Ramona Rocks iTunes Festival in London

The Sexy, Sultry Karen Anne

As I've said before, I've been watching the iTunes Festival all this weekend. It's been great, the sound is really great, the music is great and it really is the next best thing to being there. Anyway, I was blown away Sunday night by this band called Ramona, and their lead singer, Karen Anne. It's funny how the supporting acts actually seem to be outshining the main acts so far. I thought it was that way with the Smoke Fairies when they played in front of Seasick Steve (who was still great himself btw) but wow, Ramona was a revelation. Their setlist included songs like "Tell That Girl," "Trophy Wife," and my personal favorites, "New York City," and "Steve McQueen." There was even a distraction of some kind at one point during their rendition of "Five Years," some kind of loud noise that would have halted the momentum of even the most seasoned band but they played through it like champs. I urge you to check their album when it drops later this year, I was a little disappointed that I couldn't buy it on iTunes right on the spot after their performance, they've only got a couple of songs (How Long, and Steve McQueen) available on an EP and even that's only available in the UK store. Bummer, but I look forward to seeing them in concert in America hopefully sometime soon.

iTunes Live Festival in July

The Foo Fighters are scheduled to play live on July 11th

The iTunes Live Festival can be seen streamed for free on an app on an iDevice every day this July. The festival showcases performances from 62 recording artists on 31 nights, that include Paul Simon, Coldplay, Duran Duran and a host of others. I've watched the first two days, and was able to see Paul Simon, Smoke Fairies and Seasick Steve and was very impressed, not only with the quality of the performances but of the seamless streaming through Wi-Fi as well. I guess that's another side benefit of all that iCloud goodness coming in the fall. Simon's rendition of 'Late in the Evening,' the Smoke Fairies performance of 'Storm Song,' and Seasick Steve's 'Back in the Doghouse' in particular were very good.

There are a few hiccups of course, one is that the set lists don't always seem to be in sync with the song being played, and you can't seem to set an iCal reminder for some bands more than one day in advance. It would be nice if we could set reminders for the entire month, but I guess you can't have everything. Despite these shortcomings, I urge you to take a look for yourself.