Mark Poppen

You might not have heard of Anouk, but she’s The Netherland’s rock-chick. She’s an amazing singer. As a music loving designer, my eye caught Anouk’s new album cover. Apparently the gory-ness is not photoshopped, but the “Anouk logo” is, and it’s an upside-down one, and I think it’s awesome.

I’m a music junkie, and I can’t design without music in my ears. If it’s from my MacBook speakers, my Logitech speaker set or my epic JVC headphones, I need them to play something. Here’s a little list of tracks I like to rock out to when designing, just so you can get a drift of my music taste. In random order:

Paramore – Misery business (Listen)
Green Day – Basket case (Listen)
Weezer – Dreamin’ (Listen)
Anouk – Good God (Listen)
Prodigy – Omen (Listen)
Daughtry – Every time you turn around (Listen)
David Guetta – Gettin’ over (Listen)
Tiesto – Elements of life (Listen)
La Roux – Bulletproof (Listen)
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Suck my kiss (Listen)
Rage against the machine – Bombtrack (Listen)
Tenacious D – Master Exploder (Listen)
Skunk Anansie – Charlie Big Potato (Listen)
Muse – Uprising (Listen)
Arctic monkeys – Brianstorm (Listen)

“Hell yeah!” is an expression I hear all the time in this town. It’s a country-thing, I guess.

I love music, and I can’t do without. I get grumpy when I don’t listen to music longer than a few hours. My interest in music goes way back when I was a little kid. I even tried to play instruments, but failed because I didn’t have the discipline to practice on on a regular basis. Now I don’t have the time to fiddle around on a guitar, piano or drums.
In my teens I listened to a lot of 90’s Eurodance like Vengaboys (The Vengabus), T-Spoon (Sex on the beach) and 2 Unlimited (No limit and Ready for this) and when I grew up I understood more and more about music, and went back to realizing there was more than electronic music, and started to listen to stuff like Dire Straits, Roxette, Phil Collins, but overall (even in my “techno-years”) I stuck to 1 favorite band: Queen. Anyway. I’m just trying to explain that I’m open for new music.

Ever since I moved to Canada, I can’t really get around country music. There’s a bunch of country-music-radio stations and tv stations, and I learned to appreciate it. Artists like Carrie Underwood, Sugerland, Taylor Swift, George Canyon, Brad Paisley and Paul Brandt helped a lot.

Yesterday I was watching CMT, a Canadian country music tv station and I saw a show called “Gone Country“, where John Rich (from Big and Rich) was looking for a new star for the industry. Not just some random kid plucked off the street, but the contestants were Bobby (bad ass) Brown, Carnie Wilson, Dee Snider, Diana DeGarmo, Julio Iglesias JR, Maureen McCormick and Sisqo. It was interesting to see how people from completely different music/acting cultures tried to squeeze their way into the country lifestyle.
Bobby Brown gave it his all,
Carnie Wilson was “forgettable” (like Simon Cowall would say),
Dee Snider gave the audience “the finger”,
Diana Degarmo has a heck of a voice,
Julio Iglesias was playing the audience (especially that girl on the front row),
Maureen McCormick hesitated to go on stage,
And Sisqo did one of his R&B dance moves.

John Rich had a difficult decision to make, but chose Julio as the artist to make a country-single with him.

I’m eager to hear what Julio can bring when he actually has time to write a song, together with some big guys in the industry.

Check out my music library on Last.fm.

I’m a big music fan. The type of guy that gets goosebumps from live performances, lumps in his throat when somebody nails a high note in a Queen/Freddie Mercury-song and (something that drives my wife nuts) one who needs to know the artist’s name and title of a track before he goes to bed.

Thanks to @KathleenLD I got to see another cool thing. Ok, it didn’t give me goosebumps, nor did it make me cry, but this is freakin’ awesome! (I know, old clip yadda yadda, but I hadn’t seen it before).