Luca Gargano

Another five days of great music from here & there. 9/366  I was looking for a song and ended up browsing through the Toto albums. I had to sit by the piano and play along. I’ve always loved this feeling in this song, and specially the chord progression.  10/366 What is Finnish pop and rock now? This is one example. It's summer, it's love, it's melody and feeling. It's knowing where you come from and how to stand on the shoulders of giants. I've always admired this young man! 11/366 What a terrible piece of news in the morning. David Bowie has died. Ziggy is gone. The stars look very different today. This is his goodbye to us. R.I.P. true genius and superstar. 12/366 I love italian music, almost everything. This is something I would love to be able to write - in any language. 13/366 Another example of pop music in Finland. There is nothing to worry when we have talented young people like singer-songwriter Sanni and her prod...

I was watching a Finnish music show from the 70's. The Finnish broadcasting company YLE holds a magnificient archive where you can escape years back - like this time I went into December 1976. The show Iltatähti was about the music year, and among it's songs there was this: a track from the solo album of guitarist Nono Söderberg. Guys, this was (almost) popmusic in the 70's! I love it.    I always love a good melody and in pop music melody (and feeling) are essential. I think this is a good example of today's popmusic. It's stuck in my head. It means it's good.    I couldn't sleep last night so I took my iPad and read the first chapter of Paul Stanley's Face the Music. It is an honest book about a guy who has lived the American dream - from rags to richez, from being the one-ear-monster with no friends to the Starchild everyone admires. I've always loved Paul Stanley because of his positivity towards things, people, life. He's the origin...

Samettiklubi täytti marraskuussa 14 vuotta ja edelleen iltamiin saapuu joka kerta uusia hienoja lauluntekijöitä esittelemään biisejään ja kertomaan niiden synnystä. Samettiklubi järjestetään nyt keväällä 2016 joka kuun ensimmäisenä tiistaina On the Rocksissa. Uusi lauluntekijäklubi Harmonia  toimii niin ikään kerran kuussa Kotkassa, Pub Jaakossa. Saan itse kunnian esiintyä siellä 11. maaliskuuta. Näin kertoo Harmonia-lauluntekijäklubin tiedote: Harmoniaklubi - ja niin syntyi laulu! Tammikuusta alkaen Pub Jaakon lavalla nähdään lauluntekijöitä läheltä ja kaukaa! Vanhat konkarit ja uudet tuttavuudet esittävät omia biisejään ja kertovat niiden synnystä. Keikan jälkeen lavalla on tilaa myös SINULLE, joka haluat esittää omaa tuotantoasi kotkalaiselle yleisölle ;-) Jos mielit lavalle niin ota pikapikaa yhteyttä facebookissa Pub Jaakon sivujen kautta TAI suoraan Sanna Pekoseen/Johanna von Hertzeniin. Klubi-illat avaa paikallinen laulaja-lauluntekijä Sanna Pekonen. Kotkalaisyl...

This time we go with a video! It's a very cold and sunny winter day, the temperature outside is below 20 Celsius degrees.  Music has a strong nostalgic power, and sometimes a song can bring you years back to where you first heard it or where it played an important role in your life - or was the soundtrack of major events in your life. This time I remember a day exactly like this one, cold and sunny. I was at home in Porvoo, I was 14 but didn't go to school that day - I can't remember weather I was sick or if it was weekend. I was watching music videos from Sky Channel (We didn't have MTV in Finland in 1987) as this came on. I was blown away. I mean I knew AC/DC already and I even had a couple of their albums, but only now I realized rock can be loud, fun, entertaining, self-ironic and cool at the same time. And they have "the Italian mother" at the end too. Or in Finland she would be called "Justiina".  I re-watched the video so many times my VHS...

It's Monday. I'm at work. The radio is on. Thin Lizzy. Today's the date of Phil Lynott's death. I wonder why with some artists you always celebrate their birthday and with others their death. And with John Lennon we always celebrate both. Here's something that I often find myself jamming when trying guitars or sounds.

The song for today is one of the finest moments in film music. Everybody's going to see the new Star Wars movie and of course it has a score written by John Williams, probably the best movie score composer of all times. Can you name over 10 movies with music by John Williams? 20? 30? Check out this list . I love many of his songs and compositions, but this one is special - perhaps because when I first heard it I was 9 years old and saw E.T. and the kids flying with their bikes. That magical moment is something I'll never forget. And this piece of music will always represent all the good things in the world, things that are possible if we want them to be. John Williams discography on Spotify. The full Luca's 2016 list is HERE.

The year 2016 started with the first song on side b of  Super Trouper.  You know what it is. We all know. A masterpiece. No more champagne and the fireworks are through. Here we are, me and you, Happy New Year ! During these first days of 2016 I ended up talking about Spotify and how I see it's better to have your music on it than not, even though from the artist's point of view you could earn more from having your music streamed... but then again I think we all would like to earn more than we do from whatever we do, and as I see it listening to a song can't be compared to what owning a recording used to be before. There are many many sides to his discussion and I'm not going that way at all right now, but instead I decided to share a new Spotify link for each day of this year. One argument in these heated discussions was that "music gets lost in Spotify", which I can't quite understand. (I think it gets lost if it's not there...) Anyway, the way m...