Here is the house...

…not only first day of summer, but also a B-day of ex-member of “Depeche Mode” Alan Wilder, due to which we have such great works from them made from 1982 to 1994.

Happy Birthday, Alan, and I wish you to make new impressive work in “Recoil”! :-)

Today on one of Russian radio stations I heard the name which is familiar to me for several years… This is one of my favourite women in music. Her name is Siouxsie Sioux.

Today she, because of which I began to listen to bands with frontwomen (and now “Siouxsie and the Banshees” is one of my favourite bands of all time), is 55! I want to congratulate Siouxsie with her anniversary and wish her to do more great work!

Today is a great day for those who loves music, especially Depeche Mode - Dave Gahan’s 50th anniversary.

Depeche Mode is my favourite band, and their frontman Dave Gahan is, perhaps, my favourite frontman in the whole music world. I admire him not only because his musical talent - the way he sings, moves, even writes songs -, but also because of his own person. For those 50 years he have been having life full of many moment, but today we see wise and self-sufficient man.

I want to wish Dave all the best in his own life and also to enjoy the life itself and make new music.

Last night I was on fantastic concert at “House of Music” in Moscow. It was not a performance of a popular rock band and it was not a stadium. I’m talking about concert of Tommy Emmanuel, Australian guitarist.

I knew about Tommy due to my friend which is fond of guitar and all things relating to it. I saw several videos in YouTube of his performances and I was impressed very much by both playing the guitar and behaviour on stage. And yesterday I saw this all by myself in real! Thanks to my friend for telling me about this concert to happen yesterday!

Well, we came to Svetlanovsky hall of “House of Music” - very beautiful place, I must notice. If you’re going to visit Russia and love classical music, you should come to “House” because of not only the programme of it, but also because of its fantastic place from which you can see old houses which weren’t touched by new ones. Moreover, personnel was kind to every person who came - when you went to a hall itself, you were shown the place you bought a ticket to. By the way, we had great seats: we saw all the stage quite close from one side, so we used our binoculars only to watch thoroughly Tommy’s playing the guitar.

The concert began at 19:10 (only ten minutes later than the announced one). In first part of the concert Tommy invited his fellow-countrymen - brother and sister, which played all the part music, close to French chanson and retro. They gave a quite energetic performance - most of all I liked the song when the youth played the piano and his sister played the accordion.

After 15 minutes of an intermission Tommy Emmanuel had out attention. I don’t know his compositions good, but I can say that they were very different: some of them were with Spanish feeling, other ones sounded like blues, third ones reminded me of “Dire Straits”’ songs. Also Tommy played medley of Beatles’ songs (I remember there were “Here comes the sun”, “When I’m sixty four”, “While my guitar gently weeps”, “Day tripper” and “Lady Madonna”), and in the end of concert he played some rock’n’roll tunes and sang a capella (he has very pleasant voice!) rock’n’roll hits “Blue suede shoes” and “Johhny be good”. I must say that Tommy is a fantastic player - I wondered how he could play the acoustic guitar like on the stage there are lead guitar-, bass guitar- and drummer-players! Also, he is a great showman. He almost dances during playing the guitar, and also he likes to joke with the audience. Most of all I remember one composition during which Tommy played the guitar and used it as a kit at the same time, and, moreover, used some thing by which percussionists make calm sound (I don’t know what the name of it is) and several times pushed his head to a microphone! Other episode I remember is when Tommy took off his coat, but then said: “No!” (people, maybe, wanted more “striptease”! xD ) - and showed his torso a bit.

People enjoyed the concert very much. I saw that two persons gifted bunches of flowers to Tommy. By the end of the concert some of people had stood from their seats and came to the stage: ones wanted to receive an autograph from Emmanuel (some guys came in concert with their guitars to have an autograph), and others just wanted to dance. And Tommy attended most of them! At least, he shook his hand with people from occasionally made “fan-zone” and, by the way, came to our parter by the stairs to do the same! Then he gave a “five” to some person which place was above the entrance into the stage and went from it back, though he came back for a minute because people applauded Tommy very much.

It was 10 p.m., but I didn’t feel those three magic hours, though I had much impressions from a concert itself, which I’ve tried to describe.