Holiday in Australia, first 2weeks

So little time and so much running around, backpacking with huge bags, playing guitar on the beach, avoiding blue bottles jellyfishes, meeting locals, checking kangoroos, admiring surfers, complaining on the high price of alcohol and cigarettes...BUSY BUSY BUSY! But i think i could live in Australia,
this experience is making me so happy and enriching me...here are some pics of the last 2weeks!

 Me feeding Kangaroos in a Farm near Newcastle, in New South Wales

Spent Sunday in the famous Bondi Beach, lots of surfers..weather was weird: rainy,sunny and then a wonderful rainbow appeared!

I'll come back soon with more stories of my adventures and more pictures

Countdown minus 10

So the countdown has started and in 10 days I will fly to Australia, a trip I have been wanting to do for more than 10 years....oh yes! I can't wait to see everything, trying all the exotic food, hearing the Aussie accents, having breakfast with vegemite on toast, hearing good rock music on the radio ( because Silverchair is one of my favourite bands)and tanning smelling the ocean!
So much to do, i booked one month but i may extend it depending on how good i feel there :-)
My trip will start with Sydney, then I'll go North towards Nimbin. At the end i want to go south to the Blue Mountains or Melbourne. And then a last week ik Sydney.
I am planning to do a charity event for the charity based in Amsterdam that I work with.
But we are still in the planning phase....UHOH!
I have created a little project for Australia, basically I will start to do Vidlogs of what happened during the day or the week...depending on my schedule!
I have already signed up for one jam session/open stage in Sydney, so that's gonna be exciting!
But the exciting hasn't finished because next week Tuesday night I'm going to have a gig with my band and this is the poster of the event, going now. I'm off to rehearsals

Emergenti italiani puntata 1

Post in Italian, special project:

Emergenti Italiani puntata 1

COSA:

Ogni giovedi sera, su radio cicada su stads FM ad Amsterdam conduco una trasmissione su band emergenti del Mediterraneo. Promuovo canzoni italiane, spagnole, greche, portoghesi e della Serbia e Erzegovina.
La trasmissione inizia alle 21 e puo'essere seguita in streaming tramite questo link, direttamente sul sito web della radio Salto FM. Il link apre un player dove e'possibile selezionare giorno della settimana e orario. E'semplicissimo!


CHI SONO IO:


Una cantautrice emergente anche io, ho lavorato per diversi anni come speaker radiofonica e ho deciso di creare uno spazio online di incontro e discussione degli emergenti italiani.

COME PARTECIPARE:

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8 weeks offline

Hello worldwideweb,
i just pusblished a post that I wrote circa 7 weeks ago and since then, I have been in the midst of moving to a new apartment and not having the internet for a while.
So lot's of packing and of course waiting  for the installation which took a while.
I have it has been refreshing not to be online for a while, being more present,and stopping the rhythm like this.
I learnt  to be more time-efficient when being online because i only had available a couple of hours a day. Incredible how much our life is related to this machine of information and data. Incredible how we are so entangled to it.
Maybe we get re-wired as well and start leading our life as a net, the same way the web works.
But this period of  "offliness-ness"( i love to make up words) made me start to do a lot more things such as a band to play with, that kind of came without too much searching for it. But it came.
We are maybe complete and we had a great 1st show last Saturday at a party house, called Badhuis, an old public bath! Superb building, with old arcades and original mirrors and tiles. 10 performers for this party and we managed to close it just before the midnight with a cover of i shot the sheriff by Eric Clapton, The Who with Can't explain and my original song Not afraid, which was kind of improvised because the drummer had never heard the song and we had never rehearsed it with him.
So it actually went SUPER well and I was full of adrenalin for many hours later.
And this is a very blurred picture of the FUN night:

The party was in a street called Nirwana, which in itself i thought was charming!

My week of discoveries

Tuesday night i went to see live the Scottish band The View and they were superb performers! great energy there, I am glad i saw them 'cos i really got a lot of inspiration.
They were playing at Melkweg.


 

My week of discoveries

A great club for Songwriters in Central Copenhagen or København in the local lingo..called Råhuset or more understandably  Raw House.It is not far from an area with the old slaughterhouse, nowadays a very lively area with clubs and parties. A few musicians there really caught my interest,and I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing perform: Daithi Rua I wish I played guitar that well as he does...damn! I heard two of his songs and he can perform with great energy and stage presence while being Irishly friendly and humble. I liked his two songs and I recommend anyone to check him out,a pleasure to meet. 
Second musician i was very impressed was a young man from the South of Sweden, precisely from Malmö where I actually lived for 1 year in 2010! 
The link to Ludvig's songs is here: http://soundcloud.com/ludvigjonathanandersson
He is to be followed: original songs, awesome voice and all the ingredients for a new talent coming from the incredible Sweden, full of handsome people with great open spaces and a talent for making good music. Something they eat, breath or maybe the good fresh polar air! This is Malmö, my town for one year:

This superb video: I love the scenery, the costumes, the haircut, the dancing...
I Love the voice and the song and I love the powerful positive message it carries:

      
SAY MY NAME 
       
AS EVERY COLOUR ILLUMINATES
     
WE ARE SHINING 
         
AND WE'LL NEVER BE AFRAID AGAIN 
   
SAY MY NAME 
       
AS EVERY COLOUR ILLUMINATES 
      
WE ARE SHINING 
         
AND WE'LL NEVER BE AFRAID AGAIN

Get your own valid XHTML YouTube embed code

I  Hope this embedded code works,it is so hard to embed these days from youtube, or am i behind in social media skills?

My week of discoveries and listened to this week (one post)

When I tell people of how frantic life rhythms are nowadays, they mostly confirm that's the way it is.
They start to tell how it is normal that everybody works full time and makes a living and how more full of things to do our life is.
But I disagree with simply keeping things as they are, especially if we could change it, thanks to technology. And i see more and more people envisioning the same.A campaign by a Peruvian architect named Carlos Tovar  ( on twitter Carlintovar)  http://4hourworkdaycampaign.wordpress.com/ about the possibility of transferring all productivity into a 4hour shift, with a process of several months and gradual decreasing.
The point is that the technology of today could make machines do most of the work.
I was checking out the contests of the website wearelistening and found that the winner of the 2012 Songwriter competition is  an extremely talented man named Putnam Murdock, who won with the 
warm and country song "When I die" . Not all the songs I listen to, make me have some kind of visions of places and that song does: campfire,a ballad with a guitar near the prairie and big spaces on sunsets, fantastic landscape thank you Putnam for these moments!
One interesting blog i discovered is about Moon Phases, as I believe they influence us a lot( and it is scientifically proved), so this one, I am now checking regularly, it is boorkmarked! http://newmoonmanifesting.com/
I am quite excited and soon...off!!! for a few days of extreme North in Denmark and a few gigs at Songwriter events. Pictures published here in a week or so!

Listened to this week

Trueidentity music, alias electronic music from the Netherlands, how did i stumble on it? he went to perform at Zero20 Unplugged anniversary party later on in June.

The amazing classical-pop band from Greece Mikrokosmoi and the experimental and 70's inspired video of the NZ PURPLE PILGRIMS that i stumbled upon while looking at some live clubs in London.All rock and all from Milan: Hellekin Mascara, who look like sailors?

I also forgot to mention for a while all the amazing unsigned bands that we have been playing at radio Cicada on salto.fm every thursday night from 9 to 10pm.

Here they are: Juan Perro, Santiago Auserón’s post-Radio Futura artistic alter-ego

Thanos Kalliris  Greek singer  born in Athens and also involved in the Eurovision Song Contest. 

Tus Locas Razones really enchanted me with the Spanish "Tu controlas tu destino" that I stumbled upon in a period where I was realizing exactly the message they bring across. Link to their reverbnation

Just over 10days ago we played on airvPapel Mojado, a singer songwriter with beautiful  ballad rock in Un Segundo, una eternidad  and same day from Greece... i love their name, and the elegance of it, in both English and Greek language:

MIKROKOSMOI/ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΙ  this band ranks number 4 on reverbnation Corfu'!

The people in Portugal, have irony and have with with it, in fact a group of Portuguese musicians created a band called Homens da Luta that's literally "battle people" and they composed a song called "O Ronaldo Paga a Crise" : Ronaldo,(the footballer) pays the crisis!

Another band from Portugal: CINTURA, we played their songs: NO DA GRAVATA e Desculpem La’, the same day we did, back in beginning of July we also had some Croatian music with Luka Nižetićs. He is best known for his hits like "Ponekad poželim" (Sometimes I wish) and "Proljeće" (Springtime)! 

Do you know my favourite parfume is Myrrhae?Certainly not, now you do...but we played a few songs from the Greek talent:

Christos Dantis link to his page ,on air we had his "To Palio Mou Palto" and "Ena Tragoudi Akoma" he composed "My Number One" for Elena Paparizou, winning the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 for Greece.^[1] 

Experiments with healthy cakes 1 and is living like a KID a bad thing?

As a base I used the recipe on the British All recipes.co.uk ( should I be ashamed, as Italian to cook following a British website ???Kind of inverted Jamie Oliver) http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/8729/easy-banana-cake.aspx

with modifications as follows:

Serves: 10;serves 8

• 125g butter>170 g coconut butter
• 150g caster sugar>100gr cane sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract>20gr cinnamon,10gr chilli,5gr cloves
• 1 egg, beaten>same
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed>4 very ripe bananas,mashed
• 190g self raising flour>same
• 60ml milk> no milk
  
  
  
  The result was a delicious ( i would call it) Banana Creme Brulee
  
  
  
  While I indulge in experiments with cooking I have been faced in the last weeks with an exchange in points of view in life of me and people, friends, family around me of more dramatic intensity than before in my life.
  We call it all with the same word, "life"but we do have extreme different ways of living it, both how we live experiences outside and how we process them as information and how therefore we see WHAT life IS, HOW life FEELS and THE POSSIBILITIES in this LIFE.
  Many see LOTS of rules in life, that LIMIT them, and I think for a period of  my life I was taken and drained out in this type of thinking.
  Living like a KID nowadays means, realizing that there may be no tomorrow ( adult thinking) and therefore live like it is a game, where you try and if you make a mistake you try again and in any case you advance and something happens. And along the way you meet friends and people you love and you share experiences, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but never losing the taste of the adventure, because adventure is the dice to the game of life.
  Playing every turn like it was the last one, and loving every minute of it, because really from one moment to another,the game may cease. When I was a kid, and i remember it well, there was no limit of time when I started to play a game,I was intensely in "it"even if it would last only a short while because we were called by our parents to do the "homework".
  Nowadays we have to remind ourselves of our own "homework" or include it as an active part of the game.
  When I was a kid, there was no exclusivity and no jealousy, if a friend passed by and then life brought us apart,there were no hard feelings. The same way I think, we can realize that we continuously change and sometimes people grow away from each other and it is not a bad thing, but just the evolution of things.
  For the first time in my life, just like Jack in the TV serial "Lost"I am realizing that I cannot fix it all, amend it all, save them all but I'm accepting the law of allowing, and also allowing that others don't take actions and that certain things evolve in the way we had not expected or planned or wanted.

Bands listened to this week

Stephen Michael is a songwriter with powerful songs charged with emotions,i'm glad he found me so i could listen to his music, then Irish music in original irish language....nice with Irish Root Cafe'.
I expected a different music when I saw the profile image and the name of Inner Planets, anyhow, very original and nice to listen to, from NY.
And on radio cicada last Thursday we played the Serbian singer Dzenan Longarevic, very pleasant! Nanah, also a Serbian artist with a mystical voice,really surprised me, her song "More sokol pie" deserves to be discovered by more people, really!
The spanish band Centura encharmed us with their cool tracks and then i stumbled on Alex Canasta, who are Danish from Copenhagen and are working with Massive Music and that's how i found them. Lovely sounds.

Bands listened to this week

I totally was in love with Calemoon voice, close your eyes and his country music and voice will make you think you are in front of a firecamp, in the mountains of the USA somewhere....such a nice feeling.
Alldaywitit or better said Joseph Pryor,will surprise you with bouncy rhymes and great rhythm,and the LA-based Crunch which used very originally sounds and i really enjoyed listening to them.

My week of discoveries

From this blog(sorry in Dutch) some advices to emerging bands
So this lady from this blog I stumbled upon, quotes that Einstein suggested the main issue of life( if this I understand) is to choose between believing the universe is friendly and believing the universe in unfriendly. That was April 25,2012 and while this lady was writing this blog post somewhere in the world, i was in Amsterdam wondering exactly the same thing...that's about different people with these two opposite outlooks in life, one friendly and one not friendly.


List of 10 strange-edible plants in the world, like this:(Kalir-Kanda growing in India and producing a substance that fulfills the sense of hunger but without actually having any nourishing property Weird!)

maybe something to add in my LIFE wish-list of things to do(scroll down when you get to the page, the article is half way, don't know why the made the template so weird and two articles in one page with one totally misleading title?)
Anyway interesting!!!!LINK
And i think this is the craziest idea of 2012 that I have heard of and it is all-made-in-Holland, the country where I am living these days.
So these guys are imagining a TV show about...living on Mars in 2023, therefore I feel compelled to link to my song "In 2046", maybe I should see if these guys need a soundtrack!
In 2046

Bands listened to this week

These last weeks my reverbnation account has exploded with fans and comments on my music, which was a pleasant surprise and i really hope reverbnation keeps his sincerity and does not become full of spam as myspace has become.
So my music playlists these weeks have been enriched with the music of the bands that connected with me and the new fans such as  Vipe-Stunt-men, for the first time in my life I hear  electronic music from
the land of....Thailand thanks to these guys who fan-ned me ( can you actually say fan- ned me?)
Theflygentlemen, some italian rock in English a bit as I like it, let's see if you enjoy them too,Showdown Boulevard and Frankie O'Rourke who wrote me a very appreciative message about my song "Uomo dello spazio".
I am ignorant in these things did Ization make titles inventing some words or it is somehow a slang?
then I appreciated the music from Pace Ride, the funny tunes of Jackslacks, Danielle Reich

Listened, then played in my radio show on radio cicada @salto.fm  the portorican Lunatic will remain in my memories,because of his gratitude and several messages of thanks for me. 
Many bands I contacted and played on my radio show, never bothered to reply and that's a pity I think.
I say it both as a musician, because we all have busy lives but a minimum of interaction seems the norm, if you put your profile OUT there on the internet, it is because you want to be seen,listened and you should want to reply back to someone giving you airplay! and both as a fan, who bothers to write to you out of all the other bands on the extreme overly populated internet!
Luckly in Portorico Lunatic was very thankful and that made my whole day, one day of gratitude. Labels
#Thingstobeproudof

Listened to the new fans on reverbnation : Cortez, KCO, Bobo Raposi,Adam-Son Indie,Reggae from Glasgow, Mirokolica a very exotic name( at least to my ears), Andrew M. Hall whose style i extremely enjoyed listening to...the description on his profile was simple and genuine:
Hello everyone,
I am here like the rest of you all because I love music!
I hope you have a great year.

Jwkeeley from Seattle who can make awesome lines of guitar,dreamy a bit evanescence-like arias of Dreamaria and Monica Dupont who was inducted into The National Blues Hall of Fame as"Great Blues Musician" and appointed Ambassador to San Francisco and electronic french music from Paris, very pleasant by David Dumas.
Listened to the pleasant melodies of soulnarrative, with whom i hope to start a collaboration soon.

My week of discoveries

Read the Map of consciousness, levels, who do you resonate with? Do we get along more with the people in a higher frequency or lower? In this period i feel much more connected to those that I feel are living in a higher frequency than me...
http://personalexcellence.co/blog/map-of-consciousness/

A monster? Italian immigrant who Worked as a "freak"in the US but lived up to 77 years and said he "travelled a lot and enjoyed every moment of his life". A wiseman, that nature certainly did not bless with perfection at birth, at least not the physical human perfection that we have as a model, who turned upsidedown his fate, making what for others would have been a handicap, his fortune and somehow his tool to happiness! How to interpret a bad start into a new opportunity!
Certainly a story to remember for motivation in life, I just love this story! Ah but that link is to an Italian website....while this is another reference to the man but in English.

The meaning of...my name.... which is related to the SUN!

In Italian, from a very interesting blog, 11 things you can do to become happy instantly

Lately I have been feeling that my body does not want anymore excessive drinking/bad eating/sleeping habits and I have been doing lots of siestas at strange times of the day, especially when the weather was too hot to do anything or even to think.
I also spent 5 days last week, in Spain, totally recharging myself with Spanish hospitality, awesome sun, happy smiling people and lots of outdoor and in-the-nature walks.
I feel at the top and I am looking forward to spending more time in South Europe or again Spain.I am already planning the next holidays I think! Anyhow last Thursday I was playing guitar and singing on the Ramblas in Barcelona at 12 am! it was super hot! I'll post pictures soon.

So going back on the healthy drinking/eating/sleeping, I have experimented with some cooking, baking fruit cakes with only cane sugar/or honey/carrobe powder ( strong taste, but mixed with coconut cream and liquorice powder/sugar is very interesting!) and coconut butter.
Also my friend Caroline in her blog is an inspiration for healthy drinks!
And I have to steal her idea for my kitchen:

So essential and clean to take the seeds/nuts etc out of their package( that takes soo much space in my kitchen closet).
This week I am going to experiment cooking with this but not sure if I will prepare those recipes or just invent something...I had in mind to do a vegetarian sushi roll, flavoured in spirulina...

My week of discoveries

I started a new morning habit....to start my day with a laughing meditation....and I mean literally....to laugh....so I read this blog and this other blog

Discovered some Dutchness since i live in Amsterdam, the voice of Ilse DeLange i recognize a similar sound to mine :-)
How did I know that this sign was from Sidney,Australia? I don't know how I knew...but I would love to see it myself or does anyone reading my blog knows where this sign is located? can pinpoint on google maps please?
I'm so intrigued by this thing. I was just reading this blog and they had the post about this sign....

Study by a University of Chicago on percentage of believers of God per country and the history of the fluctuation in the last century, interesting percentages.But where do we go from there? 

Celestine Chua is awesome,as her blog on self development.
This post she wrote on 101 things to ask yourself every day always manage to bring me back to the present. I really find it hard to be present every day.

Bands listened this week

For my radio show on Radio cicada, I am always looking for new talents from South Europe, so I'm always listening to lot of new and unsigned music...from everywhere !Here my best source is twitter
This week I listened to
Dr. Trikinosis, electronic music from Spain succested to me by the blog Weloveyoursongs
Jazz Callner,and some interesting african inspired melodies
The Kiteman Orchestra thanks to the Dutch radio 3fm, I am sure those guys rock live!
Irish  band Rezlow and melanchony

Unsigned bands played so far....emergenti italiani e non

In English:

I have not been good,so far, to update here on the activities and promotions of the new incredible artists that I have been doing for the past 5 months through Radio Cicada.
( To listen to us/to old episodes go to this post to find out how)

A weekly review and careful listening of lots of bands from Italy, Spain, Portugal,Greece, Albania,Bosnia,Montenegro and Serbia.
I am therefore starting this week to list all the bands and fantastic musicians we discover and promote!

From January to April 2012 we therefore played:

Breis
DimitrisManolias
Nao
Sir Giant
Quinto Imperio  
BAD STAFF 
La La Love you
Stormy Mondays
Jorge Otero
OCP
Adonoris
Luis Antero
Emanuel Casimiro
Giordano Maselli
Professional Sinnerz
Apostolis Armagos
Fent Tard
Kostika Collaku
Cristina Branco
Nikos Ordoulidis
Raul Gonzalo
Sarao Latino
Chema Lara
Melli
Nikoh e.s.
La Blanche Alchimie
Chiara Ragnini
Beppe Gambetta
Dimitris Manolias
Jovana Nikolic
Luciano Martella



If any of you band/songwriters are there reading this post and I forgot the link to your website, send me a message and I will update this post with it :-)

Radio Cicada has a blog and we transmit on air every Thursday and Sunday evening on Salto FM,which can be listened to, on the internet as well.

In Italiano:

Sono stata molto disorganizzata( lo ammetto!) nel parlare della mia attivita' di promotrice di band emergenti e di presentatrice radio ma da questo mese cerchero' di aggiornare regolarmente quello che sara' in rotazione su Radio Cicada.
Le nostre trasmissioni sono su Salto FM, canale radio e tv locale di Amsterdam, che possono essere anche ascoltate su internet, se andate a questo post, ci sono tutte le istruzioni. E' possibile riascoltare e scaricare tutti gli episodi degli ultimi mesi.

Ecco quindi una lista di tutte le band che abbiamo passato da Gennaio ad Aprile 2012:

Breis
DimitrisManolias
Nao
Sir Giant
Quinto Imperio  
BAD STAFF 
La La Love you
Stormy Mondays
Jorge Otero
OCP
Adonoris
Luis Antero
Emanuel Casimiro
Giordano Maselli
Professional Sinnerz
Apostolis Armagos
Fent Tard
Kostika Collaku
Cristina Branco
Nikos Ordoulidis
Raul Gonzalo
Sarao Latino
Chema Lara
Melli
Nikoh e.s.
La Blanche Alchimie
Chiara Ragnini
Beppe Gambetta
Dimitris Manolias
Jovana Nikolic
Luciano Martella


Cerchero' dalla prossima settimana di scrivere un post mensile/settimanale....( non riesco a trovare il tempo di farlo...)
Se voi bands/cantautori avete letto questo post e ho dimenticato il link al vostro sito,scrivetemi e lo aggiungero' al post appena posso!

Siamo in diretta su radio Cicada la domenica e il giovedi sera

My week of discoveries

This week I have been working on a new version of the kompoz song BLUE SKIES, both in terms of singing, adding some bluesy feeling and in terms of lyrics, i am confident it will sound nice, here is the instrumental version http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.track.project?trackId=182279&projectId=30224
I visited an interesting place called Lev Kaupas where I was totally inspired by the movement #givingissharing born from the idea of giving 2 Festival tickets for free as a present to whoever, through the ad on a newspaper. That was done by Jeroen and he attracted lots of emails of people inspired, touched by him, and also companies that....wanted to actually follow his example and give! So now this guy is helping these companies to do that!
I also found out, how to do my new favourite drink, which is made of fermented kefir grains and next thing I am going to do is to learn how to do it :-)
Then I am reading on eating flowers! Healthy and tasty flowers, but i did not know they were so much...42? I only knew roses and the squash flowers that we eat in Italy( stuffed with filling or fried, yummi so delicious!)
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/42-flowers-you-can-eat.html

Jamming Jamming

Lately I have been participating in many jams in Amsterdam enjoying the exploration of vocal improvisation and i loved it!
So many ideas have been rumbling in my head since and many things are going on...

Airplay Radio Cicada FM in Amsterdam

Every Thursday night from 9 to 10 pm on radio cicada FM, I promote art,news and artists from Southern Europe,
therefore I am happy to receive news/newsletters/info and above all demos from unsigned bands from Southern Europe.
You can send your material to debbje@yahoo.it and I will reply to each email!

How to listen to the radio show:

If you live in the Amsterdam region: tune in on 106.8 FM

Online: go to>;salto.nl  click on> radio choose>stads fm  and click on this button >

How to download/stream an old radio show:

go to >salto.nl  click on>
then click on >stads fm on demand and choose the date and time of the show :Thursdays at 9pm

 In Italiano:

Ogni giovedi sera dalle 9 alle 10 su radio cicada FM, promuovo arte,notizie e artisti provenienti dalla regione mediterranea,
ragion per cui ricevo sempre con piacere suggerimenti,demo,notizie da band emergenti.
Potete mandare il vostro materiale a debbje@yahoo.it rispondo ad ogni email!

Come ascoltare il programma radio:

Se abiti nella regione di Amsterdam: sintonizzati su 106.8 FM

vai su >salto.nl clicca su> radio scegli>stads fm e clicca il bottone >

Come scarica/ascoltare in streaming le puntate precedenti:

vai su > salto.nl clicca su >stads fm on demand e scegli la data e l'ora del programma : tutti i giovedi alle 21

Buon Ascolto!

AND 2012!

2012 has come bringing ideas,

like this one

words of wisdom that I find around the globe and that will be of use to so many other people,
loving to listen to new music from South of Europe for this idea 

that takes place in Amsterdam.

But then there are also the creative ideas that are born on the internet and that bring to FREE MP3 to download thanks to this idea
and also this idea.
Are you hungry for more?
found this image btw