Oups, nearly I forgot to inform you about that here, Most of you probably know that there is a second episode of AlionLive and have viewed it more or less completely. Yeah, the editing and uploading took a while again. Well, it is 6 parts with a runtime of roughly 15 minutes each. So it is roughly 1 1/2 hours. Most of the time took the creation of the english subtitles. I love it to see the number of viewers increasing slowly but steadily. This of cause encourages me to film more episodes and create new ideas for AlionLive. Many thanks to all of you again who let me know via mail, Facebook and Twitter, that they liked it. And here's the full second episode of AlionLive. Have Fun!
Today I have something very different for you than usually. Many of you might know my new video format AlionLive. If not, then have a look at it now. Each part of an episode of AlionLive is due to the maximum upload size of Youtube just under 15 minutes long and so far I have always accompanied it with my own music. Yesterday I got the idea to now also offer the possibility to other musicians to get their music featured in AlionLive episodes, and gain additional people to get to know about the music of rather lesser-known artists. And if I know one, then it is that independent artists who do not have a major record deal, can not have enough, namely promotion. And this I would like to provide to you, dear reader, if you are a musician. If you are concerned that unscrupulous people then just steal the music from the video and may no longer buy your MP3s, I can reassure you. Since I more or less talk over the music, the whole would be more of a mixed blessing ;). So what are you waiting for? Your music could already be presented in the next AlionLive episode. On request, a link to your website is displayed or a purchase link to the MP3. So you can directly gain new customers from AlionLive. The whole thing is very simple: You send an email to alionsonny@alionsonny.com and possible high-quality version of the song you like to have presented at AlionLive. We will discuss everything else then. I look forward to your mail! Ah, and by the way: This is all for free!
First I want to apologize to the visitors and users of alionsonny.com for som inconviniences, which occured during the past weeks. Somehow the songlist was not updated correctly, and because of that my entry for the Leah Rosier Remix Contest aswell as my Teddybears cover "Punkrocker" did not appear. Somehow that had to do with some databasetable and I don't want to bore you with technical details. This should be fixed now. I took the opportunity to work a bit further at the website. Since quite a time there are some not so nice problems with the site, which are actually quite serious security leaks in conclusion with our all the time beloved hackers. I am not talking about real and serious hackers here, but rather about so called script kiddies who feel very cool, if they manage it to break into a private website and fuck something up. So I fixed some fat problems connected to the main database core classes, which caused at least some ugly PHP error messages. Ok, and during the next weeks I will fix some minor problems, which for example fuck up the CSS regularly. And I will extend the website. Yes, right: There wil be NEW STUFF on alionsonny.com. I seriously think about implementing optional registration for user accounts, to supply, for example a newsletter for REAL fans. Let me surprise you! I'll close this posting with apologies upfront for any inconviniences which may occur as result of the work at alionsonny.com. It is no "work at the open heart of the site", because I have a quite good development environment here, which allows me to test the modules before I put them online. But minor errors and bugs are allways possible. I ask you explicitly, to send me mails if you come across stuff which doesn't work or look like it should over a longer period of time. That way I eventually get to know about errors which I did not notice. Thanks in advance for your patience and help!
Well, my listeners really has to wait a long time since my last song release. But as some kind of a compensation for this, the new release is really something special. Some time ago a friend pointed me to the music of a swedish band, called Teddybears and I quickly learned to love their music. Especially I liked a song they had released with one of the founding fathers of Punkrock: Iggy Pop. It was a song titled "Punkrocker". If you dont know the original track and want to give it a listen, just go to Youtube and search for Teddybears and Punkrocker. I would have liked to embed a video here, but the last time I linked to a video of that song either the video had been taken down or there was that familiar message, that the video was not available in my country. So, go and search for yourself and you'll find. Well, and because I liked that song SO much und I started to re-create the instrumental part in my sequencer software, I thought to myself "Hey, why not do a coverversion?". And if you think, that my version like most of my songs will be instrumental, i can and must surprise you. No, it is not an instrumental version, and now for the surprise: I sing it myself! Yes, this is quite a rare thing, and I'll do it again very soon. On can say that I found my vocalist voice once again. The song is NO on-to-one copy of the original. It has the typical alionsonny sound & flavor. At least this is, what the first reactions by listeners told me and I think they are right. They said that this track has the typical alionsonny sound, just a bit "different". Well and now enough words, here's the song:
To celebrate the end I want to mention that the next episode of AlionLive has been allready filmed yesterday. It features a biketour to the Sachsenwald, a forest near Hamburg / Germany. Alltogether I filmed about four hours of video material. This is roughly 1/3 or 1/4 of the material filmed for episode one. However, I will NOT use the ful about four hours of material, but only the highlights. This will be a funny and lengthy video cutting session. The episode is, as announced in german language, but will have english subtitles. Well, and that's it. I'm off for cutting video!
Here's something new from me again. This time you can see me live, private and in colour on video. I know that this will be a shocking experience for some of you, but I love it soooo much to surprise, baffle and sometimes shock you all out there. So, what's it all about? It is some kind of a lifevideoshow, in which I want to show you a bit of the stuff you don't know about me so well. Well, some of you folks complained about that I am too alien and unaproachable, even tho I am quite open in my communcation online. But with those videos which go under the working title "AlionLive", I want to even more become your "musician next door". The whole thing is planned as a mix of information, comedy, music and purest madness. The first episode has allready been published on Youtube and the filming began 1 1/2 weeks ago. It shows in four parts a walk thru the nature reserves in the north of Hamburg / Germany, of cause spiced up with some of the best alionsonny music. So here's episode one of AlionLive. Have Fun!
This idea came to life because of a listener, wondering about all the songs I had released since July 2004, and he didn't know abut most of them. Well, some people seem to have major problems visiting and browsing the songs section of alionsonny.com. For all those people and those who are simply too lazy to browse thru the huge load of songs which stacked up since 2004, I created a new service: I'll daily randomly pick one song as the "alionsonny random Song of the day" and post it on the social network sites I am on, especially on Facebook. So I hope to get especially my older songs to my new listeners and friends. So here we go with the first "alionsonny random Song of the day". It was first released on February 27th 2007, and it is "Progress (feat. MC Dubbel-U Bush)":
Yeah, some time has passed since my last song release. This is due to some other projects I am working at and, I confess, some kind of lazyness. But I am back with something special. There's a great Reggae vocalist from Holland and her name is Leah Rosier. I REALLY advise all of the reggaelovers amongst my listeners to check out her music. YOU WILL LOVE HER! Leah and Dubbhism started a remix contest on her song "Irie" recently and as I found the vocals really great and felt like doing a remix at all, I gave it a try. Well, first my other projects kept me from working at it most of the time, but then, 3 days ago, I wanted to finnish it. What I had on my mind when I first listened to the accapella was the "Ghetto People" or "Lalabella" riddim. When I listened to the accapella on it's own, imagining what bassline etc. could fit for it, there was allways the bassline of that riddim. Strangely after a time, there was also another thing which came to my mind: The chord progression of Blue Oyster Cults "Don't fear the Reaper". When I told friends about that, they said "Sonny, you did far too long listen to that accapella. You must have audio hallucinations!" ;) Ok, so I had the idea, that somehow I would put at least influences of both of those songs into it. Then I had the idea to go even further and put modified (or like some friend said malformed/mutated) versions of 2 other classic riddim basslines into it: The Slengteng Riddim and my beloved Alibaba Riddim. I f you hear closely to my version of Leah's "Irie" you will hear them for sure. Well I got hooked on that accapella and I will publish another version which will be very different from the one I have done yesterday. Yes, the remix has been released yesterday allready. The contest rules say I may not upload this song anywhere than on Soundcloud until 17th of April when the contest ends. After that I will for sure upload it on alionsonny.com and all the other music upload sites on the great wide web. Until then, you find the song ONLY on Soundcloud, but you may also download it for free from there, just as allways. Enough words, here's the music:
