music

Idan Raichel Performing at SF Jazz

Really excited that Idan Raichel is coming to San Francisco.  He’s performing as part of the SF Jazz Spring Season later this month – details here.

“The Idan Raichel Project is an Israeli musical collective that features singers from Ethiopia, and a cross-cultural roster of Yemenite, Arab, African and Caribbean musicians.”  Happens to also be one of this artists I listen to most 🙂

Below is one of his popular songs:

If you are in SF,  definitely worth checking out.

2008 Year-End Wrap-Up for My Blog & iTunes

Last year this time I posted some stats from 2007 about this blog, and I spent a couple of minutes today doing the same for 2008, plus looking at iTunes for similar types of “buzz” data:

Top Posts (based on pageviews):
Apple MacBook Air Commercial – Catchy Song
The Great Sync on OS X: Google
Switched to Google Apps for Personal Email
Garmin Nuvi 350 portable GPS navigator
Quick Tip For BlackBerry Users When Call

Top Referrers:
automattic.com/about
ma.tt
stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A…>
google.com/reader/view
twitter.com/raanan

Top Search Terms:
apple air commercial song (or a slight variation of this )
comcast blast
garmin nuvi
viigo review
installing leopard

Top Clicked Links:
phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.w…
yaelweb.com
google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sync
plaxo.com/downloads
photomatt.net/2007/06/20/raanan-joins

From iTunes – looked at top songs played. What was interesting is that since I almost always just click “shuffle” – the distribution is pretty much flat among 1000 or so albums, but the ones listed below had a slight edge:
Mosh Ben Ari: Live ( earlier post )
Daniel Salomon: Haifa 87
Hadag Nachash: Live
Habanot Nechama
The Idan Raichel’s Project: Within My Walls
Avishai Cohen: Shaot Regishot ( thanks Yoav )
Roy Adri: Until End

Here’s to a happy, safe, and quiet start to 2009 !

MTV Music

Everyone I’ve talked to the last couple of days has lost countless hours on the new ( soft launched ) MTV Music site which has a huge archive of music videos.

What’s amazing for me is that I don’t think I ever saw these videos – especially since MTV basically stopped playing music videos in the early 90s.

Here are a few classic early 90s hip hop vids I found browsing around that bring me back to my college days 🙂

Vodpod videos no longer available. Vodpod videos no longer available. Vodpod videos no longer available.

Mosh Ben Ari in NYC

If you are in NYC the next few days and into reggae/world/israeli music, try to catch Mosh Ben Ari.

Sunday he’s playing a free concert as part of summer stage in central park and Monday night downtown in the lower east side @ Pianos — a great spot for music. Then Tuesday July 1 in Brooklyn at the Williamsburg Musical Hall

I was able to see him last week in San Francisco at the Independent and it was a great show.

For those who have never heard of him, here is a clip of a live show below, with tons of other clips and a 3 part interview of him all on youtube.

iConcertCal for iTunes: Super Simple and Smart

Just want to give props to iConcertCal:

iConcertCal is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city. It is available for both Windows and Mac OS X and supports worldwide searches.

It simply runs inside iTunes and notifies you of all the concerts of your favorite artists when they are performing in your town.

I listen to some obsecure music and lots of non-US stuff, and so far so good.  Not exactly clear if it’s handling languages other than english though.