Category: Music

Last night I found out that Smashing Pumpkins are going to be performing in Bahrain in October. For those of you who’ve been following my blog from the start you might already know they’re my favorite band. My first blog template even included “Breathing under water and living under glass” in the heading which is from their song Thru the Eyes of Ruby.

Presale tickets went on sale this morning, there were only two kinds available, General Admission and something called Premium Package which what I understood is the same but includes free beverages and canopies. No idea if beverages includes alcohol or just soft drinks so I got the General Admission tickets.

But, I really really need to find a way to get backstage access, so if anyone can help me out I’ll owe you one!

The last time I saw them live was 10 years ago when I was in LA as part of the The End of Times tour with Marlyn Manson. I shot the video above at that concert.

Recently, I decided I needed a better way to organize my CDs. I have around 300 packed away in boxes, making it virtually impossible to listen to them. While a lot of this music is available digitally, I still have a huge collection that isn’t available online. Initially, I started looking on eBay for CD cases, but then decided to look locally first. Since, the only music shop I know of that’s still open is ROMCO, I decided to head there.

I’ve posted about ROMCO before. They used to have a shop in Hawally, but it closed years ago, with all remaining cassettes and CDs moved to a small room within their offices, located in the same building but at the back. They carry a few English tapes, but most of their collection is Arabic. The last time I posted about them they used to sell the tapes for 1.5KD but now they sell for 2KD for some reason.

Up until a few years ago there were a couple of more cassette shops open in Kuwait but they also closed suddenly and I think this is the last one left standing. And if you’re curious, yes I managed to find a CD case for my CDs. They had two SKB CD-400 ATA Carrying Cases left which I guess DJ’s used to use since each can hold up to 120 CDs. They don’t have anymore of those cases left, but they do have some CD stands and wallets still available.

The employee there told me they’re open from 9AM to 4PM, so if you want to pass by and check out their tapes, they’re located across the street from Alandalus Complex in Hawally. You can also find them on Google Maps.

If you know of any other music shop still open, let me know.

Popular British R&B singer Craig David is coming to Kuwait for a live performance in May. I used to be a fan of his music back when I was in university, so it’s pretty random that he’s coming to perform here. He’s known for hits like “7 Days,” “Fill Me In,” and “Walking Away,” and he recently sold out The O2 Arena in London as part of his 25th Anniversary Commitment Tour.

Craig David will be performing for one night only in Kuwait at The Arena on May 2nd. I’ve been told tickets could potentially go on sale as soon as tomorrow, but follow @thearenakuwait for the official announcement.

Update: Tickets are now on sale. Here are the ticket prices:

Bronze: 30KD
Silver: 40KD
Gold: 50KD
Platinum: 60KD
Diamond: 70KD
Royal: 80KD
VIP: 100KD
VVIP: 120KD

The British boy band Blue is coming to perform in Kuwait on April 10 and 11, and tickets will be going on sale tomorrow (Thursday) at 6PM.

Blue, known for early 2000s hits like All Rise, One Love, and Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, will be performing at the National Theater at JACC.

Tickets start at 20 KD and will be available on jacc-kw.com

The British boy band Blue, who had a number of hits in the early 2000s like All Rise, One Love, and Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, is coming to Kuwait. Blue rose to fame as one of the top boy bands of their era, selling over 15 million records worldwide. I honestly didn’t know who they were, but that’s probably because I come from an era when New Kids on the Block and Take That were the popular boy bands.

Blue will be performing live on April 10 & 11 at the National Theater at JACC. Tickets are going on sale next Monday.

Tickets for the Coldplay concerts in Abu Dhabi are sold out but there are a bunch available for sale here in Kuwait by people who bought them and can’t go anymore. If you’re looking for Coldplay tickets, check the ones available for sale in the Classifieds section of the blog.

Al-Rai Media Group is entering the entertainment industry by launching a mega musical project, ‘The Spirit of Kuwait,’ in partnership with Kaif Production.

‘The Spirit of Kuwait’ will be a Kuwaiti heritage-based musical work presented in orchestral form with a modern twist. It will also be the largest artistic orchestra in Kuwait, comprising nearly 100 musicians and featuring some of the country’s top musical talent. The orchestra will be led by maestro Dr. Ahmad Al-Oud, with Salman Al-Amari and Abdulaziz Al-Mesbah as the primary vocalists. Maestro Mohammed Salem Al-Qahoom, one of the Arab world’s most prominent composers and orchestrators, will orchestrate the musical pieces.

Alongside this all-star roster, the show will also utilize the latest in concert technologies. It is expected to last an hour and a half and will feature state-of-the-art audio-visual systems to immerse the audience in a captivating experience, blending traditional Kuwaiti heritage with modern artistic innovation.

The first performance of ‘The Spirit of Kuwait’ is expected to be in May 2025. To stay posted on this project, you can follow @alraimediagroup and @kaif_kuw.

For more information, read the articles below.
Article 1
Article 2

“My Belongings,” or “Moqtanayaty” (مقتنياتي) in Arabic, is a store in Kuwait City specializing in vintage electronics, including radios, boomboxes, record players, TVs, cameras, as well as records and cassettes.

Unlike most places that sell vintage items, nearly everything in this store is in working condition. They also repair vintage electronics in their in-house workshop. So, if you have an old record player that stopped working, you can bring it in, and they’ll try to fix it for you.

The store isn’t new—I first discovered it and posted about it in 2016 when it was located beneath JOA in the city. Since then, they’ve relocated several times and now have two locations in a building across the street from Souk Al Mubarakiya.

Their corner store on the ground floor serves as the repair shop, while the main showroom is located on the first floor of the same building. To access the showroom, you’ll need an employee from the repair shop to take you upstairs.

The showroom is like a mini museum where everything on display is for sale.

If you want to stop by to browse or get something, the shop is open daily except for Fridays from 8:30 AM to 1 PM and again from 4:30 PM to 9 PM. It’s located on Ahmad Al Jaber Street, opposite the Ahli Bank of Kuwait tower. Here is their location on Google Maps and here is their Instagram account @vintage_radio_

I never got the chance to see Michael Jackson live, but this might be the next best thing. Michael Lives Forever is a mega tribute concert, with faithful reproductions of his iconic costumes and choreography. This isn’t just a random tribute show, this is the longest-running and most successful Michael Jackson tribute show in the world. Like properly legit.

After watching a couple of videos of the show, it looks like from where I’ll be sitting, I wouldn’t be able to tell it wasn’t the real Michael Jackson performing. The show was actually conceived, choreographed, and brought to life by Lavelle Smith Jr., the renowned choreographer who worked directly with Michael Jackson for over 25 years. The show has toured around the world and has been seen by over a millions fans to date.

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A post shared by Blast Off Events (@blastoff.events)

Blast Off Events are the ones bringing Michael Lives Forever to Kuwait and the show is taking place on October 25 at the JACC National Theater. Tickets start from just 5KD and are available on jacc-kw.com. For more information head over to @blastoff.events

Pinkfong and Baby Shark are coming to Kuwait for a one of a kind concert experience.

The Baby Shark live shows offer a unique musical experience and are ideal for fans of all ages. Pinkfong have performed in over 200 countries and engaged over 1.5 millions around the world. Children can sing along to the songs and meet the characters.

The show, organized by Blue Panda Production, will take place from October 3 to 5 at the Gulf Cooperation Council Joint Program Production Institution Theater in Salmiya (Google Maps).

Here’s some exclusive information: you can book a meet-and-greet with the band after every show, directly at the venue.

So join Pinkfong and Baby Shark as they take you on a musical adventure. Tickets start at 10KD and are available on Eventat. For more information, check @bluepandaproduction

Kuwaiti musicians Ghazi Al-Mulaifi and Amin Abdal have both been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Latin Jazz Album category. Ghazi and Amin played a key part on the album Virtual Birdland by Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.

That album was nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album at the 64th Grammy Awards which took place back in 2022, but Amin and Ghazi only recently found out that they were also nominated because of their role. Ghazi was a composer and performing artist on the album as Boom Diwan, while Amin was the recording engineer for the band.

This makes them the first Kuwaitis to be nominated for a Grammy, and the first from the Arabian Gulf.

Boom Diwan is a band that blends Kuwaiti bahar music with jazz and you can follow them @boom.diwan. You can also follow Ghazi and Amin at @ghazimusic and @xxmrfarixx.

This is a summarized repost of the original post I published a few years ago. In case you’ve never heard the story, read on. I decided to repost it on Instagram since there is a chance Saif will be performing in the UK later this year with the help of Habibi Funk.

I found out about The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr through the former Australian Ambassador to Kuwait who one evening made me listen to their album ‘Jazz, Jazz, Jazz’. The album was a reissue by the label Habibi Funk and they had included an interview with the band who were Sudanese and had performed on KTV and in various hotels around Kuwait in the 70s. I took some photos of the album and shared them on my personal account when to my surprise, I got a message from a follower telling me that Saif was a colleague of hers and she was surprised to find out he used to be part of a popular band. She put me in touch with Saif and I invited him to dinner over at the ambassador’s house.

Saif was full of interesting stories. He was never meant to come to Kuwait, when he turned 18 he decided to leave Sudan and head to Germany. His plan was to head to Lebanon first so that he could then take the train to Germany, but due to a series of events and the fact he needed to make money, he got convinced to try his luck in Kuwait.

When he arrived, he met up with an old friend who hooked him up with a job as an English teacher for air traffic controllers, and a side gig where he would perform music on a KTV talk show. One day one of the producers at KTV asked him if he could put together a band because he wanted to record a performance for the station. Saif told him he could and called up his friends in Sudan whom he used to perform with called The Scorpions. The band ended up on KTV and you can actually watch that performance on YouTube since Habibi Funk uploaded the whole thing.

Saif eventually performed for a Kuwaiti event organizer back then called Hussein Abul. Hussein was the guy who brought the likes of Boney M, Demis Roussos, James Brown and Santa Esmeralda to perform in Kuwait. Saif actually had the job of driving James Brown around when he was in Kuwait.

Saif is still in Kuwait today and until recently was teaching English at a local aviation school. He still performs in Sudan every now and then with his old band. Jazz Jazz Jazz is available to stream on Spotify and you should check it out.

There is a rumor going around that Lana Del Rey is planning to come to Kuwait and perform as part of her Middle East tour. Turns out the rumor originated from a couple of popular instagram accounts that posted an audio file where Lana supposedly mentions she will be performing in Kuwait and Qatar. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s not true.

The audio file is actually from a really old Lana Del Rey interview with an Australian radio station from back in 2015. The funny thing is, Lana doesn’t even say she is coming to Kuwait. During the interview Lana mentions that if she was going to do another real tour, Australia would be one of the first places she would think of, other than the Middle East. When the host asks where she would like to tour in the Middle East, Lana then mentions she’d like to perform in Kuwait and Qatar.

You can hear the audio snippet that has been going around above. Don’t believe everything you read online, even if they have over 100,000 followers.

This is just a quick review of this really great tiny and cheap Bluetooth transmitter/receiver. I’m posting about it for anyone googling a solution for their Bang & Olufsen A9 like I did.

Back in 2013 (so over 10 years ago which is crazy), I bought a Bang & Olufsen A9. Not sure what had gotten into me, probably related to some trauma from my divorce back then, but I somehow thought it was ok then to pay 890KD for it. The speaker actually ended up costing me more than that because after setting it up at home and realizing it didn’t look as good in my apartment as it did in the shop, I ended up redecorating my whole apartment around it (true story)!

Fast forward to today, I got married again and so redid my apartment and the A9 is back in the spotlight again. It looks even better now with my new aesthetic, but because technology has come a long way since I bought the A9, I was having issues streaming music to it. The AirPlay would work on and off, sometimes I needed to reboot the speaker to get it working right and it was just annoying to use, and so it was there for looks only. I was then googling to see if the unit had Bluetooth and confirmed it didn’t, but then I came across some people asking if there was a way to get bluetooth installed and someone mentioned getting a Bluetooth receiver. So I started researching and realized that, if I found a bluetooth unit tiny enough and ran off USB power, I could potentially strap it onto the back of the A9 with velcro or something, and just like that I’d have Bluetooth on my A9.

After doing some research on Amazon, I eventually decided on the LAICOMEIN 2-in-1 Bluetooth Adapter. It was both a Bluetooth receiver and transmitter, it was tiny, could be powered with USB, and it cost just $30. Now that I have it I can’t believe how perfect this little thing is.

My B&O A9 has a small compartment on the back with a cover. Inside the compartment is where you connect the power cable, ethernet, and RCA inputs. But, there is also a USB port which was used to connect to the iPhone during the first time setup. The LAICOMEIN came with everything I needed to connect to the A9 and the set up was SUPER easy. I just had to put the switch on the bluetooth unit to receiver mode, I then connected the USB cable and line-in cable to it, and then plugged the other end of the USB cable to the back of my A9 and the line out into the RCA inputs. As soon as I plugged it into the USB port a red light came on to let me know it had power, I then pressed and held the power button down to turn it on and switch to pairing mode. That was it! The A9 automatically detected there was a device connected to the RCA input so switched to that, and then my bluetooth turntable saw the A9 and connected to it. The whole thing took less than 5 minutes to set up.

The LAICOMEIN is also so small that I didn’t need to figure out a way to strap it to the back, it just fit inside the tiny compartment at the back of the A9, and then I just closed the cover and you can’t even tell there is anything there. It’s perfect!

Speaking of my bluetooth turntable. I recently found a great deal on a Pro-ject T1 BT turntable on eBay. It was a brand new open box unit and I managed to snatch it up for $284 with tax and shipping (add another 30KD to ship to Kuwait). In comparison it costs $499 on Amazon without tax so I basically got it for half the price. But, the T1 BT has the WORST implementation of bluetooth I’ve seen on any device ever. The bluetooth module is a separate unit at the bottom of the player with a separate on and off switch. The plan originally was to pair it with my KEF LSX speakers, but I couldn’t get the pairing to work. There are no lights on the T1 letting me know if bluetooth is on, if it’s connected to anything, or if it’s pairing and I just couldn’t figure it out. Eventually I gave up on it, but as soon as I installed the bluetooth receiver into the A9, I turned on the bluetooth switch on the side of the T1 just out of curiosity to see if anything happens, and right away it connected! So now my record player is connected to my A9 and I think I like this setup now.

So yeah, at just $30, LAICOMEIN 2-in-1 Bluetooth Adapter is a great purchase and I’m now thinking of getting one for my B&O Beolit 12 which I also purchased 11 years ago and also only has AirPlay. If you want to get Bluetooth on an old device, I totally recommend this, here is the link to it on Amazon.

Since a lot of record stores pop up and close down often, I tend to update this list every few years.

All the small online stores that sold new records have closed down, including @vinyldestinationkw, and so if you want a new release, your best bet is ordering from Amazon.

But, if you’re looking for old used records, you actually have multiple options in Kuwait.

The Antique Basement
This basement in Salmiya has various stores selling vintage and antique items, three of them also have a small collection of old records. They’re not organized but instead are either just pilled up on top of one another, or randomly stacked in boxes. Finding stuff is a bit of an adventure, but on the bright side, they’re mostly English records. Here are the instagram accounts of those stores:

@tathkron
@fahad___bokhaled
@alnasser_antiques_kuwait

Nawader
This guy has the most insane collection of old music since he acquired all the remaining stock of the old record label “Bou Zaid Phone“, one of the most important Kuwaiti record labels. Nawader has a huge collection of new-old-stock records, cassettes and even 8-track tapes. Nearly all of the records he has are in Arabic, and he also has many very hard to come by ones. I got my 4-volume vinyl set of the “Kuwaiti Television Artistic Group” from him, and although he wouldn’t sell me his copy of the Iftah Ya Simsim record, he did hook me up with someone else who sold me theirs. He has a location thats by appointment only, but you can also purchase or request items through any one of his three instagram accounts:

@nawaderq8
@q8nawader
@istuwanat

Moqtanayaty
If you’re looking for a vintage record player, boombox, 8-track or even reel-to-reel players to buy, the best store in Kuwait is Moqtanayaty, or “My Belongings” when translated to English. I bought my vintage record player from there and they can even repair vintage music players, VCRs, or really old TVs. You can check them out on instagram @vintage_radio_

If you know of another place that sells records, let me know in the comments.