you can't make someone love you with a song

I went to Madrid for the weekend. I even managed to borrow an mp3 player, so I listened to Mojave 3 while crossing desert-like Castilla. And if I had to be there, why not going to a gig?. I felt lucky to find one interesting enough for me to go. Her Space Holiday played at Moby Dick on Saturday night and I convinced my friend to go so everything was alright up to that point. I had listened to many HSH songs and also some of the remixes -especially the Bright Eyes ones.

Supporting HSH, the Scottish band My Latest Novel. They were nice and friendly with the audience who seemed to understand their accent perfectly. It wasn't particularly exciting. Maybe too easy/predictable or as someone said, a mixture of all Glasgow bands in one. Electric violin, a thousand guitars, coral voices.

Not long after, Marc Bianchi came onstage -converse, torn jeans, shirt, gafapasta, tattoos- and also his band, and they started with incredible "My girlfriend's boyfriend" that I absolutely adored. It sounded better than I thought it would, I enjoyed all songs!. He is touring to his new album "The past presents the future" that you should listen to. He also started with a four track, and a couple of cheap microphones but his music now is really energetic and powerful. And well, wouldn't know what else to say. He played "Something to do with my hands" my favourite. "My problem with me is my problem with you" and "I don't care where you move, I don't care if it's far, all that I ask is that I know where you are in case our timing is right, in case you need more from me than a bit of advice or a tongue full of sympathy". I am amazed how these simple lyrics can express one of my feelings right now, even though another song reminds us that "you can't make someone love you with a song".

As it often happens to me, when I came back, after more than 5 hours travelling and getting extremely bored, I felt a bit lost and empty, tired and having to work next morning. I often feel like that after what it is supposed to be "fun". But I found this website with the link to a moving Jens Lekman live show so I waited for some minutes and when I could finally watch and hear the video clip with the headphones just taken from Auto-Res, I sighed and thought that maybe Jens' voice means that there is still some hope.

where are we going?

If feelings are a myriad of things, on my birthday, I'm feeling many of them and afterall I still have a sore throat. Cakes and coffee apart, I thought I'd post even if it's another pointless one. Everybody loves José González album. It helps the fact that "Heartbeats" is the soundtrack of a Sony advert that people enjoy a lot -though I loved the Stereototal one- and sometimes I remember that I saw him live, when the name sounded a bit strange being Swedish. As usual I travelled somewhere, to someone, to listen to something. I attended a strange Finnish festival in a town between the lakes and liked his cover of "Love will tear us apart". I never thought I would see him in a Sony advert really.

A few weeks ago I wrote something about Jenny Lewis and her new album with the Watson Twins, "Rabbit Fur Coat". Well, it has leaked on the internet so you can listen to it before it is officially out, late January. Some people think this is something to avoid, there are groups of people completely against this. I guess you just choose what to do, go and click or go and wait. I like it, especially the song "Handle with care" and yeah, because Conor's on it. You know.

My week's song is something different. These days I visited some shops looking for something to send to London and bought the Ghost World DVD, second-hand. Of course I love it when Enid gets her hair dyed singing to brilliant Buzzcocks, but I downloaded Skip James - Devil got my woman. Coincidentally enough, I got Ghost World the comic book for my birthday, a few years ago. The comic for girls. On the same visit I bought the album of an old Spanish band, Parkinson DC. I had it on a tape somewhere but as most of those tapes got over-played and ended up broken. The album's name is "Albanige" and it was recorded by Ken Stringfellow. I know someone who would love that. Please, send me new stuff from new Spanish bands.

Next weekend I'm going to Madrid. I don't work Tuesday and Thursday. A big yay for that.