The Return of Ryan

I love to blog about my favourite music musicians. Some of them are just extremely good and people just fail to take notice, or maybe it's the my taste of music. There's a two way arguement. Anyway, I'm stuck with my ANTM (Next Top Model) post as my description at the moment would put anyone to bed, so I'm working on it. And since ANTM is longer as exciting as before, it contributes to lack of expression in the some of my words. But it should come soon.
So back to the musician part, this artist has not released an album since 2005 so it has been a long wait from a fan like me. He is one of my favourite musicians, Ryan Cabrera!!
After releasing two albums before in 2003 and 2005 , he is finally out with a new one called The Moon Under Water, released on 13 may 2008. It's definitely been a month full of new stuff, didnt expect it.
Well, he claimed it's his best work so far. So here came of his biggest fans, eagerly listening to the album. Firstly, the biggest problem of all............BIG PROBLEM. Who is this!
The picture I first saw wasn't with any captions. I was wondering why the hell is this guy's picture doing on Ryan Cabrera's page (probably some lyrics page). After looking closer for at least 10secs, I was like OMG.......it's him. How can that be him. What happen to the other Ryan.
Where are you man!

So to the music, I haven't thoroughly listened to it. But my first impressions on some songs have let me down on a few occasions , hopefully not this one.
The album starts of with Between The Lights, which really sounds quite fresh, somewhere he hasn't really touched before. Then all I could remember except for Say, most of the front songs all have the beat in them like the first song. The last few songs are the slower ones and they are quite nice. And it ends with I Will Remember You , which was released last year but this one has a different tune than the one released previously.
Rating based one listening to it once. 8/10. His voice is exactly the same, I just think he tried to improvise on his songs and trying something new. Some songs have very attractive beats, but no recommendations yet. As I say in all my posts, "Catch the album when you can".

~deyao~ is falling stupid for the song "Fool" and the singer.

Back From The Dead

OMG!! I am proud to announce to all Prison Break fans. Sara Tancredi is ALIVE!
Is this show finally going to win back some lost viewers.... According to this article HERE. which I am sure is really reliable.
I was really suspicious at the end of Season 3 when they Mahone said "Sara is the weal link". I was thinking to myself, why the hell would she be a weak link when she is dead. Now we know why Sara is being one, she's bloody alive! She's back in the job after having her child.
I am so happy! This could add some spice to show as the third season was virtually a disaster.
She is so back! She is so back! I am so excited!! The hottest doctor I know..haha
A Michael and Sara reunion? I am so looking forward to it. Their 3rd ever kiss? haha, I'm too much of a fanatic.

~deyao~ is overjoyed.

Marie Digby at DeepRockDrive

I've experienced a live concert before , but not a live online concert. And as I said before, two live performances in a space of 5 days , this was certainly beyond even a dream. Freshly back from her tours in Singapore and Malaysia, Marie was back in the US, and she went to the Vegas for her live concert for the entire world. Anyone with an internet connection could have watch her live performance.
A frequent visitor to her YouTube channel and her MySpace, the news was delivered. It was presented by DeepRockDrive and brought by Pepsi. Despite her recovery from jet-lag and the heat of both countries, she showed no signs of any shortcomings. 3pm in Las Vegas time would be good for people in the US, but it was 6am on the next day for people in Malaysia. But no worries for anyone, Wesak Day came to the rescue.
Up I was at 5.50am, anxiously waiting for the show to start. Internet connection and power supply please don't let me down, this is almost once in a live time opportunity. At the end, everything was above my expectations, the video and sound quality was excellent, and the most important thing was the comparatively slow Streamyx didn't disappoint me.However it did let someone else down.
At least some quick thinking left me some souvenirs. Print Screens/Screenshots. Now I can share it with everyone. Click to Enlarge!!
Here's the first screenshot I took, clock at the bottom for evidence. As you can see there are quite interesting interactive stuff, virtual claps and chat box where text could be seen by her. The video was showing her tuning her guitar.
As you can see at the right hand side, you could vote for the next song. The majority song would appear on her screen and she would play the song. Since Fool was my current favourite, so I voted. And sometimes, people do think the same way as you. And so it was Fool as the first song. YEAH!!! So happy...such a nice a nice song. But things were short lived, the next song I voted for was left for the very end.
Well, I voted for "Better Off Alone" and it was never played until the very end. Haha. Then she played her hit single Say It Again. That was a pretty obvious choice. Oh yeah, the guitarist is Lance and her drummer is Craig who has played for Josh Groban.

As you can see, there was plenty of interaction between her and the fans. She responded to some of the questions between songs.

Then it was to the piano for Stupid For You.


Next up , it was Umbrella. Then, it was two very emotional and difficult songs of all, Spell and Miss Invisible. Worst still, it was back to back.You could see her pouring so much emotions on Miss Invisible. She explained her story of Miss Invisible, which is practically a page out of her journal. When she was 13, she ate lunch alone at the library and later went to the bleachers (benches) in front of the field as you couldn't have much a view in the library. She said she was to be blamed for not making the effort of making friends knowing there were many others like her.
After that, she spoke of her relief when she was given Girlfriend, a more lively song. In the mean time, as being half-Japanese, she spoke a few lines in Japanese to show she speaks fluent Japanese. She sounded exactly like one. I was very impressed.haha.She didn't translate what she said though.

And lastly, she closed it with Better Off Alone and Beauty in Walking Away. And like all concerts, there was an encore with a fitting song, Unfold.
She really deserves a big thanks from all the fans. Which artists in the world does a free online concert. Her performance was wonderful and very dedicated. I wonder sometimes, first album is about her personal stories, when those stories run dry, I am thinking what is she gonna come up with. Thank you so much Marie!

~deyao~
My next post would be on ANTM cycle 10 without revealing the winner.

Marie Digby in 1U

Didn't expect myself to be blogging about her for this many times. But really, an album which impresses me this much plus watching her perform LIVE twice in 5 days , I think there's quite a bit to talk about. So here I went to her free showcase on 14/5/2008. Thanks to Loon Hung for accompanying me to the event after long uni hours, or else I don't think it would that great. Well, Marie being a 'leng lui' convinced him to go, so I had no problems persuading him to go with me.haha!
Here's the advert for the event.

My goodness the grand prize was there up for grabs, meet and greet passes....thats like unbelievable. However, consolation only for me, I'll take it any day. Saves me some cash too.
The event apparently was going to start at 8pm so I was telling Loon Hung , we need to be right in front , so by 6.50pm we were there, on the 3rd row. Well 1 hour plus wait wasn't gonna be bad, but all the pre-event activities dragged it all the way till almost 9 until it started. We were like waiting forever and standing so long, the crowd was mad and everyone could barely move.
So things finally kicked off, shutterbugs as usual raised their cameras like crazy, the screaming was deafening .
So here are some photos from the event. I sourced most of them from around people's blogs and flikr pages cause their pictures were so much clearer with their high tech gadgets and becoz most of them have special zone passes which are so near. So credit to all the photographers.
Here's the a shot to show the entire stage. Btw, she brought her guitarist , Lance.


You could see she was pretty excited being in Malaysia the first time and playing in front so many fans. She kicked off obviously with her hit single "Say It Again", which probably the crowd's only song they fully knew.



Marie tuning it up! No short of enthusiasm at all.


Marie performing "Stupid For You" on the piano. The song which portrays her tough time of asking guys out.Haha!



Marie did a lot of communicating with her fans. I think she complained many times on our "lovely" hot weather.



Marie performing her emotional "Unfold" and "Beauty In Walking Away". Those so called fans were like busy taking pictures, and I couldn't see another person singing along. I mean this are her "it" songs. You could really feel the meaning of the songs when she sings them.



She gave a lot in her performances, but sadly I could see many of those fans not knowing what song she was singing . Cameras make no mistakes, she is that beautiful! She also sang Fool (my current fav) and her song for Gap, Paint Me In Your Sunshine.



Close Up!


Working her fingers on the guitar! She closed the showcase with her trademark song, Umbrella. She pleaded to the crowd to sing along, well I think many of them only knew the "ella-ella, under my umbrella" part. Lol.

The closest I got, when she was walking to her autograph session. Luckily she had I huge bodyguard.


I'll try to get pics from loon hung if possible and would upload them if they are good. So here's the 1 of 2 review by me. Next would be her DeepRockDrive online concert which was held 3pm in Las Vegas, so it was 6am on Wesak Day for me. Nevertheless, I had some screen shots and hopefully I could get them up soon. Hope you liked the pictures.

~deyao~

The Girl with The Fairy Tale Story

At this present moment, I am totally overwhelmed by Marie Digby's talent, album and her story. After listening to so many interviews by her, I got to know more of her story. As I said a fairy story,starting with bitter beginnings and now she has such a wonderful career that is just starting to take off. So let me summarize what I know so far.

Summary of Marie Digby
She started playing the piano at the age of 3! and the guitar at the age of 17. She never thought she had any talent when she was at school. In school, she couldn't really fit in with her class, people didn't like her and apparently this beauty had acne all over.She ate lunch alone everyday and even the library. The story is depicted in her song "Miss Invisible". She proclaimed herself as a nerd and she played lots of tennis during her school years. Then the point of change came when she decided she wanted to make it in the music industry so she made an album. But unfortunately, the recording label had not given the album much publicity and advertising , hence the album didn't make it. One day, she thought of using YouTube to promote herself, randomly she chose "Umbrella" by Rihanna as it was a hit at that time and there were better chances of people "accidentally" running into her link. After weeks, thousands of people had known about her clip and it spread like cancer. People embedded her clip on websites, blogs and even made it a featured clip on YouTube which obviously drew more crowd. She then put up more covers and songs she originally made herself. Things took off from here. She released her album Unfold on 8 April 2008 and she has been touring since.

A few factfiles
1. Most of her songs are based on her true stories.

2. Voice on the Radio was written because she fell in love with a lead singer of a a popular punk/rock band. She refuses to reveal who.

3. Her middle name is Christina.

4.Say it Again was written to neutralize the sadness of songs in her album.

5.Rihanna never contacted her about her cover.

6. The song Unfold was not meant to be released because it was too personal.

7. She wrote most of at of her songs when she was alone when her family were out for months.

8. Spell is her favourite song in her album.

9. The nearly 7 million views Umbrella video on YouTube was recorded in just 20mins after she listened to the song in the car.


So that's about it for those who barely know her, I would be posting pictures and reviews of her performance from 1U and Singapore soon. And again, listen to her album when you can, it's so good! haha..Here's one her pictures from wednesday in 1U.



~deyao~

4 weeks later.

4 weeks ago, I knew nothing about this show,now it's certain to be the top of my list. Thanks to the huge, i mean very huge influence by 2 sisters and plus months of free time, I had no reason to not watch this show - Grey's Anatomy. Credit to Rong for burning the episodes for me, or else it would take really long to download. Now it's my turn to give some summary of this incredible shows that has won so many awards.

So here it goes, the shows evolves around the main character Meredith Grey , starting as an intern trying to follow the footsteps of her famous mother. She wakes up on her first day of work with an unknown man named Derek. As usual it was "Ditch the man, get on with life" and she went to work. She meets with her fellow interns and things proceeds as usual at Seattle Grace Hospital........until she was asked to get a 'neuro' consult from Dr.Shepherd, the head of of neurosurgery. She couldn't believe her eyes, her attending (her resident's boss), is Derek Shepherd, the man that she slept with just the night before. And the story move on from here.

This is the current cast for Grey's Anatomy.


Small introduction abt the cast members.

Meredith Grey. She is the main character of the as mentioned earlier.Her mother left her when she was young.Her father left for someone else. In earlier parts of the shows, people knew her because she had a famous mother, but she broke out of it. She has a very funny relationship with her "McDreamy".





Derek Shepherd. The head of neurosurgery.He is an attending. He is known to be the best in his field. His relationship with Meredith is no secret in the hospital. Things went really controversial when he revealed he had a wife that cheated on him. Nurses go crazy over him.






Christina Yang. She is known to be Meredith's best friend. She has a relationship with an attending which has caused her to go crazy about cardiothoracics. Potentially the best intern among all.She is not exactly the friendliest person to know. She has a very weird mom which she really goes bonkers about.





George O'Malley. An intern. He is one of the nicest people on the show. His relationships are really complicated because he falls for too many people. He is also involved with his resident. One of his best moments was performing surgery in an elevator.






Isobel "Izzie" Stevens. Played by the beautiful Katherine Heigl. She is one of the fun characters in the show. She moved in with Meredith since the beginning. She has been accused on several occasions to be too emotionally attached to patients like Denny Duquette. She did one hell of a job drilling a man's skull by listening to instructions over the phone. "I am a rockstar!".






Richard Webber. He's the Chief of Surgery, which means he's the boss of everyone. He is like the best person you can ever have as a boss. He is such a nice person. He once said "Think of me as a principal, the nice one". He and Derek share a very odd similarity - affair with a "Grey".





Alex Karev. One of the interns. He is sometimes unlikeable but overall he is good when persuading people or giving advice. I don't think anyone really likes him, except this girl he saved from a crash. He was once with Izzie and even had spells with Addison.







Miranda Bailey. She is the Chief Resident and was formerly a resident to the interns. First thing that comes to my mind, she is the "Nazi", although no one dares to call her by that name anymore. She is really intimidating and she fears no one, especially Derek as her boss.







Callie Torres. She is the head of Orthopedics. She made her debut when George dislocated his arm. She seems so vicious when she tries bend dislocated joints. She is very close friends with Erica. Somehow, she reminds of Jordin Sparks.








Mark Sloan. Head of Plastic Surgery. Formerly good friends with Derek. He was hated very badly by Derek because he was with his wife. He proclaims himself to be the best out there you can find. He has been said to have slept with many nurses and now they are all against him. Luckily for him, patients that come to him are not in a life or death situations.






Lexie Grey. She is an intern from the second batch. She is a "Grey", so this makes all that much more interesting. But she's not Meredith's real sister.







Erica Hahn. She is the Head of Cardiothoracics from Season 4 onwards. She had a cameo role in the previous season for a heart transplant. It was revealed she finished second behind Burke in school. She once said being half the man Burke is , is pretty damn good.






Addison Montgomery. She was the Head of neo-natal surgery. She deals with all the babies and pregnancies. She caused the biggest surprise at the end of season 1. One of the funniest parts was her having poison oak and Derek laughing. Really miss her !





Preston Burke. He was Head of Cardiothoracics. He is the best heart surgeon out there. He was nearly appointed Chief of Surgery. He played a big role on the development of Christina. He asked Christina to move in with him. He left in season 3 in an unforeseen manner due to off-set issues.






McDreamy in the elevator with Meredith , Addison and Rose! Mark had to taunt him...haha



So here's my summary on the show and on the characters. My take on this show would be a 9/10 which means it is really good. I'm sure the awards won by the show speak for themselves. Highly recommended to everyone.(Note: Not all descriptions are totally up to date and I've omitted some so the whole story isn't thrown away )

~deyao~

A Song To Share

A song by Marie Digby called Voice On The Radio. The lyrics and music are really good. Click play below if wanna hear it ! Enjoy!



Last night I fell in love with a stranger
Behind the glass house he came walking out the backdoor
Into a crowd of screaming girls calling his name

I never saw it coming, the way a voice can make me feel
And I fear that I am falling
I should be old enough to know
Not to fall in love with the voice on the radio

So here I stand fighting what I feel for you
Torn between what reason says and how I really feel
And here I stand, wondering what to say to you
Hoping that you feel the same, the same as I do

He's in a rock band with a voice like an angel
And eyes of a raven sky
And suddenly I find myself twelve years old again
Dreaming of you

But who am I kidding to even think that you might see me
It's in the stars that girls like me
And boys like you were never meant to be

So here I stand fighting what I feel for you
Torn between what reason says and how I really feel
And here I stand, wondering what to say to you
Hoping that you feel the same, the same as I do

Would you be scared if I told you I like you
And would you run if I told you I love you

Cuz here I stand fighting what I feel for you
Torn between what reason says and how I really feel
And here I stand, wondering what to say to you
Hoping that you feel the same, the same
As I do, as I do, as I do

I never saw it coming the way a voice can make me feel
And I fear that I am falling
I should be old enough to know
Not to fall in love with the voice on the radio

The "American Idol"

This David Cook performance on American Idol was fantastic. It's called "All I Really Need Is You" by Neil Diamond. I thought it was good, but when I heard the original song, I was like "how did he do that"...!!!


~deyao~

Highly Recommnended

Another week is almost over , more Grey's Anatomy episodes racked up, another album wrapped up. As I said before, Marie Digby has an album out. I've listened to it all week and a couple of times particularly on a few tracks. So here's some review.Another picture.
Firstly I must say, I am overly impressed by this young star. I didn't think she would be anything but a person trying to impress on youtube. But I got it totally wrong, the album has little hint of any wannabe or copycat. It sounds totally original. Whats more, some songs are of the highest quality , creativity is outstanding coupled with her brilliant vocals and skills on instruments, the album is nothing but great.

Highly Recommended Tracks
ALL!!!
ok, just kidding..
Say It Again
Stupid For You
Girlfriend
Traffic
Voice On The Radio
Unfold (Top Rated)

Those are the tracks are the ones I probably listened most, thats why. I can promise you other tracks are nothing short of being great. So check it out !

~deyao~