Today we are marking 10 years since Michal Niv died. She was a legendary Israeli disc jocky who introduced me (and many of my generation) to indie rock & punk in the 80′s and had a tremendous influence on my musical taste.Here are two songs you could often hear on her weekly show, “HAFSAKAT ESER”.
The first, Bring of the Dancing Horses by Echo and the Bunnymen, was also the opening tune of her show.
and Just Like Honey by The Jesus and the Mary Chain.
Further reading (in Hebrew) and many songs representing her musical taste by David Perez & Sharon Moldavi
Yesterday was an exciting day for Roy Zu-Arets and I. An album we’ve produced especially for the holiday season called “Snowflakes Piano Holiday Classics” was officially released.
If you were looking for an original music album to treat yourself or give as a gift in the coming holidays just visit iTunes , Amazon or order as a physical CD.
In “Snowflakes” Roy played in his unique style, renditions to seasonal classics such as Silent Night, Joy to the World, Jingle Bells and others. The result is a charming album that uniquely convey the serenity, joy and magic of the season.
You might ask yourself what do two Jewish guys have to do with Christmas songs? Well, we don’t. But when we first listened to the melodies without reading the lyrics, we actually heard a wide variety of music styles that show we are all coming from the same roots, including Israeli folk (O Little Town Of Bethlehem), Sephardic Romanca (The First Noel), a Classical composition written by the great (Jewish) composer Felix Mendelssohn (Hark The Herald Angels Sing), Blues & Soul (O Christmas Tree). Plus, if you look closely at the snowflakes that are on the cover you will see that in the center of each one of them there is a Start of David. I noticed this only after Ken sent his final design, so I assume it was a sign from above that we are doing the right thing.
I know I am biased, but when Roy called me a few days after we finished recording all the tracks and said “I hardly listen to my complete albums after they are done but in this case I keep listening to the songs over and over”, I knew we created a very special product.
The beautiful artwork was designed by Ken Messenger who used to be on my team at at Snap and now runs his design studio. Highly recommended designer.
Here’s a version of Jingle Bells that we posted to our YouTube channel.
A few weeks ago my friend Roy Zu-Arets (disclosure: I created his wikipedia page) who is the most gifted musician and very original composer I have had the luck to meet and I began working on a fun side project that involves music & social media. We call it “The Vibe Of Now”.
The idea behind “The Vibe Of Now” is to create a musical micro-bloggingexperience – release of original compositions that are created in a spontaneous, immediate, unplanned and instant way and reflect what the composer is feeling at that moment. The entire production process is also very fast. We meet at Roy’s studio in Hollywood three times a week (Mon, Wed and Fri) for 1 hour. It takes us 45 minutes to record a piece, mix the video with stereo audio that we pull out of the recording console and publish the clip to YouTube.
Both of us have worked and released products that reached millions – I have done it in the internet space at Snap, JDate and ICQ and Roy has worked as a composer, pianist and producer with many artists, performed in prestigious halls in front of thousands and produced platinum and gold albums. But this small side project has its own magic and is very exciting for both of us. Users from all over the world send us their feedback on the music videos and how they touch them. Our YouTube channel metrics are growing week after week – the number of daily views, subscribers (now is a good time to become one), friends, comments and ratings.
A few days ago we reached a new major milestone with the release of Roy’s first solo piano solo album (after a 20 year career of playing, producing and composing with and for others) called “Confessions of a Composer”. The album features selected tracks from the first series Roy released to YouTube during the summer of 2009 plus a few bonus tracks recorded with guest musicians. You can buy the album on iTunes , Amazon or order as physical CD.
We are also about to put the “The Vibe Of Now” concert. It will be a very original and different show from a typical piano recitals, and it will feature the album pieces, variations on a theme of known songs but with some twist, and original compositions that will be composed during the concert together with the viewers similar to the process that happens at the studio. If you are interested in bringing Roy to your venue, university, tech-conference, town hall or your next corporate event, please contact us.
Next for us are a few additional mini projects:
* A special album for the holidays which is being finalized these days (Update: It is now live)
* Collaborations with some of LA’s finest musicians
* A 100% live session that we will stream to the web using UStream and twitter
* And probably a few more fun projects since the tools we have in our hands allow us to do almost anything and take it to the masses.
Last thing – this project would not exist without users’ feedback. So if you have one for us, a request, suggestion, media inquiry, touring/booking request or a testimony/album review, please contact us using this form or on twitter – royzuarets or jaym.
Only 6 days ago I saw Pearl Jam performing an excellent show at the Gibson Amphitheater. However, last night is by far the best rock concert I have ever seen and one that will probably become one of the most memorized and mentioned shows in Pearl Jam’s 2009 tour.
Reasons:
1. Set: plenty of non-hits you don’t hear often – Faithful, Unemployable, Footsteps are just a few example. Between yesterday’s show and last week’s show I saw them perform 35 different songs. Only 9 songs were played in both shows, 5 of them are from Backspacer (Got Some, The Fixer, the fantastic Unthought Unknown, Just Breathe and The End) so they still sound fresh, new and very exciting.
2. Fans: The fans energy level was a lot higher than last week’s first show and the band reacted well to this. When the special guest (see below) came on stage the roof exploded off.
2. Gibson Amphitheater Acoustic: I said it in my previous post but must say it again. The sound quality in this venue is fantastic. During the first encore opened with Eddie team with a string quartet and performed Just Breathe, The End and Lukin (you got to see the video). Unlike last week’s show, last night you could actually hear the strings providing incredible cover to Eddie’s voice.
3. Special guests: the highlight of they evening. Into the 2nd encore Eddie said something like “what makes certain nights special is the presence of one person in the room…” and then he surprised/shocked everyone and invited Chris Cornell to join the band. Their performance of Temple Of The Dog’s Hunger Strike was fantastic. Chris’s voice sounded so good and the band performed it so well.
And finally, right before we thought we have seen everything, in the middle of the final song, Alive, as the song’s guitar solo started, Mike McCready handed his guitar over to Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) who made my ears bleed…
What an epic performance that I am so happy I captured on my Flip HD (all songs except for two). It was difficult not to sing & jump and luckily my battery lasted all the way to the end. When the bootleg will be released I plan to get it and mix the video with high quality audio.
BTW, looks like my Hunger Strike video was picked by the RollingStone. Nice.
Here’s the entire playlist embedded in this page. Just hit the play button, expand the video to a full screen mode and turn on the volume.
Update (10/8/09): My buddy Bill went to the last Pearl Jam concert in LA last night. He was gracious enough to take my camera and shot the entire show. After you are done watching LA3, you might also want to check out LA4 playlist. It was a fantastic night as well.
I have known Roy Zu-Arets since our sons attended the same day care a few years ago. Since then I have been closely following his unique journey in life which includes music, Judaism and a constant struggle of a musician trying to make it big.
After all, it is not easy to do what he is trying to do given his background. He started playing piano at the age of 3 and began his professional music career at the age of 12 (!). In his early twenties he was already a busy music producer, composer and pianist in Israel. He played with many artists, produced mega hit records and concerts like Rita‘s “A Great Love” 4 times platinum album and tour, HaYehudim (The Jews) debut album called “Separate Reality”, one of Meir Banai’s albums and many others including Guy Zu-Aretz (his brother) upcoming album. He wrote scores for movies and theater and had a successful and busy career in the Israeli music industry. But then he decided leave everything behind and went after his dream – move to the US to become a musician in the premier league. He first spent a few years in New York where he attend Julliard & Mannes music academies, and then he moved to Los Angeles where he is trying break into the small, close group of Hollywood movies score writers. In the mean time, he is slowly establishing impressive milestones n the US which including producing Taking Back Sunday’s “Where you want to be?” platinum album, and writing MacHeads soundtrack, but he has not gotten to work on a really big movie since in Hollywood it is very difficult for a “nobody” to become “somebody”.
This might change though, very soon, thanks to the way he uses YouTube to share his talent, music and work process with the masses. Every morning, as part of his warm-up, he improvises melodies based on his mood and feelings. None of these melodies were composed before and he does not memorize notes – he “simply” plays the melody that is going in his head at that very moment. His studio neighbors, owners of a video production company, heard him play and suggested to video tape those short improvisations and publish them to YouTube as part of a documentary series called “Confessions of a Composer”. The videos are recorded using two iPhone 3GS phones, the sound is recorded separately using Roy’s studio equipment (thus the high quality), and then they mix and edit everything to a short video clip that gets posted to YouTube. This entire process happens 5 days a week, Mon-Fri.
I predict that it is just a matter of time until one of Roy’s improvisation videos will become a major hit on YouTube. Naturally, the variation on a popular songs tend to get more traffic and views (probably not enough views given the quality of these videos), like Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” (see embed below), Michael Jackson’s Earth Song and Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling. But the improvisations are even more fascinating to watch, as they truly show his qualities as a composer and pianist.
From what I have gathered from Roy, the amount of feedback he has been getting after a few weeks of daily videos submissions is unbelievable. This includes comments, ratings and many emails from YouTube viewers from all over the world. More than that, a well known Hollywood director who stumbled upon one of his videos and loved it, already came to meet Roy at his Hollywood studio.
So, here are two video clips that illustrate how talented and versatile he is. My recommendation is to subscribe to his channel as well as go back and watch all the videos uploaded since the project began on July 13th. You will get a daily injection of heavenly and inspiring music from such an extraordinary & gifted talent.
Update (1/26/2010):
There is a new iPhone app that eliminates the need to configure FStream. Read about it here.
Original post starts here:
This tip is mainly for Israelis and other Hebrew speakers who live abroad or just travel and want to listen to Israeli radio stations on their iPhone while on the go. Getting this done is pretty simple:
1. Install the free FStream application on your iPhone via the AppStore
2. Open FStream and set up your favorite stations. You can do it on the iPhone or you could use a web interface which makes the input process quicker (see instructions under the More -> Web Management tab inside FStream)
3. Last thing, make sure to turn on the “Cellular Network” option otherwise the application will only work when you are iPhone is connected to a wifi hotspot.
I have collected urls for some of the popular Israeli stations streams:
I have found many other urls on different websites but those were broken. The streams above were tested and as of today (1/30/2009) (3/1/2009) are working.
If you know of other stations’ streams, feel free to add in the comments section.
Update (11/28/2009): I posted an updated list & more stations here.
TheSound LA features the best rock music made to date. As simple as that. And it is great to discover (and re-discover) every day albums, songs and artists that have made rock music what it is. That’s why it is my favorite radio station.
I enjoyed listening this morning on my way to work to “Album Sides Wednesday” (and twittered about it, twice) that I wanted to continue listening to uninterrupted, dusty, classics vinyl albums, but, was so disappointed to find out that you can not do it online because “According to rules agreed upon with the Recording Industry Association of America, we are banned from presenting uninterrupted album sides on an Internet stream.”. So now I have to switch back to iTunes and listen to compressed and narrow spectrum MP3 files, at least I am back in the car.
Regardless of that, wherever you are located, and as long as you love rock music, you should add TheSound LA to your radio and bookmark the site so you could listen to it online- 24 hours, 6 days a week.
A little more than two years ago, while I was still working at Spark Networks, I met Isaac Barel (first on the left). Issac is a very talented graphic designer and at the time he worked with me and my team on the redesign of Cupid.
Beyond the fact he has exceptional creative and design skills, Issac is also a great guitar player in a band called Mad Bliss. During his visit to Spark’s Beverly Hills office, he gave me with MadBliss’s first EP, “Karen’s Molested Apple”, which I immediately got hooked to. Lately MadBliss released their full LP, “Heaven Through Old Eyes”, which to me positions them as a leading Israeli indie rock band.
I just found out they will be performing live in Tel Aviv on Oct 12. Too bad I am no longer in Israel, but I hope that Issac and his friends will find the time and energy to follow other successful Israeli bands, such as Rockfour, and go on a world (or at least a US) tour. Their music should not be ‘one of Israel’s best kept secrets’…
Many of the bands songs can be found on their myspace page and on their Sonicbids page.
“The Pretender” starts with a mellow 30 seconds guitar intro (anyone said Led-Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven?) which then explodes into a typical Foo Fighters smash hit. (Another) powerful drumming performance by their wonderful Taylor Hawkins, Tight and rough guitars and a shining vocal performance by one of the greatest rock artists ever, Dave Grohl.
If the rest of the album will be as powerful as this single, then this is going to be the best alt-rock album of 2007 (and maybe one of the band’s best albums).
Previous companies I was involved with include Snap.com (as VP of Products), Spark Networks (parent co of JDate as VP of Products), AOL (as Director of ICQ Mobile).
Some of the topics I am passionate about are social applications, web usability, design, mobile applications, sport and music.
few weeks ago my friend 
