Opening Day

People who know me, know the passion that I live for.

Baseball.

Today was the exciting opening day, the first game of the season. Atlanta Braves visited Washington Nationals in a pretty good game. As usual it takes some time for the players to get into the mentality and stadiums after spring training so they feel a little bit rusty, the weather during these early games tend also to be really cold (which is a big contrast from just coming back from Florida or Arizona in spring training). It was very interesting to see the National’s new ballpark, which had President George W. Bush throw the first pitch. Besides from a couple of home runs and spectacular pitching by the Braves the game wasn’t too interesting until Ryan Zimmermanthe hit a beautiful walk-off home run to end the game in favor for the Nationals. The game was entertaining though like always when Jon Miller and Joe Morgan are the commentators. Now I can’t wait to see Toronto Blue Jays against the Yankees, and Seattle Mariners against Texas Rangers tomorrow.

For anyone interested in baseball I can highly recommend a mlb.tv subscription which lets you watch every game being played, it’s great just coming home and being able to watch anything, there’s usually around 15 games being played every day so there’s always something to watch.

Digital/Acoustic (2)

Today I watched an interesting video from G4TV’s daily Attack of the Show podcast. The segment was called The Loop: Musicians in the Digital Era. A contributor for Wired News, Eliot Van Buskirk and Phil Kay from a Nuclear Free City was invited to discuss the new digital technology of music and how it affects independent musicians. Although interesting, I found the arguments and topic quite obvious, but what I think was the most intriguing point was when they started talking about the physical formats. Van Buskirk argued that people are beginning to go back to vinyl, probably due to that the format is far opposite from digital formats. I think this is a very valid point.

I now recall a conversation I overheard in one of downtown’s record shops. That business is going better due to all the kids that buy frames for record covers, want to buy vinyl because of the ‘cool factor’ of the covers. I like the fact that vinyl starts to get cool again, it’s not just a nerdy collector or a DJ (or a fusion of them both) who gives attention to vinyl, but a broader sense of the public. This will gain the true vinyl nerds because it will probably make less stores go bancrupt.

I was also skimming through a book today by Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster called How to DJ (Properly), I came across an interesting chart of positives and negatives of DJing with CDs compared to spinning vinyl. Although there were many positive notes on why you would want to play CDs the last one said “once you’re bitten by the DJ bug you’ll probably want to get into vinyl as well.” A quote I think signify the physical value of a vinyl record. As a DJ that grew up practicing on vinyl; I find it very hard to accept a strict digital setup. Since all my records are back in Sweden I am forced to stick with a digital setup over here. Playing on a computer is functional, but I honestly find it extremely hard to choose a song to cue up for the next song, since all music is just in a massive library of mp3s, they are all just in a dull list of titles, when playing with vinyl you have a whole crate of large colourful sleeves that you put together for that particular night, you don’t only get the pleasure of sitting home choosing what to bring and imagine what you might play, you also get the sense of where to find them in the crate (an important aspect of DJing, since not finding the song you want to play is one of the biggest nightmares of playing out). So even if more and more DJs play CDs today, understandably to the lower costs and and learning time, acknowledging both formats will definitely make you access a broader variety of music and hopefully that leads you to play better music.

Which one do you prefer?

Kultur 2007

When I look back to last year. I realize it was a great year. Culturally.

In the summer I went back to Sweden. On a trip to Stockholm I went to the most memorable exhibition of the year; Speed For Life. It was an exhibition by fashion photographer Mikael Jansson. But instead of exhibiting fashion photographs, Jansson showed the result of a three year long project where he has followed the Formula 1 race all over the world documenting it his own style. The photographs were beautiful, and amazing.

Back in Vancouver I finally got to see my favourite painter’s Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. In a great exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery her work was presented along with some famous photographs of her by her husband Alfred Steiglitz. The exhibition was very satisfying. I did miss a little bit some of her city paintings, which I find her most interesting work, but what was shown was inspiring enough.

Music hasn’t hit me as hard. Although I have discovered great artists such as Juana Molina and Lt Fisk. The best album I bought was probably Nouvelle Vague’s Bande À Part.

Many great films have come out from last year, and I have many to catch up with. Films I have seen and enjoyed has been Death Proof, Lust, Caution and The Darjeeling Limited, but the best one is Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, a movie that just won’t leave my head.

To finish it off, the best trip for me 2007 was to the Scottish island Islay, a little island in the Atlantic ocean that is full of single malt Whisky distilleries such as Laphroaig, Bowmore and Lagavulin. This is where I also made the discovery of the year; Caol Ila 12 year old single malt, my favourite whisky so far.

There. Now I can move on and appreciate what has to come in the new year.

Coal Ila Whisky Distillery