Mika's fantastic concert!

janena

Guests
Yesterday i went to see him in concert here in Amterdam (Holland).

It was an amazing expierience, WHAT A PARTY!

What a quality.

Apart from Michael's concerts this is the best one i have seen.

Some highlights:

relax:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvArs-9NaAU
ibtermezzo and lollipop (from paris concert but same tour):
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iZZx0CLsJIM
jamming:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj31cTmDxeo
dutch speaking mika (funny): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz48HFDSdZE
how much do u love me: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0rTRVSBihSU
new song: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ypIkCiZf-zg
stuck in the middle:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VZAqH93Rwsg

WOW, lol...

It was freezing while standing in the que but it was all worth it!
 
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Mika makes Marmite pop music. Back in January, when Grace Kelly first leapt out of the radio, people rushed to instant judgment. Indifference was not an option. His album, Life in Cartoon Motion, is more of the same. It’s either winsome and irritating or a gorgeous blast of arch, witty, invigorating, left-field pop where no two songs sound the same, but all are naggingly familiar; where 1980s disco meets 1970s glam-rock and full orchestras are counterpointed by falsetto vocals.
“That was completely unintentional,” he insists. “When people say I’m savvy and musically calculating, that doesn’t abide with me. I’m not. I consider what I do quite normal. Whatever I do, I do because it feels right.” Mika, now 23, has been compared to Freddie Mercury. He certainly shares an exotic background with the Queen singer, who was an Indian Parsee born in Zanzibar. Half Lebanese, half American, Mica Penniman was born in Beirut and raised in Paris and London. He speaks English with a mid-Atlantic twang. His education was scarred by bullying, dyslexia and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Factor in a precocious musical talent, a striking visual imagination and an ambiguous sexuality, and you have an outsider’s genesis resulting in music made by instinct, not corralled by genre or an idea of what is hip.
“I am an outsider, a watcher,” he agrees. “It wasn’t by choice. You have to be delusional not to want to belong. I had a really hard time for most of my childhood.”
The third of five children, Mica was evacuated to Cyprus during the Lebanese civil war in 1984. Moving to a thriving Lebanese community in Paris, he grew up in a matriarchy, with education the absolute priority. “If you are even just a quarter Lebanese, it will take over your life,” he explains. “The food, the music, the attitude, the openness of the household to anybody, the incense burning, the volume at which people talk, the flammable Arabic arguments that evaporate within 30 seconds.”

Music was omnipresent: Dylan, Joan Baez, the Byrds, Serge Gainsbourg, Tino Rossi, French children’s songs, Arabic oud instrumentals and the female vocalists Om Kalsoum and Fairuz. “As a kid, I had a fascination with patterns, which is why I loved melody,” he says. “I made mix tapes that weren’t organised by singers or style of music, but by emotion – melodies that make you happy and melodies that make you sad. I’d end up with Tino, Nina Simone and Shabba Ranks on one tape. To me, that was completely normal.”
This idyll was disrupted by the first Gulf war, when his banker father was trapped in Kuwait for seven months. One by one, the trappings of luxury – the housekeeper, the large apartment – had to be given up and the family moved to London. Mica, who had previously attended a small private school dressed in bow tie, matching shirt and shorts, his hair as long as a girl’s, was enrolled in the Lycée Français, in South Kensington. Dislocated and disturbed by what had happened, he was crushed by the school. His dyslexia got worse – so quickly that, within a year, he could barely read or write.
“I had a cruel teacher who made my life complete hell,” he says, still angry years later. “How can a system that bases itself on learning by rote cope with a dyslexic? And I had problems with other kids.”
Asked to leave at 11, he spent the next seven months painting and being taught to sing by an expatriate Russian. He always had a voice, though he dismisses talk of a five-octave range as “making me sound like the alien in The Fifth Element”. He made his stage debut at the Royal Opera House, and sang jingles for British Air-ways and Orbit chewing gum. It wasn’t about the money – he never charged enough – but about gaining a sense of self-worth.
“I loved it,” says Mica. “I clung to the idea that I was a real person, and this was my job. If I messed up, I cried, because it made me look like an idiot. I knew there were a hundred other kids who could do it. My mother was shocked by how seriously I got into it.”
He went to Westminster School, where a teacher showed him how to use visual aids to overcome his dyslexia, and the dunce turned into a straight-As student – despite twice being asked to leave when the family funds ran dry. His obsession with a musical career meant normal friendships were elusive. At 13, he blagged his way into a private record-company party for Diana Ross, sang five songs and forced the boss to have a meeting the next day. A few years later, Simon Cowell didn’t like his songwriting, but said his voice was unique. “He said he’d call me. When he didn’t, I called him every day for four months. He never took my call. I was holding onto everything and everyone I could. That’s the OCD. Once I have decided something, it has to be that way, and it doesn’t change. While it works for me, it has ruined personal relationships. My family understands me, but it causes problems with my friends, even with my crew on the road. Now I have a set bunch of friends. I am extremely faithful and I spoil them, and it is important to do that whenever you can.”
He is an obsessive collector of Japanese designer toys, toy theatres and illustration art (Jim Woodring watercolours and Tony Millionaire comic-book cards). If he finds a jacket he likes, he gets three. He wears three watches on his wrist, but only the Nike digital tells the time. “We are all obsessed with repetition, we just don’t know it. Pop culture is based on repetition, which is why Warhol was a genius.”
At 19, Mika had his first and probably last moment of self-doubt. His attempt to read geography at the LSE lasted one afternoon. Then he won a place at the Royal College of Music, even though he couldn’t read music. For the next 2½ years, he led a double life.
He needed to be exposed to music, to discipline and pattern, something to do at nine every morning, but he was never going to be an opera singer. “I was mediocre. In the evenings, I was writing pop songs or working as a waiter to pay my studio bills.”
When he went to a party at his grandmother’s in New York, a publisher put him together with the songwriter Jodi Marr. After a year spending his student loans on flights to Miami, begging floor space and cadging dead hours in the studio (the Bee Gee Barry Gibb fired his house engineer for giving Mika free time), he had five songs.
Instead of touting them around, he spent another year creating the concept of Mika, designing (with his sister) a distinct visual image with characters, a logo and photos, all packaged in a box tied up with ribbon. Although an illusion made of cardboard and borrowed time, it looked like a million dollars, and the highly commercial songs had company head hon-chos scrabbling for their chequebooks. “There is a liberating vulgarity to the way you can do business in New York that you can’t get away with in London , ” Mika laughs. “Here, they called me an irritating prat; there, I had chutzpah.”
Mika signed with Tommy Mottola (the former head of Sony) in America and with Universal in the UK. Although America is proving a harder nut to crack, in Britain the single Grace Kelly went to No 1, has sold more than half a million and is still in the Top 40.
“Life in Cartoon Motion was my school-yard album, and I wanted to catch that freshness,” he says. “I knew I had only one chance. The glorious thing about a pop song is its populism – a lot of people shy away from that, but I think it is empowering. I have this fascination with the mundane: I love soap operas, the idea that you can take the freak and write about them in a pop song. Take Big Girl [his amusing paean to the larger lady]: she is an outsider, but, for three minutes, I put her on a throne, paint this incredible multicoloured backdrop and turn her into something she never is. It’s supposed to be funny, but not in a Little Britain way, in a human way.”
Mika is in this for the long haul. It is all he has ever wanted; he has never been frightened to fail and is confident about taking his live show to the big summer festivals. “I’m not exactly indie rock, am I?” he grins. “Do you think I’ll get glassed?”
In July, he is also opening an exhibition of his album artwork, of which he is fiercely proud. “I want to be able to tie it all together, which is why we’re putting together this exhibit, just to show the process behind it.” He adds hastily: “It’s not supposed to compete with anything being shown in the West End or Hoxton.
It is art with a purpose – illustration artwork that works.”
This year, Mika has already survived months of ocean-crossing promo work, being the saviour of pop music. And it’s only May. He shrugs: “In 10 years’ time, I will be doing the same as I am doing now.
A pop star – that’s so ****. I don’t think I’ll ever be a member of that club.” Once an outsider ...
Artwork from Life in Cartoon Motion can be seen at Blink Gallery, W1, July 11-14.
Mika is performing live at Glastonbury, June 22-24; T in the Park, July 7; Somerset House, July 17; The Big Chill, August 3; V Festival, Staffordshire, August 18; V Festival, Essex, August 19
 
Oh God!
Reading this, its kind of frightening and fascinating at the same time. Its like young Michael, describing his life, habits etc...being an outsider due to life experience, personality.
Frightening, because no matter what the press is going to use this against him, if he grows to big.:(
I like his music, not all of the songs- but he is one of the few I have heard in pop music that has something going on that is just HIM. Its pop music, but there is something there that is original and fresh.

Am I being to pessimistic, or is anyone else thinking this as well? I just saw the video interview of young Michael from the set of the Beat it video, and its still fresh in my mind. Go and look, and let me hear what you think?
 
I know what you mean..

As a person he reminds me of Michael in some ways as well...
As a musician i think he is different but then again, he does make unique music...easy to recognise (just like Michaels) so mayby they have more in common thatn you would first think.

I hope the media wont turn on him the way they turned on Michael but gossip has already started and since his career is moving forward in warpspeed i am not positive about it (gossip about his sexuality has already started as well as people blaming him to copy 80's music)...

Btw, this is gonna be the new singe...the clip is cool!

http://del.interoute.com/?id=8e13df33-3999-4955-831d-c837c48f972d&delivery=
 
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worked at one of his concerts. it was a good show hes certainly got talent. mind u the biggest cheer of the night was when he sang "i want you back" he did a gr8 job of it aswell
 
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Mika definitely lives in his own world and I love him for it. His music is fresh and original, as is he, himself. I adore him. He takes inspiration in his musical style but it is ultimately his.
 
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I just finished wathing the DVD that came out last month, it is actually really cool.

The concert is on it, a 1 hr documentary, some songs he plays on the piano (live), videoclips!
His cover of 'I want you back' is on it as well :D.

I just read on his myspace that he had to cancel the last 2 concerts of his tour because if not he'd risk damaging his voice (he has had health problems during his entire european tour).
 
07 dec 2007
MIKA nominated for a Grammy
Hi guys

Yes, excellent news. MIKA has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance Recording for 'Love Today'. This is excellent and well earned recognition for the massive global impact that he has had this year.

This will be the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, prestigious stuff, and will take place on 10 February 2008 at the Staples Center, Los Angeles.

MIKA will also have the opportunity to thank his American fans when he tours the US and Canada at the end of January and early February.

Love

Mikasounds

-----

I love the lyrics to his new song!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yxHfDhoJ8X8

There's a boy
His father's bad
He's sitting on the road
And he's so sad
Now he cries
Every day
Just tell him to forget about the father
Who couldn't show the way

There's a girl
Her momma's gone
She's got another man
And couldn't carry on
Now she cries
Every day
To forget about her mother
She runs away

How much do you love me
How much do you care
How much do you need me
When I'm not there
How much do you love me
How much do you care
How much do you miss me
When I'm not there

In this life
We live and learn
To lose what we love
And get what hurts
I'm not about
To forget it all
Gonna love every minute
Every hour more

Holy Johnny is also new, really cool:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ypIkCiZf-zg
 
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Star of wonder: Mika talks about his merry future

MikaLIVE_468x580.jpg


Mika's future is so bright you've got to wear shades. Then again, with a wardrobe like his - not to mention the eye-opening backstory - you'll need them anyway...

"I am very suspicious of people," Mika begins. He falls silent for a bit, replaying in his head some scene from his past. It's a habit of his.

"I was always told I was ugly. I still think I am ugly. I know I've got an odd face and you can't tell me otherwise. It's the same with what I do. Part of me sees myself as talented, and the other part sees me as strange. Ideas get stuck in your head and nothing changes them. Not even fame."

How screwed up do you have to be to be a pop star these days? At its most base end, the X Factor approach to stardom, you can't get anywhere without the X Combo: the suitably intriguing – yes, we're talking 'kooky' – personality and harrowing backstory.

And that's ironic when it comes to Mika, because he has fabulous examples of both and still Simon Cowell turned him down (and perhaps just as well, considering how few of Cowell's music-hall acts have achieved a career of any longevity or credibility).

Mika was born in Beirut in 1983, at the height of the Lebanese civil war. His family fled to London via Cyprus and Paris. Diagnosed dyslexic, considered autistic, certified obsessive compulsive (he still buys all his clothes in sets of three), he was bullied so completely he had a nervous breakdown.

His father was taken hostage in Kuwait City by Saddam Hussein for his human shield; he was 'adopted' by a Russian opera star, accepted amid fierce competition by the Royal College of Music (despite not being able to read so much as a semi-quaver of sheet music), only to drop out, pursue a professional singing career and spend years wading through an ocean of rejection slips. And then he used one of those slips to finally make it.

One particular record company executive was so disparaging that Mika wrote down his hurt feelings in a song, Grace Kelly, masking its meaning with upbeat melodies. The song went straight to No 1 in the UK for five weeks on the strength of downloads alone, and Mika became the biggest-selling new artist of 2007.

A classic ugly duckling becomes swan story? Not quite. "Lots of people don't like me," Mika says. "Lots of people don't like my music. There's not a lot I can do about that."

It would seem the bubbly onstage performer of cute hits such as Lollipop has major ghosts to slay. The story that emerges today is more of a revenge drama – and those don't always turn out too well.

We meet on the set of a photo-shoot where Mika will leap around brightly in an approximation of his stage act. His arrival is preceded by the distinctly tall, dark and glamorous appearance of his two sisters, Yasmine and Paloma. Mika goes nowhere without them.

"They always come with me to pick my clothes and fix me," he explains, following up the rear. "A stylist might say you look amazing in anything. Your family will always tell you if you look a complete idiot."

Mika is also – like his sisters – very tall (he stands at 6ft 4in) and rake-thin in jeans and a vintage black overcoat. Rather than bouncy, he's initially slightly edgy and uncomfortable. It transpires he hasn't eaten for quite some time.

He's nervous about having his photograph taken. He bends his head and upper torso to one side as he speaks, and occasionally stops altogether as if he expects you to start laughing at him.

"I'm totally used to standing in an alien environment and having to deal with it. My first ever gig was in a side room at the Manumission club in Ibiza. I walked on to this tiny stage and it was empty, just a few blank faces staring at me. I'm so used to intimidation I just dealt with it and slowly the room started to fill. That to me was a bigger thrill than getting to No 1."

More than any other pop star since, perhaps, Freddie Mercury, Mika is driven by a sense of difference. He always knew he was something special, and so did his peers – which was bad news for him.

At the age of nine, he attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London. Rather than hang out in jeans and cool, ripped T-shirts like his fellow students, Mika would turn up in bright red trousers and a bow tie.

"Oh, my school days were a nightmare," he says. "It was as if all the kids could smell there was something different about me. I was bullied all the time. It was all psychological and name-calling, the usual weirdo stuff.

"I was fatter then and they used to say I had child-bearing hips. That always stuck. Those are the scars you can inflict that don't ever show. The teachers were just as bad. They thought I was completely stupid.

"A lot of kids end up pretending to be someone they are not. You can learn how to dress like everyone else and learn to talk about computer games and football and the sort of music other kids like. I did attempt to do that a couple of times, but I couldn't stand it. I couldn't change the way I was. It made me even more extreme."

His family was put under pressure to have him diagnosed as autistic and tutored as a special-needs pupil, but his mother resisted. Parental support remains a crucial lifeline, with Mika explaining of his initial inhibition today, "I surround myself with my family and my oldest friends. I don't let new people in."

For someone so painfully honest about his unhappiest experiences, Mika is evasive when it comes to his family. He describes his father's job as "something in finance", and is unwilling to talk about why he was in Kuwait shortly before the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein's regime kidnapped hundreds of foreigners and forcibly used them as human shields around factories and military installations.

Mika's father was held for seven months before Saddam finally released the hostages under intense international pressure.

"I was terrified about my dad. He was an American in Kuwait. We didn't know what was happening."

That's all Mika will say on the matter – surely one of the formative experiences of his life. He returns to the subject of school, where the pressure of his dad's internment got too much for Mika. He stopped speaking, reading and writing altogether.

"That was a very bad time," he says. "I can see how weird I was. One day I decided the school needed a Christmas tree and spent hours dragging this huge beast of a tree into school. No one was pleased. I got two weeks' detention because I was 45 minutes late and had made a big mess of leaves and soil all over the building. All the kids just laughed at me."

Mika's mother, decisive as ever, pulled him out of school and encouraged him to sing, welcoming the Russian opera singer Alla Ardakov into their lives as his trainer. He'd escaped from the school environment, but a part of his personality, it seems clear, was scarred.

"Even now if I was put back into that environment it would happen all over again. For the first few hours everyone would be happy for me and want to talk about my music. Then there would be the laughing. Then the jokes at my expense. Then the nasty comments."

For all that this borders on camp self-obsession, there are thousands of people who relate directly to the way Mika grew up. "Generally, the people who like my music are the less conventional ones – the outsiders, the weirdos," he says. "It's amazing how many of us there are."
Mika's fans arrive at his shows dressed up as the characters in his songs: pink and cutesy Lollipop girl, kipper-tied closet gay Billy Brown and Big Girl.

A select few musicians are singled out as uniquely sensitive to their fans' needs, and Mika is one of them. Strangers give him presents. "I get amazing things from sketch books filled with their drawings to hand-made kimonos for my toys and this incredible embroidered shirt that I wear."
His pursuit of recognition began in his teens when he was obsessively sending out tapes to every record company.

A chance meeting with Simon Cowell when he was 16 looked promising. Cowell told him his songs were 'too strange' but thought his voice (Mika has a five-octave range) was good. "I kept calling him for months and months," says Mika.

"He never called me back. He obviously didn't think I was worth it. I haven't seen him since I became successful. He probably doesn't care. That's fine. He just didn't get me."

Mika believes that what happened to him at school helped him avoid the trap of becoming the sort of artist Cowell would like. "I pushed on doing my own thing and just went round to clubs and festivals and gathered a core of people who understood what I was doing. It got bigger and bigger, which is why I got to No 1 before anyone in the mainstream had really heard of me."

Success firmly under his belt, Mika remains unwilling to conform to people's expectations of what a pop star should be, say or do. He avoids models and liggers, he doesn't do bling, he rarely appears in magazines and doesn't hang out with other musicians. He won't say whether he's gay or straight (Q: 'Are you gay or straight?' A: 'Boring!').
"I don't have anything flash," he insists. "I live in a flat and I spend most of my time working, drawing and writing songs (Mika is only able to write lyrics if he draws at the same time).
"I would like to earn money. Making a lot of real money would be cool. I think I could handle being rich. I'd definitely find something interesting to spend the money on."
Like a Ferrari? He looks stunned. "That wouldn't even occur to me," he says. Fame might prove to be Mika's biggest challenge so far. He's taken on the bullies, proved himself bigger, brighter and more successful than they could ever have imagined. But when Revenge Of The Nerd is the story of your life, what comes next?
Mika's album 'Life In Cartoon Motion' is out now, and the single 'Relax (Take It Easy)' is out on December 31


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1889
 
And Yayyyy....He'll be back in Holland in july and i plan on going (35 weeks pregnant but hey!...at least there/'ll be one REALLY REALLY BIG GIRL, lol.
 
Mika is simply amazing. I really love his music. Something positive,for a change. Hope I'll hear him live. Happy Ending is one of the best songs I have ever heard in my whole life.
 
I love Mika his voice is amazing and so are his songs he has a style of his own which i like about singers and is totaly orignal we need more singers like him in todays music
 
I don't see what's wrong with the shoes, they seem like regular shoes... Maybe I don't see well?
 
new Mika-concert for me in 3 days WAHOO....

As long as i am not going to deliver the baby there (mika as a midwife? LMAO) it should be fine...
I'll be bringing my own seat, special permission from the organisation!
 
this topic had me confused some people...jokingly refer to MJ as Mikka
 
new Mika-concert for me in 3 days WAHOO....

As long as i am not going to deliver the baby there (mika as a midwife? LMAO) it should be fine...
I'll be bringing my own seat, special permission from the organisation!

I'm going to that concert as well :)
I saw the one in november too,it was really amazing and soo much fun :)
 
Hey thats cool!
Yeah, the gig in november was one huge party....we had a great spot too...

If you see a giant 8 months pregnant woman sitting on a army-greem chair come and say hi, okay?

We wont be in early...i think around 7 pm.
i am really exited, the warming up acts are promising as well!
 
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Show was GREAT, got to meet Mika and shake hands after the gig :wild::wild::wild:
Fans (about 60) that had been waiting after it ended got to meet him in the cateringtent.
He wouldnt sign aoutograps and had voiceproblems so wasnt really able to talk much but he took timefor everyone and we were allowed to take pictures and give present (and of course *DOOHHH* i had none), anyway..he was nice, polite and really down to earth, great expierience!
The securitypeople were rude though...everything went smoothly and no one was freaking out (i wish MJ fans would behave that well, lol) and they still felt the need to shout and act snobby (dont like that).

Here are some highlights of the show:

Intro and Relax;
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7MWutIMUWAw
Austronaut boy:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=aHspwlM3MD0
Holy Johnny:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=tQZYI79oBik&feature=user
New song (Rain):
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=DLnQvAkNTwY

meetgreetmika1.jpg

(sorry for the weird pic, my camera has a sense of humor)

get_preview.php

2651652532_09dc1106b8.jpg

mikaandastronautboybk3.jpg


http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=38037811
 
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I just saw him in concert yesterday. it was so amazing :wild: He did sing 'Grace Kelly' in French lol. I don't really understand french tough, but it was cool. Unfortunetly he didn't sing 'I want you back' but it's on the dvd anyway :D
 
Janena, I'm soo jealous of you!
The concert was indeed great (I was almost completly at the front of the stage)
But I didn't know there was a chance to meet him!
Oh well maybe next time..
 
We were actually just waiting outside the venue (we had missed our last bus) when Mika invited us in, together with around 40 other fans.
It was a great expierience, he's very friendly and respectful towards his fans (even when some fans do not respect his wishes and act rude), a nice genuine shy guy.

Here's us with Mika:

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March 20, 2009 Videos 272 Comments
I’ve moved my return flight to the UK back and forth about 8 times. I’ve got to hand it to BA they’ve been rather alright about it all, but it feels good to be going home soon. So here’s where I’m at. The recording of the album is almost done and next comes the mixing. I haven’t wanted to blog for a while. I felt like I needed to get into myself and concentrate on the crazy pile infront of me. I also wanted to have some proper news.
Whilst finishing up the record, loads of other things have only just begun. As I mentioned ages ago, ever since my Salt Lake City gig I’ve wanted to plan an acoustic tour. Back to basics. Well its starting to come together! Countries so far include; Ireland, UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and the USA. But there are more to come! These shows will take place this summer.
These venues are mostly going to be very small and the shows very intimate. I couldn’t think of a better way to get back in the groove. Because of the very small size of the venues I am planning on making tickets available early to fans who have been with me for the past few years, via my website and the fan club, before they are available elsewhere.
There is so much else that is in the works that I’m dying to share, but am gonna wait until its all solid. I was looking for something to illustrate small venues but I couldn’t find anything good. I think the image above is better though.
I started a twitter account… I thought I would give it a go. I could see how it could really start to irritate me BUT I thought it would be the best way to announce some secret shows later on in the year, or stuff like that… will keep playing with it. My twitter screen-name is mikasounds if you wanna find me.

We’ve also got a new vid blog coming soon!
Until then,
Mxx!
 
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