What would you do if I sang out of tune?

'I get by with a little help from my friends' - a song made famous by two artists and a TV show which arouses nostalgia whenever it is brought up in conversation. One of the artists is the above but the original composers of the song are of course, The Beatles.

On Saturday I was focused on the later version of the song at RMF, next to the famous Kopiec Kosciuskzi, for the purposes of correcting a Polish singer as he attempted to emulate the fantastic performance of Mr. Joe Cocker seen above in all his glory at Woodstock. Not only had the singer to perform in front of me and the two sound engineers but also three representatives from 'Open Finance' who were using the song to advertise the bank. So for about three hours we sat and worked together to get the singer to imitate the great performance of a Beatles classic.

The major pronunciation problems for me were with 'work' and 'buddy' with the latter sounding like 'body' which may have taken away from the innocence of the song had the line been
'All I need is my body'.

In the end the singer nailed it pretty well on the head with a throat rasping Cockeresque performance. There had been an earlier suggestion that he either smoke 20 cigarettes or drink some 'spirytus' (I don't think this word needs to be translated to get the meaning) in order to get that throat wrenching effect but it turned out pretty well without the need to resort to such drastic destructive methods.

I haven't been able to get the song out of my head since. Anyway have a listen as it should be coming your way soon and let me know if you think it is a worthy cover version.

Another Year

So another increase to the millenium and another chance to start again with new aims and goals.

Personally, I always feel the beginning of the school is the beginning of the year for me as this is when everything changes. Nothing really changes in January, but in saying that I am going to use this new year to try to take an optimistic approach and not focus on giving up things but on achieving aims, most notably; raising my level of Polish, studying hard, getting fit and making something to be proud of in music and writing.

These aims have not changed from last year except perhaps the getting fit one as I sense my metabolism is beginning to slow down meaning I must speed up my activities to counter this.

Time will tell if these aims are achieved but if not ... well ... there's always next year.