Admin Lisa Wagner
AdminForum Replies Created
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Hi Michael,
“Did you ever have to make up your mind if touring America with John Sebastian, John Sebastian himself, might work?” Seems like a clever way of dressing up the “When are you coming to America” question ;-P
It’s on our bucket list but for the time being touring isn’t in the cards yet.In this day and age going on tour and playing live has to be very well financed, planned and executed to be worthwhile. We learned from watching the history of other bands and the current state of the music industry – even the most well-known bands are struggling to break even. We’ll definitely get back on stage eventually but we have a whole lot of things we need to work on before that to make touring a sensible endeavour.
As to John Sebastian. We chatted with him on the phone just a few days ago and he is in the best of spirits enjoying life and music 🙂 It would be less a matter of making up our minds but what makes sense for everyone involved. “Touring America” is something that sounds easy and romantic but in reality looks a bit different, especially for Europeans.
However, in our own interest, we’re trying our hardest and bestest to move quickly and hopefully will get to travel more of the planet when the time is ripe to do so.
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Hi Tim,
Some people here have partly answered your question already but let’s see if I can elaborate a bit. When our grandma’s condition became too much for our grandpa to handle, she moved back in with us, into the home she grew up in (and that she also partly built herself – she was an architect). So she moved from the city back to the countryside, where we were living at the time.
The landscape is super flat to the east of Vienna – no hills, no valleys, very unlike the typical picture of the alps that people associate with Austria by the way 🙂 It makes the land appear endless. After a bit of an adjustment period we think grandma really loved being there again. She would go for SO many walks, literally up to 5 times a day at some points. There always was at least one nurse with her but we often joined her too.
She could walk for hours, singing, “talking” to us and the flowers and she loved meeting and petting the dogs she passed 🙂 And then she would suddenly stop in the middle of the walk, look into the distance and theatrically say “das weite, weite Land” (the wide wide land) while moving her arms to show the open scenery.
We assumed that she might be quoting the tragic comedy play by Arthur Schnitzler that we know she used to enjoy. But she might have also simply revered to what she was seeing: a lot of wide, wide land. It became more and more rare that she would speak sentences that would correctly relate to her environment so sentences like that really stuck out to us. Also she seemed very peaceful in those moments. It became a bit of a synonym to what her inner world might have looked like too. A calm but empty plain with less and less coherent thoughts.
Thank you everyone here for sharing your own family stories and tragedies. Dementia is a cruel illness, for both the person affected and their family and friends.
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Hi Steve, For all our shirts and hoodies you can click the “More Information” Tab on each product, to get the exact measurements. The tab is below the big image, right next to the “Reviews” Tab. Hope that helps 🙂
Have a look here for example: https://test4.monalisa-twins.com/product-category/clothing-monalisa-twins/And we’re happy to hear you enjoyed your Birthday greetings!
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Hello Greg!
Wonderful to have you here, we hope you’ll enjoy the ride (and more jigsaws to come 😉 ). Greetings to Los Osos ❤ -
Hi Ron, good idea. We won’t be able to print any in time for 2019 but if it’s something that many people are interested in, we’ll keep it in mind for 2020 🙂
Thanks,
Lisa -
Good question, Greg.
There are tons of things that have interested us over the years that we could potentially see ourselves doing in some other lifetime. The great thing about working and creating “MonaLisa Twins” is that for us this whole project (aka our lives 😉 ) is more of a manifestation of an overall “direction” we have chosen to follow that leaves so many opportunities and things to learn.
It allows (and demands) us to incorporate many “professions” and interests into this journey. So whether that’s photography, writing, screenplay, design, website programming, painting, social media etc., it all has its much needed place in MLT 🙂
A different early childhood fantasy about becoming a Zookeeper, horseback rider, vet or basically anything that has to do with animals has to wait for a different lifetime 😉 -
Hi Robert,
What I listen to on a day to day basis totally depends on mood, or I simply let my “random” button design my playlist which normally results in quite the mix of what I have saved over the many years. Obviously most of it is things from the 60’s with our biggest love being the British Invasion stuff from that decade. But on a day to day basis I find myself checking out all sorts of things. Let me scroll through my playlist real quick and give you an example of the mix in artists I’ve recently been listening to … Beatles (obviously), Dire Straits, Gilbert O’Sillivan, John Mayer, Billy Joel, Sondre Lerche, Nina Simone, John Martyn, Paolo Nutini, Madeleine Peyroux, Emitt Rhodes, Bo Diddley … So everything from current Jazz to old school rock n roll 🙂
Now of course that by no means means I “love” them all equally, but that’s just what recently kept me entertained through long video editing sessions.
As for a recent “current” discovery: I loved the musiciality on the “The Other Favourites”’s “Fools” EP. Simple, effective arrangements and great musicians. -
Haha, I forgot about the sock incident, that was a great one! “Eric the Fish” holding up a sock during our performance of “Bus Stop” (referring to our music video) cracked us up for sure!
Okay, let me think of some more examples (and there are plenty ;-))…– During Holiday season, a drunk Christmas elf tried to storm the Cavern stage. Very festive!
Or
– Mona misplacing her capo on stage not just once but TWO TIMES during a show, having to stop the entire performance super awkwardly! Looking around, scratching her head, audience members started to help her find it (Turns out she placed her silver capo on top of the silver bass drum … good move ;-))
In her defence I should add that this has been one of our very first shows we had played in Austria, and we were clearly not that organised yet haha
Or
– At a show in London we once accidentally locked ourselves and two other bands IN the backstage area (the already weak door handle decided to break that very moment). The compère who was about to announce us to the audience had to get us all out (while someone from the film crew who was locked in with us nearly had a panic attack!).
🙂
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Hi Jung, like you said, it depends on the type of performance, how long we’ve been playing with the other musicians for, how familiar we are with the set list, etc.
As a general rule we normally practise with the whole band once a week for several hours (when we’re performing – we’re currently still on a break). If we get a new line-up together or have a particularly important show coming up with a new setlist, we sometimes have a lot more and longer practise sessions until everyone is comfortable and grooved in.
On the other hand, during our Cavern residency for example, we had weeks where we (as a group) didn’t have any band practice at all, because everyone knew their part so well and we didn’t change the setlist each week.
It really depends, and of course I’m not talking about the practising everyone should be doing daily on their own anyway 🙂 Band practise was more of a way to go over details, work on performing, harmonies or refining arrangements and to get tighter as a whole.
Preparing for something like the Steve Harley tour is a lot different. Most of the songs were completely new to us, and we started learning our parts months ahead. We had the recordings and our ears to work with and to figure out chords, harmonies and our percussion, guitar and vocal parts. At one point we met up with Steve where we’d go over the tricky bits and any questions we had, or what he wanted us to focus on.
Then, two days before the tour started, the whole band got together (some flying in from South Africa) and we basically practiced for the whole 48 hours 😉 It was a tough schedule but we made it work. For things like that it is absolute key to come well prepared!
We had a ton of improvisation going on on that tour as well. The music and setlist really allowed for that. For the majority of MLT gigs, that is normally less of an element, though of course no show ever really sounds the same 🙂
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What an endlessly fascinating subject. Reading everyone else’s answers here I think is the best proof of how we all experience what music does to us in a slightly different way. I’d say the majority of people would agree that it is something so essential to the human experience that it almost takes on a mystical and philosophical element that is hard to put into concrete words. Like what is love or what does it mean to experience.
I never tried to formulate my thoughts around that subject but this is how I would currently do it, (though I’m sure people much cleverer than I have dug a lot deeper and worded it a lot more eloquently ;-)) :
In its most basic form I would say I consider art to be some kind of a short-cut way of communication. But in a terribly profound way. There is no setup needed, no explanation, often no words or even the need to understand the language. Some of the music that has moved me the deepest was long before I knew English well enough to understand the song’s lyrical meaning.
It transports feelings, thoughts, a state of mind, sometimes lyrics and ideas, memories, even physical sensations through nothing than some soundwaves hitting your eardrums. If you think about that for a while it becomes so mind-boggling that you can’t help but think music is some sort of weird unexplainable witch craft :-).
But next to watching a really captivating movie (which without music would still be dull as hell 😉 ) it’s probably the closest thing we have to travelling in time or space without physically moving.
I think people also enjoy and want music in their lives so much because, even in its most primitive forms, it always speaks to the part in us that looks for the comfort of harmony and patterns, of things coming together to form something coherent. Instruments, a beat, melody etc. turning into one.For creatures who very much dislike chaos and disarray I guess music is the easiest way of finding something that speaks to our need of having things play together in harmony. Again, in its most basic form. I believe that the most exciting and meaningful music then takes this concept and pushes the boundaries, shakes it up a little, leaves you with just the right amount of ease and unease to keep your attention.
Then there is a whole cultural aspect, the poetry/storytelling aspect, the way people use music as a way to identify and to belong, etc. The different purposes of music. To motivate, to regulate emotions, to relax or to heighten one’s alertness, get out anger etc. I mean, what music can do to one’s brain is simply insane. We tie memories and times of our lives so strongly to music. The kind of music we grow up with gets engraved pretty involuntarily into who and what we become in the future.
And then there is the whole aspect of creating music yourself. Learning and mastering an instrument, the repetitive and disciplinary aspect of that. The physical aspect of getting your body to produce what your mind wants to hear.
And then when it gets to the actual songwriting: Where does inspiration actually come from? What exactly is an idea and how can one influence one’s own ideas? How does one really produce ideas? What can someone do to build a foundation that’s going to allow good or even great ideas to be born? It’s all those weird, slightly abstract questions that once you start thinking about turns into such a huge subject that it hurts my head 😉
I’m sure people have written books about subjects like that, and I understand why – because a forum post is not going to cut it even in the slightest. Music, or art in general, is such a universally accepted concept and phenomenon taken for granted, but once you start looking into it more it becomes this unfathomably complex thing that so much of our reality is built upon.
To be able to partake in an artform this wonderful and strangely mysterious with the potential of bringing joy to a large number of people is amazing ♥
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We wanted the opening track to set the mood, to introduce the overall thematic arch of the album and to pay homage to artists and thinkers and the type of curiosity that had a profound impact on the future of society. People that knowingly or unknowingly ended up playing a role in stirring things up a little or a lot. The pursuit of truthfulness. Also as much as we draw inspiration from the past, and especially the 60s, it is the future that is yet to be written, that is yet to be shaped and experienced. We don’t romanticise the past. We believe there are lessons to be learned and a lot of wisdom to be taken on to help shape the future in the best way possible. That’s in a way everyone’s own responsibility and what makes the human experience so utterly exciting 🙂
Whether or not all that comes across in the track is up to the listener’s interpretation but those thoughts plus a big dose of sheer fun and experimentation was what was driving our artistic decisions for that track.
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For this video we had to approach it a little differently as we filmed the video before we even started recording our version of the song. In the video we were miming to the original tracks and only had a few hours in the car to memorize the chords, that’s why it’s not perfectly in synch at some points 🙂 Not our preferred way to shoot a music video but we didn’t have the time to get our version ready before we left for the States. So for the California Dreaming Project we decided to shoot all the footage and later work on the music for it. But it worked and gave us enough time to concentrate on the music in peace after our trip (plus we were really inspired by the US adventures which I think helped us in the studio too).
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Oh, no worries, we were both that wreckless haha. I think in the video you can only see me but Mona was just behind me. We went skydiving for our 18th Birthday. Turns out, jumping out of planes can be a lot of fun as long as there are parachutes involved. We told you that we will do almost anything to get good video footage! 😉
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When we’re at home, talking German I’d only ever pronounce it the German way (as you say, more like “Leesa” or even “Leeza”). On the other hand, when I’m introducing myself to someone in English and I’m in “English speaking mode” I’d pronounce it in more an an “English” way. Funny and a little strange when I think about it but that’s how it comes out. 🙂
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Hmmm. One might think that could be a simple one word answer, but we give you the long version: When it’s just the four of us we mainly talk German. It would feel a little strange “switching” languages within the family when this is how we’ve grown up and talked to each other all of our lives. But all of us are regularly incorporating English words and phrases in our sentences (adapted to German grammar :-)) as it is often so much shorter to express a thought in English. All in all we have got quite the mishmash going on, but as long as we get the message across (telepathy helps a lot) we don’t care much. Except when our grandparents visited, then we made sure to make ourselves understood 🙂