Walid Itayim & Friends Live at Sporting June 22 , 2010

Walid Itayim: guitar and vocals/Jad Abi Haidar: Vocals/ Munir Khauli: guitar/Mazen Siblini: keyboards/Abboud Saadi: bass guitar/ Emile Bustany: drums.

The songs featured in these 3 live clips are: "Faith", "Thank God It's Over" and "They Call It Love".







We participated in Day 1 of the Old Vs New Rock Band Festival. Our set was about 45 minutes long. We played 9 out of the 12 songs that are on my CD "Where I Wanna Be" which was released in 2009. If you would like to buy the CD, it is available at cdbaby.com Click below:

A really good review of my CD has been published on the USA based rock music site hardrockhaven.net
The very positive review was written by music journalist Alissa Ordabai who has done interviews with many big names in the rock world including Aerosmith, Vinnie Moore and Paul Gilbert! It's nice to get a bit of international recognition!! Click on the following link to read the review:
http://www.hardrockhaven.net/online/2009/walid-itayim-where-i-want-to-be

Unfortunately, only about 100 people showed up out of an expected number estimated to be at least 500. It is pathetic that so called "music fans" would miss a rare live concert by a band they claim to like because of a fucking world cup football (soccer) match. It's our bad luck that just as we opened with our first song, a match involving Argentina was starting on TV and the Lebanese people, more than any others in the world, take the world cup very seriously! All political and religious divisions disappear and you will find people with diverse political and religious convictions bonding with each other in the various cafes and bars in the country that have put up a TV screen for the month. They talk to each other about how glorious Messi's last goal was with the same passion and devotion as members of the same religious sect might glory over the miracles that their prophet or messiah undertook. Apart from the world cup, another reason why people didn't come to the event could be the entrance fee of $20 which is extremely fair if you consider that there are 4 different bands who need to be paid for playing. Organizing a music festival of this sort is no joke and people should appreciate the fact that some people have sacrificed a lot of time and effort to provide live musical entertainment for no profit to themselves. Instead, these same people will happily spend the $20 and sometimes much more without any hesitation on some event in a club where the only entertainment is a one man DJ. What a sad situation it is in Lebanon for musicians and artists. On a different note, it's only when I see myself on video that I realise how much weight I have gained and how bad I look. I thought about not posting the videos because of that but who am I kidding, that's what people see when they see me in person and the video will not surprise them as much as it surprises me. I guess I have to deal with this problem until I lose the weight. In the meantime I cannot stay in hiding and should not worry about what people say or think. It's not like the groupies are standing in line :-) LOL