Seasick Steve

Source: http://www.speakup.com.br

Language level: A1 Basic

Speaker: Jason Bermingham and Chuck Rolando

Standard: American standard 

 source of the picture: guardian.co.uk

Have you heard of Seasick Steve? He is the biggest surprise in the music business today. He’s 70 years old, he looks like a homeless person, and he plays the blues on an old guitar with only three strings. His CD I started out with Nothin’ and I Still Got Most of it Left went high in the UK album charts. If you buy a copy, you can discover the magic of Seasick Steve.

BLUE MAN

Steve suffered a serious heart attack in 2004 and decided his music career was finished; but when he recovered, his wife convinced him to record his songs for posterity – just him  and his guitar. He made the CD Doghouse Music in his own kitchen in front of the fire, and the thought that was the end of it. He was wrong he was invited to appear on the BBC television show. Jools Hollands’ annual Hootenanny, on New Year’s Eve 2006, and he instantly became a star.

ON THE ROAD

Steven Gene Wold, who was born in Oakland, California in 1941, really was a homeless person. He left home when he was 13 years old to escape from his violent stepfather, and spent the next years travelling around the USA on freight trains and working on farms. In the 1960s he played gigs with legends like Lighnin Hopkins and Son House. He remembers. “The old blues-men all suddenly became famous. It lasted a couple of years and then they disappeared back to the farms.”

STREET LIFE

In the early 1970s Seasick Steve himself disappeared to Europe and became a homeless busker on the street of Paris. He later moved to Britain and worked as a sound engineer and session musician. He later went back to the USA and headed to Seattle, where he worked with Grunge bands like Modest Mouse. In the 1990s he lost his enthusiasm for modern music and moved to Norway –his wife is Norwegian. What does he think of his sudden success? “It’s a surprise for an old guy like me,” he says. “All these young people coming to see me that’s a real honor!”

See Seasick Steve’s  “Hootenanny” performance on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNoPNC3ebYQ .   

IRELAND, DOORS OPEN

 DOORS OPEN

Source of the picture: www.destinoviagem.com

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: C1 Advanced

Standard: British accent

U2 WERE HERE

In recent years Ireland has enjoyed an economic boom, even IF that stopped with the credit crunch of 2008. Yet life goes on in Dublin’s redeveloped docklands area. Here you will find the headquarters of financial and high-tech companies, such as Google, Facebook and Linkedin. The area also has plenty of new housing and there is a massive concert venue, the O2. Yet, as Loretta Lambkin of the Docklands Development Authority explains, the current economic crisis presents a challenge:

Loretta Lambkin

(Irish accent)

We also run a lot of events during the year, we have a huge event called the Docklands Maritime Festival, where we have tall ships and markets and street entertainment, so that we try and…enliven these areas all the time. So it’ll take a long time, and for Ireland to climb back out of the recession, it’s gong to take some time as well, and that has had a huge impact on us, but, you know, we continue to try and programme things to try and…and run things within our own capacities.

TOWER RECORDS

And it seems that even the legendary Dublin rock group U2 have felt the effects of Ireland’s current economic downturn:

Loretta Lambkin

U2 have always been synonymous with the Docklands area, they’ve always recorded all their albums down here. They started off in Windmill Lane, which most people would know. They now record most of their albums down in a studio in Hanover Quay. The plan was that we  would build a building called the U2 Tower and it would be one of the tallest building in the city, and at the top of that, the top two floors, would be where U2’s recording studios would be based: hence the name the U2 Tower. Now unfortunately, given the current climate, the economic climate in Ireland, we’ve had to postpone the project. So it is very much a live project in our plans for the future: however, it will be a couple of years away at this point. 

We want sex, movie...Interview.

INTERVIEW

Source: www.speakup.com.br
Language level: Advanced
 Speaker: Jason Bermigham
MADE IN DAGENHAM

The British movie Made in Dagenham which has been given a rather different title: We Want Sex (short for “We Want Sex Equality”) in many European countries, will be released in Brazil on DVD this month, under the title A Revolução em Dagenham. The film tells the true story of a strike that took place at the Ford Motor Works in Dagenham in 1968. It involved 187 female employees who demanded the right to equal pay. The film, which is directed by Niget Cole, stars Sally Hawkins, who plays Rita O’ Grady, the strike’s unlikely leader. As Sally Hawkins explains, the story is still relevant today:

Sally Hawkins

(Standard British accent)

Source of the picture: cinedica.com.br


Still, in this day and age, we’re fighting that fight. What’s so nice is the fact it’s from true life, it’s real, this happened, and these women set in motion. The Equal Pay Act you know, of1970s. It’s…without them, that wouldn’t have come about.

The film’s producer is Stephen Woolley, who discovered the story of the Dagenham women almost by chance.

Sally Hawkins

The story about how he came across this story and this fight and these women through the radio, through an article, and hearing these women speak, and hearing their voice, you know, obviously triggered something in Steve and he thought, “That’s…that’s the story I want to tell.” And, absolutely, he’s so right, and thanks God!

And Sally Hawkins says that she met the real women of Dagenham, more than 40 years after the event:

Sally Hawkins

I went to Dagenham: they’re still all there, and they’re still all friends, and they still have that camaraderie, and seeing that spark between them, and them sort of you know, being quite witty each other, quite cutting, but also, ultimately, they really love each other and they’re really good friends: it’s about that, really.

IN THE NAME OF POP (the Sixties)

Standard:British accent

Language level: Lower-intermediate

Speaker: Justin Ratcliff

Source: she-sins.blogspot.com

Source: www.speakup.com.br

IN THE NAME OF POP (the Sixties)

      Pop groups choose names to be memorable or stylish. These names become so familiar that we no longer notice their meaning. When you hear Genesis, do you think of the Bible? Do you think of water in the desert when you see Oasis?

      The names of great bands often have hidden meanings. Here we take a look at these origins, to understanding the music and fashions of recent decades.

INSECTS

      “Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’.” That is what John Lennon wrote in the Liverpool music magazine Mersey Beat in 1961 (this was before the Beatles were famous).he had tried various names: the Quarry Men, Johnny and the Moondogs, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beats. His final choice plays on words, suggesting insects, like Buddy Holly and the Crickets, but also “The Mersey Beat” (The rock’n’roll scene of  Liverpool’s River Mersey and “the Beat Generation.”

      Insects would not come back into fashion until the 1980s, with Adam and the Ants. But the Beatles certainly influenced two groups’ name. The Byrds and the Monkees. Playing with spelling has been common ever since. Def Leppard, Megadeth, Black Crowes, Phish.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE…

      In the early 1960s, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards started playing with guitarist Brian Jones. They took their name from a blues song by Muddy Waters, “Rolling Stone” (Later, in 1967, it would also be used as the name a new rock magazine). The phrase comes from a proverb: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” It’s a classic rock’n’roll sentiment: always keep moving, never settle down.

      Other band names capture that rock sensibility. The Animals sound wild. The Kinks sound idiosyncratic and sexy. “There’s nothing Kinky about us, “said singer Ray Davies. “Kinky is such a fashionable word: we knew people would remember it.”

SURF MUSIC

California band The Pendletones took their name from the Stylish Pendleton shirts. Imagine their surprise when they opened their first single. “Surfin,” to discover that the producer had renamed them the Beach Boys!

      Another classic band began as The Detours, then became The High Numbers, it is said that, while they were trying to think of a new name, guitarist Pete Townshend (who is now dear) kept saying “The Who?” They became The Who and the hits soon followed.

THE SUMMER OF LOVE

The late ‘60s’ brought psychedelic music, with the influence of sex and drugs. The Doors took their name from Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book on drugs. The Doors of Perception. Lou Reed’s group, The Velvet Underground, were inspired by a book on sadomasochism.

      Influenced by The Beatles’ psychedelic album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, many chose names reflecting their experimental music: the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Captain Beef heart and his Magic Band. Pink Floyd’s name comes from blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council: their original name, the Architectural Abdabs, was much more bizarre.

THE SEARCH FOR SIMPLICITY

      New bands reacted against this complexity. Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker considered themselves the best blues musicians, so they called themselves Cream. Other simple names include Yes, Free, Rush, Wings, Squeeze and Kiss. Freddie Mercury chose the name Queen for its ambiguous royal and transvestite connotations. Peter Gabriel nearly called his band Gabriel’s Angels, but decided Genesis sounded fresh and new. Van Morrison changed the Gamblers name to them.

      

Amy MacDonald

Source: of the picture  meninasnorock.blogspot.com


Source: www.speakup.com.br
Standard: British Accent
Speaker: Justin Ratcliff
Language level: C1 Advanced


Amy MacDonald

FOR THE RECORD

      A few months ago Speak Up featured an interview with the pop star Paolo Nutini. Nutini was born in Scotland in 1987 and so as Amy MacDonald, who has similarly taken the music world by storm.

      Both artists grew up near Glasgow. Nutini is from Paisley, while MacDonald is from  Bishopbriggs. The difference is that Nutini is a Catholic and so his favourite football team is Celtic. MacDonald on the other hand is a Protestant and support Rangers, while her English boyfriend, Steve Lovell, used to play for relatively minor Glasgow team, Partick Thistle.

MONEY AND MUSIC…

      In terms of music, Amy MacDonald made her recording debut in 2007 with the album This is the Life, which contained the hit single of the same name. The album sold three million singles. This is a remarkable achievement at a time when the music industry is clearly in crisis. And her sophomore album. A Curious Thing came out in March (2010). And yet, in spite of her commercial success, Amy MacDonald is reported as saying that she “hasn’t seen a penny” of the revenue, from her sales. We asked her to put the record straight.

AMY MACDONALD

(Scottish accent):

People reported that completely differently from what I said. It was actually a conversation on Twitter that I was having with fans, just people that were asking questions. And I was just answering them. And they were asking about album sales, and I never said that I’d never made a penny. What I said was that I hadn’t made any money from selling the actual CD. And that’s very normal, because the massive amount of cost that it requires to release an album. So, before you’ve even put it in the shops, you’re in a huge amount of debt to your record label, because they so kindly give you the money, so that you can live for the next year! So you’re in that debt, you’re in the debt of every penny that they spent on advertising, promotion, which obviously stacked right up. So you have to sell, I think about three million before you start earning on the album sales. So I think I’m like dead even now, like I don’t owe them anything, but obviously things are slowing down now, so there’s not really any album sales, happening. So that’s what that meant: I never meant that I was poor, or anything like that!

CELEBRITY

And how she is handling her celebrity?

Amy MacDonald

To be honest, I don’t see myself as a famous. And the whole fame thing I could take it or leave it. I’ve not really any interest. I just like music, and I like being a musician, and, for me, I think that it’s good that I’ve managed to have this very successful album, but I can still be completely anonymous because I don’t have the big beehive or I don’t flaunt myself in magazines, so people don’t really know what you look like. I think that’s a good way to be. I think they can have the voice and see the CD, but they don’t really know what you look like in a real-life scenario. So it’s good for me!

AS FOR LADY GAGA…

And she doesn’t seem to have problems with paparazzi!

Amy MacDonald:

But I think that  a lot of people actually court it. The one example that I know of was I was on a tiny flight with Lady Gaga, towards the north of Sweden. So there was, one flight a day to his place from Stockholm, and it was a festival. So everyone that was playing was on the same flight. So she was on the flight, and it was like she changed her wig three times in a hour flight, right? And it’s like: “Why else are you doing that? “Like and this is the thing. Like if she was wearing what I wearing what I was wearing, i.e. a hat and a pair of scruffy trousers and a jumper, nobody would have known who she was! But because she came out with three different wigs, one which was up to here, basically a bra and a pair of leather trousers and like boots that are that high, people know who she is instantly. And it’s just like: “Well, don’t moan about people following was wearing, nobody would even recognize you!” 

Anglesey

http://www.livefortheoutdoors.com picture


Source: http://www.speakup.com.br
Standard: American and British accent
Speakers: Jason Bermingham and Rachel Roberts







Anglesey it's one of the most beautiful Island of the United Kingdom as well as historical and touristic ones. In addition the village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobbwyllllantysiliogogogoch the longest name in the world, but the nickname is easier just Llanfain P.G, it's also a curious similar for Avatar by John Rigg

Source: www.speakup.com.br

THE ENVIRONMENT

Anglesey

The Isle of Anglesey is located on the North-west coast of Wales. It is one of the most beautiful regions of Great Britain, and has a long and important history. This month the Anglesey Walking Festival offers visitors the chance to discover the island, its legends and industrial past. The festival runs from May 28^th to June 12^th.

SURPRISES

The Walking Festival includes over 40 different walks. The Lligwy walk visits three historic eras: first a Neolithic burial chamber, then a Roman fort, and finally a 12^th century church on an isolated hill.

Another walk explores Parys Cooper Mountain with its amazing and colourful open mines. There are many surprises: the 13^th century Beaurmaris Castle, for example: King Edward I built this castle after he conquered Wales.

LEGENDS

Festival guides recount the island’s many legends. There was Madam When, a highway woman who terrorised the island’s rich merchants. There’s the Lane of Spirits. Where a ghostly Roman legion marches. And there’s Baumaris town clock: a prisoner in the town gaol cursed the clock before the execution. It hasn’t functioned since his death. The festival isn’t only for history lovers. There are also romantic speed-dating walks for single people. Then there is the new sport of Geocaching: a high-technology treasure hunt. Competitors use GPS navigators to find hidden treasures.

THE BRIDGE

Anglesey doesn’t appear to be an island. It is, however, separated from the Welsh mainland by the narrow Menai Strait. There are two bridges across the strait, the Menai Bridge and the Britannia Bridge, with its famous lion statues. On the mainland side, there are the magnificent Snowdonia Mountains; on the other, the flat lands of the island Anglesey was originally called ‘Mother of Wales’ (Mam Cymru) because of these fertile fields. It is now a recognised European area of beauty.

THE DRUIDS AND THE ROMANS no audio available

The history of the island is strangely similar to the recent Hollywood film Avatar. In the first century the Roman Empire conquered Britain. Anglesey was the last Celtic region. The Roman historian Tacitus recorded the Battle of the Menai Strait.

A line of Celtic warriors, men and women, stood across the water. Their leaders, the Druids, shouted terrifying spells.

Many roman soldiers were paralysed with fear. The Romans lost many men. After a terrible battle, the Roman army was victorious. They killed the Druids and destroyed their sacred oak trees.