Showing posts with label billie holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label billie holiday. Show all posts

Friday, September 9, 2011

Londinium

On Tuesday this week, it was exactly 3 years since I moved to Ireland. I arrived with my suitcase late on a Saturday evening, slightly hungover from my leaving party night out in Manchester.  It was also on Tuesday this week that I accepted an offer to start a new job in London.  I've been looking for a while now and I've had quite a few interviews on the way, but out of all of them, this is the one I would have picked if I'd been given the choice - so it's worked out well :)

Living in London has been my dream ever since I was 17 and I used to go down over the weekend to visit my sister in South Ealing.  The mix of people from all over the world, the energy, the excitement, the fast paced life, the smell of the underground, the massive range of restaurants, the style and the city life.  I'm sure it will be quite different living there, to actually visiting there.  But it's nice to have one of my dreams come true.  I've been lucky with the timing too - 2 of my best friends recently moved there along with having some existing friends there already so I'm not going to be all on my ownsome lonesome.  In addition to this though, the other half of the musical duo I am in, also lives in London.  Due to our distance, we've only written a couple of songs together so far but I think we're both really excited to start working together again.  Our collective name is "Bilamie" and the name comes from 2 of our favourite artists: Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse - our music so far has been in a similar vein too - jazz/blues/funky soul.  I have to admit, I'm terribly excited.  I really miss being in a band and the buzz of playing live.  I really feel alive when I'm singing.

So it's a big time of change in the next month.

But in addition to all this, I am going to be back in my home land, for Christmas :)

Friday, March 19, 2010

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Cover Versions on Demand!

One of my friends (who is also a musician!) had an idea that we should both choose 3 songs and the other person has to choose one of those songs and cover it!

So he gave me the option of these 3:
Otis Redding - Try a little tenderness
Imogen Heap - Half life
Joe Cocker - My father's son

I know other songs from all 3 artists but don't know the actual songs at all, so I got home last night and downloaded them from iTunes... I was really tempted to cover Half Life because I like Imogen Heap, but then I thought that My Father's Son was quite a simple song and I would be able to do more stuff to it to make it my own but in the end I chose Try a Little Tenderness, simply because I loved the vibe to it - think I need to invest in a bit more of Otis Redding... So last night I started practicing... The bloody chords were wrong on all the internet sites (I think they just copy from one another so if the first ones wrong, then they all are!), so first I had to work out the correct chords. It went quite well, but I need to practice it more yet...

The 3 songs I picked are:
Joni Mitchell (obviously!) - Carey
Whitney Houston (obviously haha!) - Saving All My Love For You
Billie Holiday - These Foolish Things

So I'm waiting to find out which one he is going to cover now! Woo!