Hendrix babe

Some kind of perky blues that just popped in my brain. I had to output it. Here is the music:


Paris clem: Bluesin' around

Nihon 2

March 1st, 2009:

That was a tiring journey/arrival. We got up at 4pm, just like big bums. Hungry we went out for a snack at a curry joint at about 7pm. I've chosen a fried chicken scallop, cut in slices served with a Curry Level 3 sauce. The others had a level 2 but on the menu it was written that level 3 is the spiciness "like a curry should be". Humm there are 10 levels of spiciness available so level 3 sounds fair... It's burnin' Hell in my mouth!!!. I'm usually quite resistant to spicy foods, but oulalala, this stuff is violent! Thinking that a level 10 exists sounds impossible. That stuff gave me horrible hiccups, but it was good... yeaaaah.
Then we went for a piece of cake in a small café. We noticed: there are no man in Japan. Well at least not in cafés (I'm not speaking about the beverage). Walking down the streets of Shibuya we bumped into Cyril's friends, they were celebrating a birthday! So we went for some karaoke with this crazy crowd. In Japan karaoke is a big deal, they are everywhere and they fill entire buildings.

Each group of karaoke singers get their own private room where they have a TV set, some sort of encyclopedia where all the music in the world is indexed (almost but we did find this one : Moskow. Check this goodness if you don't know it) and some pads to select your music from. Many folks need a little push to sing in a karaoke so business oriented Japanese thought it was a good idea to provide beer, as much as you want, for about 8$. Because drinking without eating isn't a smart move, you also get all the greasy bar food you love... Your dear writer sang a Barry white track, My everything. Stunning ;)
After ruining the place with a classic smell like teen spirit and the pogo-stick dancin' that goes with it, we left for a small pub located at the 5th floor of a building. The place probably used to be an apartment! One table, a bar and that's it. There wasn't even windows. There I met the second Finnish guy in two days! They must be taking over japan slowly or something. Of course I had to practice a bit my Finnish (I love showing up my language skills, isn't it what I'm doing right now after all??). A couple of Mitä Kuuluu, ei paskiempa and Kitti vittusti bought me a drink ;)

French version (If you read it you either suck or you are great, depending on your mother tongue, remember: this version is just the raw note as I wrote it during the trip):

On s'est levés a 16h comme des grosses larves. On est sorti manger un curry vers 19h, j'ai pris un poulet pané frit en tranches avec une sauce au curry niveau 3 "niveau de curry comme un curry devrait être", oulala c'était violent! Ensuite on est allé prendre un dessert dans un petit resto, truc amusant les hommes n'existent pas au japon. En marchant dans la rue on croise par hasard les amis de Cyril ;) c'était l'anniversaire de l'un d'entre eux. On est allé a un karaoke finalement et on a chante et bu jusque 2h du matin! Je leur ai fait l'interprétation de Barry White ultime qui a calme tout le monde :) on est allé dans un petit bar (un bar qui se trouvait dans un immeuble au 5em étage) la je croise le deuxième finlandais en deux jours (je crois qu'ils envahissent secrètement le japon) on boit quelques bières et finalement on vas se coucher.

Rehearsal

Saturday morning, The Acolyts rehearsed. We were auditioning a new drummer, Anto, he did quite well given that we gave him a very short notice. Anto and I used to play in the same Metallica cover band, so it was a real pleasure to hear his metallish drumming again! I think the sound is a bit better than usual (still can't hear the singin' very well but it could actually be a good thing...). I guess the band was quite rusty since we didn't play together for more than a month (because our drummer was not responding) so we didn't manage to play Harbinger really well. Anyway it wasn't a real rehearsal because we were there to hear what Anto's got to say about drumming. He performed quite well, he will tell us shortly if he is definitely interested in joining the band or not... Suspence!

We played a few cover songs on this occasion since it wasn't a real rehearsal. So today I give you the Acolyts playing For Whom The Bell Tolls and Seek & Destroy from Metallica! Don't be to excited I sucked on the vocals... Unfortunately I'm no James Hetfield. We played a bit of Megadeth but that sucked much more because we don't even know the riffs ;)

after typing this to create the right links for you for f in ../../../Repes/18.04.09/*mp3 ; do ln -s "$f" "./`basename \"$f\" mp3`clem"; done
here is the music!



Paris Clem.

Bring me back to the sanitarium - Take two.

A bit of progress has been done on this song, I recorded a bass track and a second guitar track/harmonization on the thrash verses (I'm no bassist so I'm sure Q1 (the Acolyts bassist) will do a much better job!). Still I have to re-record the singing because of my annoying pronunciation of the P in the word psycho. By the way if you have any pronunciation hints I'll gladly take'em :)



Oh by the way, here are the lyrics, (still in the writing process, just like the music):


Bring me back to the sanitarium
Words by Q1 & Clem
Music by Clem

Doom intro :

An empty hall, white and gray
Silent and deserted
Some stains on the walls

A few dead lights
No one at the desk
The cold welcome (x2)

Thrash verse:

An empty man, white and wrinkled
Silent and blank-minded
Some stains on his clothes

A quite dead gaze
Sitting in a corner
Mindless geezer

Have You Ever Heard A Psycho Kid Scream ?

Chorus:

Please bring me back to the Sanitarium
Where I can find my inner peace
Please bring me back to the Sanitarium

Thrash verse:

An empty door, white and thick
Silent and still
Some words on the painting

Psycho Ward For the Kids
What’s behind
No one knows

Have You Ever Heard A Psycho Kid Scream ?

Chorus:

Please bring me back to the Sanitarium
Where I can find my inner peace
Please bring me back to the Sanitarium



Paris Clem: who said I'm whining all the time?

Bonté divine!

Last night I went to the theater (thanks to Carole) to see that play : Bonté Divine! This comedy, based on religious themes was a delight, pretty short but quite funny indeed. I guess I should go to the theater more often, it has a bit more liberty in its themes than the movies (of course there are "cinéma d'auteur" kind of movies but they usually are cerebral onanism).

Progressive Nation 2009

Dream Theater and Opeth are on tour, and they will hit Paris at the Zenith on October 4th! Count me in!! I especially want to see Opeth on stage, it's one of my favorites bands and I heard that their performances are great & fun, can't wait!

The Metal Crew

Have a look at Metallica performing Master of Puppets live at Bercy, Paris!
(it starts with the end of another song The day that never comes). This video should give you a feel of the pit. Listen how the crowd sing along. That's the metal crew baby!

My life for metal!

Meeetal! yeah that's the stuff :) Although I've been experimenting different styles, my preference will always go to metal. Why? Because it's awesome (now that's a killer statement used to support a proposition).
First, Metal speaks to me like no other music can. While it can have thunderous hammer smashing face rhythms that pounds your head until adrenaline makes your heart explode, it also has extremely melodic pieces that fills your lachrymal channels with tears of joy... Screaming guitar solos and singers giving all of their heart to the public (and a public that gives it back in the mosh-pit).
Metal is love my friends. It's the love of a brotherhood that have strong values of honor and an epic drive to push artists skills to rocket to the skies of gods music mastery (a good band that lasts over time must have incredible musical skills, it's part of the show, what the audience expects).
Metal is also a mature style that was elaborated on several styles that were already mature at that time. Yes, Metal is based on Rock and Blues, which have proved their value over time. The first Metal band was Black Sabbath. They released their first album in February 1970. Since then Metal has evolved or should I say has mutated in many many sub genres. There is almost a sub-genre per band but one could blur the lines a bit a discover some families. So metal has kind of an endless stream of discoveries waiting for you to find out, tame, and love.

Well, I just went to a Metallica show last night, and damn it kicked so much my ass that I revolved twice around the moon before ultimately crashing into my bed after more than 2 hours of ultimate thrashing.

Love you guys!

Paris Clem: The sweet metal embrace.

You were right!

Yes, the Blog shutdown was indeed an April fool's prank! Don't worry, the Clem continues to irrigate the web with his facetious posts :)

To you my dear audience: YOU ROCK!

Blog is dead

Allright, I'm fed up with writing this blog, so this is the last post. Anyway, who cares right?
Thanks for the few who have taken some time to read my English and especially forgave my usual pedantic and sarcastic tone.

Paris Clem.