Some of you will remember Tom Dice, a Belgian singer who kept it simple at the Eurovision Song Contest of 2010. The whole Belgian act of that year was just one guy with one guitar, singing a song called "Me and my guitar". It's a very basic formula, but it was successful: Belgium finished 6th in that contest; their best result in years. This weekend I encountered another guy that liked to keep his music as simple as possible.
It all started last Friday, when I was at the Žižkovska Noc (Night of Žižkov. This is a music festival where some relatively unknown bands get a chance to perform their songs in front of an audience at several locations in Žižkov, which is a neighborhood in Prague. The days before the festival I made a list of all bands I wanted to see and based on that list I made a schedule for the night.
We started off at U vystřelenýho oka, a typical Czech pub where some Czech folk-singers would perform. Unfortunately we were too late to see some guy with his harmonica perform (or he never showed up, because it was quiet for the first 15 minutes), but the first performance we saw, a guy on a guitar with a girl on a violin that could not be heard most of the time, was kind of nice.
After half an hour the second performer entered the stage. This was one of the three artists I was looking forward to see that night. After getting himself and his equipment ready for the show he, a young guy with messy hair, came to the microphone and said the legendary words: "Hello, this is me and this is my iPod, and we are going to play some songs together."
He walked to a stool with his iPod on it, pressed the "play"-button, and we could hear music. He put on his guitar, walked the microphone, started playing on the beat that came from his iPod and then an amazing voice, one that you would expect from an experienced internationally famous singer, came from his barely 18-years old throat.
To my left were sitting his father, younger brother, mother and his favourite aunt. The latter two with a huge smile of pride. I really enjoyed the 30 minutes that he was playing and was amazed by his creativity. Him and his iPod. What a great combination.
The rest of the night we saw several other performances, including one by a nationally famous band called Imodium at Klub Matrix, but none of them made a bigger impression on me than this young guy had done. He calls himself J. Remember that name.
It all started last Friday, when I was at the Žižkovska Noc (Night of Žižkov. This is a music festival where some relatively unknown bands get a chance to perform their songs in front of an audience at several locations in Žižkov, which is a neighborhood in Prague. The days before the festival I made a list of all bands I wanted to see and based on that list I made a schedule for the night.
We started off at U vystřelenýho oka, a typical Czech pub where some Czech folk-singers would perform. Unfortunately we were too late to see some guy with his harmonica perform (or he never showed up, because it was quiet for the first 15 minutes), but the first performance we saw, a guy on a guitar with a girl on a violin that could not be heard most of the time, was kind of nice.
After half an hour the second performer entered the stage. This was one of the three artists I was looking forward to see that night. After getting himself and his equipment ready for the show he, a young guy with messy hair, came to the microphone and said the legendary words: "Hello, this is me and this is my iPod, and we are going to play some songs together."
He walked to a stool with his iPod on it, pressed the "play"-button, and we could hear music. He put on his guitar, walked the microphone, started playing on the beat that came from his iPod and then an amazing voice, one that you would expect from an experienced internationally famous singer, came from his barely 18-years old throat.
To my left were sitting his father, younger brother, mother and his favourite aunt. The latter two with a huge smile of pride. I really enjoyed the 30 minutes that he was playing and was amazed by his creativity. Him and his iPod. What a great combination.
The rest of the night we saw several other performances, including one by a nationally famous band called Imodium at Klub Matrix, but none of them made a bigger impression on me than this young guy had done. He calls himself J. Remember that name.
