Can't Get Enough

There are times when I really believe that a good thing will be followed by a bad thing, and vice versa. You could call it instant karma, but I think that it's even simpler than that. Here's an example from the last few days: I installed an excellent anonymizing web browser called Tor released by Hacktivismo a couple of days ago. One of the first things I found out while using it is that Boz Burrell (who played with King Crimson and Bad Company many years ago) had a heart attack and died last Thursday. I've always found unique experiences to be far fetched, but I seriously doubt anyone else had the exact same experience I had with Tor and Boz. Now the two are forever linked in my mind.

To get my mind of all this coincidental stuff I produced the 36th podcast in my Mużika Mod Ieħor series today. Once again most of it is based on my adventures in MySpace. I say most because one of the acts featured this week is not present on MySpace, as far as I know.

Rock guitarist Joe Vella, better know as Pejxa, recently established a presence on MySpace. I've known him since he played in a band called Stratkast about 25 years ago. He's one of the foremost 2nd generation Maltese rock guitarists. Now he plays in the same band as another of the 2nd generation Maltese guitar heroes, Robert Longo. The new band is called Fire and they've just released a CD album called Ignite. I'll play something from that on another edition of my podcast. Today I open my podcast with Pejxa's Entropy, which he has also posted on his MySpace page a few days ago. This track was recorded around 1995 at his home studio using a drum machine, a bass guitar, a guitar and two stereo video recorders. He told me that he first recorded the drums and bass together, then played back this recording and recorded one guitar on the other VCR. He then played back this recording and recorded the second guitar. So this is a relatively low tech recording compared to what can be achieved today with even the simplest of computer systems. In case you're wondering, the 1st generation of Maltese rock guitarists includes people like Albert Bernard, Tony Grech and Freddie Scicluna. Perhaps I can play something by them too on my podcast in the coming weeks.

I know I've said this before but I really seem to be making an understatement whenever I say that MySpace is a most fertile resource for discovering new music and/or music I would otherwise possibly never hear. This week I came across a singer/bass player who goes by the name Galea. She was born in Canada and now lives with her family in New York City. Her father emigrated to Canada from Naxxar in the 1950s. To cut a long story short, she has retained her paternal family name as her stage name and that's it. She's just Galea. Like Cher or Shakira, she told me when I first asked her about her name. You can hear a song called My Real Daddy on this week's podcast, which appears to be a running in-joke she shares with her musician husband. The song is from her album Diary of A Bad Housewife. You can hear more from that at her MySpace page.

Last week I announced a list of nominees for the top Maltese music releases in 2006. I asked you, my gentle readers and listeners, to contact me with titles I may have overlooked. I received several email about this and I hope to receive some more in the coming days before I release the list for people to vote on. One of the emails alerted me to NV (Nikki Vukovic and a band with Sean Vukovic and Kevin Vella on guitars, David Wain on drums and Rex on bass) and the singles No Regrets, and Open Your Eyes, which I've been told "received considerable airplay and featured in the charts of radio stations." So NV will be included on the final list, of course, and you can hear Open Your Eyes if you missed it on the radio.

Since there's a whiff of Xtuppaw in the air I must make the most of it. When Xtuppaw finished recording their debut CD at Hell Next Door Studio last spring, the next recording to take place at HND was Angelcrypt's single Thou Shalt Die. If Angelcrypt's music isn't heavy enough for your taste, I'm sure you'll enjoy the other metal track I play on this week's podcast: Beheaded's Recount of Disembodiment.

In the end, my thoughts veer back again to the idea of instant karma. Is everything really connected in our lives? Perhaps that's too spiritual a question for a simple blog like this and a weekly music podcast to entertain. If I didn't share such thoughts with you I'm sure I'd still have them anyway.

The RSS feed for the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also add the latest episodes to your My Yahoo! page.