the second video is bitter sweet symphony by the verve. the lyrics can be found here.

this is britpop. you can definitely listen to it :)

edit: apparently it’s impossible to embed the official video. so i just link to it. here’s an embedable version, without video though:

i like it because… of the strings melody at the beginning. if you would take the frist minute of the song and turn it into a ten minute song, i would still listen to it. this is one of the songs where i mostly ignore the vocals, and just enjoy the melody, the harmonics. (and yes, there are some edited versions on youtube without vocals; one of the better ones is this one.)
i also like the video, with the guy walking straight forward, ignoring the world around him as far as possible. i sometimes would like to do that as well…

the first video is of the song leaves by the dutch band the gathering. it’s the first song i ever heard from them, and the song which made me get more. the lyrics can be found here.

this is (slow) gothic metal with clean vocals. you can try it :)

i like it because… it’s so powerful and yet so beautiful. i found this track on a sampler i bought on ebay called “dark winter nights” (in fact, it was the first thing i ever bought on ebay – the second thing was mandylion, the the gathering album on which leaves first appeared); i stumbled about it since i saw it contained a track by sentenced. essentially, some sentenced songs, a stratovarius live album and this cd got me more interested in metal. this song quickly became my favorite song on that sampler, and eventually made me search for more the gathering stuff.
i also like the tree parts of the video a lot, especially the night parts, as at the beginning :-) but then, i first saw this video maybe ten years after i first heard the track?

while watching a video on youtube, i got an idea for a new project. from now on, every day until (at least) december 24th, i will put a music video in my blog at 18:00. i went through the list of bands of whose i own music, and tried to choose one video per band which i really like, which has good quality (if possible) and which is available on youtube. not for every band i could find something, and for very, very few bands, i choose two videos.
sadly, most bands don’t have good videos of the songs i like most, so sometimes having no video for a band just means that i didn’t found anything i both like and which is an acceptable video :-)
well, i hope you enjoy it, or at least parts of it. i’ll add links to lyrics as well as a few comments, which in particular indicate what kind of song this is (i.e. if you want to listen to this if you don’t like strange music as i do).

today i decided to finally do a trip to the fish creek provincial park, conveniently located in southern calgary, whence reachable by c-train. well. as long as you use the canyon meadows stop and not the fish creek-lacombe stop, even though the latter name sounds like it is closer. here are some impressions.

i guess i should have went there during fall. with colored leafs this probably looks more interesting. but it’s still nice, though many trails are currently closed.

yesterday i attended a concert by the seattle based power metal band nevermore. (i’m not going to concerts that often anymore… the last one was opeth‘s 20th anniversary on april 1st in bochum, which i never mentioned in this blog so far it seems, and the one by moonsorrow in helsinki in march.) this one was in calgary, on a thursday evening, a concert with four bands, doors opening at 8 pm. not a good idea, in my opinion. in fact, the first band started somewhen after nine, and nevermore didn’t start until short before midnight. so much for getting up early today (my alarm clock was set to 7 in the morning for cake preparations…).
the bands playing before nevermore were (melodic death/thrash) from denmark, blackguard (folk/melodic death) from montreal and (thrash) from the u.s.
warbringer is not making exactly the kind of music i like, and neither is hatesphere, though i liked the latter more. opposed to that, blackguard was really good. (i have to listen to more of their stuff…) but i didn’t go there for the other bands, but because i finally wanted to see nevermore.
eventually, nevermore entered the stage. once again i got reminded that live versions of song sound often different than the studio versions. the show was very nice, but i would have preferred another selection of songs. i should have made more notes yesterday, then i might be able to recover the setlist they played, but i think now it’s too late to get it correct.
one very nice thing about this concert was that i didn’t notice anyone smoking on the inside. that’s really nice. (and it’s a shame that i have to note this, which means that this is not the case by defaut.)

today i went shopping, and bought quark. haven’d had that for a long time. i turned parts of it into stippmilch, a dish popular in the münsterland in germany. mix quark with milk, add some sugar, and done it is. i also added brown sugar and cocoa nibs (unfortunately it’s not the right time for strawberries).
i just love this dish. it’s simple, refreshing, you can make it as sweet (or non-sweet) as you want. just perfect. if it just wouldn’t be such a hassle to get quark here…

i usually don’t really care about actors, directors etc. of films. but from time to time, a name recurrs often and impressively enough that i remember it. one such name is johnny depp. after some movies with him, i noticed that all movies i can remember him from were good. which is a good sign. so far, i saw

• edward scissorhands,
• the ninth gate,
• sleepy hollow,
• dead man,
• ed wood,
• pirates of the caribbean i,
• pirates of the caribbean ii,
• pirates of the caribbean iii,
• corpse bride,
• alice in wonderland.
• chocolat,

(the order is hopefully the order in which i saw them.) and as far as i remember, all of them are very good. movies i wouldn’t mind to watch again. (and again.) in fact, some of them i watched several times, in particular dead man, one of my most favorite movies. (i’m somewhat surprised i never wrote something about it. i guess i have to do that as soon as i see it again, which will be hopefully around christmas.) i first saw dead man somewhen late on tv, i’m not sure anymore why. maybe because i read that it had an interesting improvised soundtrack by neil young. anyway, this movie just blew me away.
two of the above movies, namely corpse bride and alice in wonderland, i saw on planes (air canada probably), somewhere between calgary and frankfurt.
the first pirates of the caribbean also has a special place in my memories. when watching it the first time, we had someone in the audience who, at a very few occasions, shouted something into the movie theater. i usually hate that, but this time, it made everything even more hilarious. it was just great.

after some silence, bad religion released another album this year, called the dissent of man. the fifteenth in their thirtyone years long career. and a good one, i think.
here’s one rather catchy track:

i just learned about the complaints choirs project: choirs from all over the world create a song complaining about annoying things in their life. here’s the recording from helsinki, which i like best from the few i saw. its sung in finnish, but there are english subtitles: