Beirut

and their Elephant gun



Genul de muzica pe care n-as fi crezut vreodata ca as ingurgita-o, dar care m-a gadilat fara tagada de la prima auditie, si care imi inspira, la modul asumat corny, locuri indepartate si oameni apropiati. Deci o povestioara intortocheata cu personaje proaspat iesite din adolescenta si cea mai strasnica descoperire din ultima vreme.

Am cules cateva bucatele din articolul asta, poate vreti sa cititi.

“One of the reasons I named the band after that city was the fact that it’s seen a lot of conflict. It’s not a political position. I worried about that from the beginning. But it was such a catchy name. I mean, if things go down that are truly horrible, I’ll change it. But not now. It’s still a good analogy for my music. I haven’t been to Beirut, but I imagine it as this chic urban city surrounded by the ancient Muslim world. The place where things collide.” Condon (adica solistu) dropped out of high school (and then four colleges), thrilling his parents along the way. “We are just not the kind of family that has dropouts in it. The rest of my family is full of track-and-field stars.” At home, he also spent a lot of time, as any American teenager would, watching Emir Kustarica movies. “He’s a Yugoslavian director who makes these beautiful, sad films. And he always had this Balkan band running around drunk and crashing into things. I just loved it.”

At 18, after bailing on his ­minimum-wage job and flying to Paris, Condon met these sounds in person. “I found this band—these kids who’d walk around with thrift-store brass instruments. They weren’t Gypsies—they were so in love with that music. Eventually, I got the guts up to ask if I could play trumpet with them. They started teaching me the songs to the point where I could riff, like a jazz song. This one guy could play trumpet with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and at night you could see little puffs coming out of the bell. There was another who played the euphonium and poured wine into it. He gurgled.”

He likes Brooklyn—it’s “as close as we are going to get to Europe in America.” But he’s deeply “wary of the whole New York indie-rock scene. It all seems like style over substance. Gogol Bordello is a Balkan punk beat-box band—I don’t want to be a part of that. Half of what makes that band work is the fact that the singer dresses crazy.”

“There are three ways I see music used in the modern world,” Condon says. “One is for thinkers: They approach it analytically. Then there are people who use music to get a raw attitude out. And then there are people who are simply looking for beauty, for the sentimentality that good music has.”


A, si nu sunt amorezata de solistul cu iz acneic vezi east17 in epoca lor de glorie, chiar incerc sa depasesc momentul "baietei-gingasei".