Moonrise


In keeping with my promise, for this post I would like to introduce an indie artist and friend of mine, Jacob Moon.

I met Jacob during my time living in Waterloo, Canada. I had signed up for a workshop on using looping devices for performance and he was the one conducting it. To get into the details of looping and what I learned from him that session (of which I plan to do so in the near future) would warrant a whole post by itself if not two.

He is by far the most talented solo artist I've seen in my life, and I mean solo. By using the process of looping, he does everything by himself: drums, basslines, guitars, vocals, creating sounds of a full band.

Yet, amidst all that talent was a humble guy who was willing to answer all questions and share his life experiences and advice with the audience. Speaking alot through his songs, he enlightened the crowd about the inspirations behind his songs, mostly from life's lessons be it the anxiety of being a dad for the first time or going through a hard time in his life: http://soundcloud.com/jacobmoon/great-beyond
or by a sheer moment of musical inspiration and creativity.

Take for example his song 'Sara', is about a girl he met on a mission trip. Sara was one of the children in the village he was there to help: http://soundcloud.com/jacobmoon/sara
Pictures and Sara's story can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnCXJrk7o7I

He did an incredible rendition or Rush's 'subdivisions'. Check out the video for a front row seat of his looping prowess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4vd9OVLO7Q
Neil Peart of Rush was in fact so impressed by it that he invited Jacob to open for their show with it.

Jacob obviously has his own musical style but if I had to list mainstream similarities I would have to say his songwriting is comparable to that of Keith Urban who is probably my favourite artist of all time while his voice tends to remind me of Jon Bon Jovi at times. Or it could be the hair. So if you like the artists I mentioned, there's a good chance you would enjoy Jacob's works.

We eventually became friends and I caught an actual concert of his during my time there in the front row.

Kind of regret not having taken pictures with him to though, would have been nice to post here.

One of my aims of this blog is to hopefully establish a large enough fanbase for indie artists like Jacob Moon in Singapore and perhaps get him to come down for a showcase. Such talents should not be missed, even if we are on opposite ends of the world!

With that, I leave you all with a personal favourite, Jacob's rendition of a Peter Gabriel Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qphRwdr6MlY

Irony

This would mark my first experience at blogging, was never one to be familiar with internet networking such as blogs and extensive usage of social networking sites.

As far as diaries are concerned, I started keeping one approximately a year back to document my life for the purpose of hoping to derive inspiration in which i could draw upon to come up with material for song lyrics to complete my originals.

I'd like to think of myself as a music lover or enthusiast, someone with great passion for the performing arts, rather than a musician as I am still pretty far from accomplishing it as a profession. Any how, I have been playing for awhile now and have been hoping to start creating originals as an attempt at the next level.

I got this idea of keeping a diary for that from Gwen Stefani, famously known as the frontwoman of punk ska band No Doubt. They are releasing an album in September by the way, for those who are interested, its been a good many years since they did. Really hope to catch them live too, still really disappointed I missed their free concert in New York because of my flight change.

Anyway back to the issue, I have written a number of music, but could never come up with lyrics that did not sound cheesy or lame. I read Gwen's biography and she mentioned facing writer's block before. She then kept a journal while on tour in which she revisited to write a whole album worth of songs. No doubt's possibly most famous song "Don't Speak" was actually a manifestation of Gwen's heartbreak following her failed relationship with fellow bandmate Tony, who is still the bassist of the band. Doubt I can fully express the irony.

Well thats my history involving anything remotely to keeping a diary. For this blog, in an attempt of creating a long lived one, I hope to establish a portal for people of similar interests where i can share my experiences and useful facts. I apologize if i am not ready to share personal and private accounts online for others to see. By no means am i judging but its funny how in the past, breach of a diary was the subject of many quarrels among friends and siblings but today, the more "breaches" the better. Irony. 

Well I guess I'm more of an old school kind of guy.

Believe it or not, when I started this post, my title was: "First Post". I was planning just an introductory post since I was initially apprehensive about posting something public but its weird how it started to feel therapeutic and one thing led to another and I started rambling on about one of my musical idols. Irony.

Stay tuned for my versions of interests related discussions. Admittedly I viewed the blogs of others like Eunice's and she mentioned being a Norah Jones fan. I got to catch her live so perhaps I'll probably do a concert review here. Also read in Brad's blog about his experience with a Japanese song (I think). Had a similar experience, maybe I'll share about that.

Hmm... I might have just openly declared a future attempt to rip off someone on a public post, the one thing you should never do on a public domain. That's why I was apprehensive! Irony.

Peace out.