jphone.org - 2008 July 16

Happy Wednesday everyone! I have been on the quest to find some new music to listen to and have currently become quite intrigued with a band called Romantica. This band has blown me away with the first song I listened to. I literally stopped what I was doing and rushed to my iTunes store and quickly purchased all of their albums.

With an album on Paste Magazine's top of 2007 and comparisons popping up all over the place between lead singer/songwriter Ben Kyle and both Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams it probably won't be too soon before you will be able to catch them at a venue near you.

I was reading up on the band and I read an interview that S.J. Barlament had with Ben Kyle on how the band started that I thought was interesting:

"We were a group of friends in school. Luke and I first played together nearly 10 years ago, but the band didn't form until 2002. I essentially gave up music for a few years to study painting. I figured I couldn't do both seriously. I sort of told myself that once I finished my degree I could start playing music again... And that's when the band formed. We were signed really early (within a few months) to a local indie label. Our violinist quit during the first recording, so we asked Jessy Greene to come in and play the string parts and she's been with us ever since (although she's not touring with us because she's touring with a slightly bigger band called the Foo Fighters at the moment)."

"The philosophy of the band is changing, and the more we tour the more it's becoming about the 4 guys on the road (Luke Jacobs, Tony Zacccardi, James Orvis and myself), as we develop new material and arrangements during our live shows. But until now it's really been about a fluid group of musicians collaborating around the songs that I write."

This band is full of such heart and soul and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I have. And please make sure to check them out if they are ever in your neck of the woods. I am eagerly awaiting them to come to San Francisco! Enjoy the music and as always, enjoy your day!

At least vacation, time for 5 weeks holiday!
Me and my family are now at a little island called ?land (placed between Sweden and Finland). We rent a little nice house at Ecker?.

I always try to test new devices on the road. This time I bring with me: a SonyEricsson G900, a Nokia N810, a Nokia E61 and also my Macbook Air. Perhaps you wondering why I have to bring two mobile phones? My G900 is my small always used mobile phone, my E61 is my perfect Email device, thats thanks to Nokia Email (push out Email from my Google's Gmail account). My N810 I use for writing in my Google blog (thanks to the perfect software called MaemoWordPy) and I also use it for gps navigation in my car. My Macbook air I use for transfer pictures from my Camera, but I think it is to big for this type of travel, I plan to perhaps buy me a Asus EEE PC 901 instead.

But bad times happen (why now?), yesterday at home a stroke of lightning destoy my router and also my ADSL modem, now I don't get any Email any more and my web site www.ojn.se don't work any longer.
Also today my wayfinder software at my N810 suddently became corrupt and navigation don't work any longer either. I had to go back to manually navigation, a paper map and my wife, she always does a good work. :-)