history based on economic cores and a tentative look on how the world might look like in the next 50 years. I am curious to see how the course progresses and how today's class integrates with the rest of the course's material.

We went to rowing practice again and I spent half an hour in the single boat once more, this time returning safe and dry to land.

And tomorrow I will be the CIO of Volkswagen of America, at least during the case study discussion.

And see this concert:

Pat Bergeson

26 Jun 2008, 20:00
Montreal Jazz Festival

With Annie sellick and the Hot Club of nashville featuring Richard smith, Aron Till and Charlie Chadwick and Pat bergeson Opening for Leonard cohen

I just found out about Pat through the Seydel newsletter. Besides being an extraordinary harmonica player, he is also a great guitar player, guitar being his main instrument. And he is opening for Leonard Cohen, which also should be quite interesting.

But I went to Canada during the wrong season for music festivals, definetely.

I've played in two bands so far, both in Brazil. Unfortunately, since I got back to Germany, I didn't find bands to play with. So my musical activity has been limited to playing in my room, on the streets and in the corridors of different Business Schools around the globe. I've had the odd jam session of open mic from time to time, too.
I was looking into my music library today and found the crude recordings of some of the concerts of the second band I played with, Bunker 292 Acústico. The band was composed by a singer, a guitar player, another guitar player and myself on the harmonica. The singer and first guitar player were my cousins, and we used only acoustic instruments, which made rehearsing very easy. As a curiosity, all band members were from German decent, and a mix of German and Portuguese during rehearsals was common.
I had great fun playing with them on Sunday afternoons, which encourages me to try to get into a band as soon as possible. I am realistic enough to know that I won't be doing that while the MBA lasts, but I think music will continue to be an important part of my work/life balance (a theme that is very trendy at the moment).

Below you will find one of those recordings, I hope you enjoy it. It is already almost 5 years old and it was one of our first live concerts, so forgive any mistakes and the recording quality. The allAll band members have gotten much better now, I believe.

Plush

I can't complain that my weekend in Kingston wasn't eventful. I started it by going, by bus, out of the Kingston Bubble to buy second hand ice skates. I went as far as the Gardiners Centre and discovered a new side of Kingston, which is a city with around 140 thousand residents.
And of course I had to enjoy the nice weather and test the skates right away, which I did on the City Hall ice rink, as you can see on the album on Picasa.

In the evening, living in a co-op house paid off: I was invited to an Irish dance with other co-opers, and really enjoyed it. Pity it only happens once a month. But I also found out that there is an Irish music session happening in town, which, if assignments allow, I plan to visit tomorrow. There is even a slow Irish session for those learning, and this one I will visit with my Pady Richter tuned harmonicas to give it a try.

After the Irish dancing I met Viktoria and Marc, who literally spent their whole weekend on the Mergers and Acquisitions assignment. It is really strange that some of the courses require so much extra work, while others are comparatively mild. I believe this really damages their ability to divide their attention even

After missing Sujay due to strange scheduling, we met him by chance at the Grizzly and people even played some pool.

Sunday was less interesting, but also quite nice. And Monday awoke to Kingston covered in snow, and it snowed the whole day. I guess the winter arrived again.

I arrived tired and hungry, but safe and well, in Kingston, Ontario, my last stop outside of Germany in the globe trotting MBA.
And this is what I found in the basement:


This is surely a good start here in Kingston. Other than that, the city seems deserted, it was already dark when I arrived, quite cold (the taxi driver told me -4°C) and we have about 40 cm of beautiful snow.
And I am going to bed now. See you all tomorrow.

If I talk about going to a harmonica convention and having lots of fun there, I imagine that many people might think this is at least a bit curious.
To give a better impression of what I heard there, I am posting the following link to a sound clip.

• Brendan Power in Bristol

This is Brendan Power, one of my favourite harmonica players ever, playing a set accompanied by an accordion player. I found this file floating around in the internet, and, although its quality is not the best, it has captured the moment well and is fun to listen to. So be my guests, enjoy!

My cousin Michael recommended the CD and I got it to check out. Really a great album, I must admit! I am enjoying it quite a lot and decided to see if I could catch them live somewhere.
And they will be playing in London soon! But the website says that the concerts are all sold out. Great for them, bad for me. But I guess this is a sign that the music industry is very much alive, despite of what the big labels want to make us believe.

Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace

After Nicholas' Workshop and some OB reading, some of us went to the LatinNight in the Students' Union building. The music was good, there was a guy to show us some steps and all the tiredness that we thought we felt was forgotten. If the day started well, it surely couldn't end better.

Rules!



If I could go back in time...

And it seems that, this time, it will be Irish. First I found the following:

Irish Music Sessions: Community Corner:

The second Friday of the month.

At Hammersmith Irish Cultural Centre, London
From 7:30pm
Price: Free

And then, by chance, I saw that Brendan Power, harmonica extraordinaire, and old acquaintance, will be playing the same venue on Saturday:

Saturday, 15 September 2007
Brendan Power
At Hammersmith Irish Cultural Centre, London
From 8:15pm (Doors 7:30pm)

On Monday I'll probably go to the blues jam at the "Ain't nothin' but..." with two or three harmonicas in the pockets. Let's see.

It is a pitty, but the Spitz is closing now in September. I've been there on my first trip to London with Nix, a big fan of punk blues and we saw the Urban Vodoo Machine one and a half years ago.
NIX, I'll drink a vodka screwdriver in your name!

I have no idea where I got this CD from, but am listening to it now and really enjoying it. Good mood all around, just what I needed. Recommended.