21 posts tagged “music”
I went to see Of Montreal a couple of nights ago and made a couple of pictures. These guys play fairly big venues in the US, or so I've been told, but over here, they played Paradiso's small upstairs room, while Marillion played downstairs. I rather enjoyed them, and they're great for shooting pictures at. First time I shot in RAW mode, but I didn't spent enough time at processing the pictures properly... My computer is just too slow. I think I need a Mac ;)
I did go to a couple of gigs recently that I didn't post pictures of. Partly because, well, I didn't have a camera, but also because I've just been too busy. That Halloween costume took a -lot- of preparation, which made me hate it in the end. After the (awesome) Halloween weekend, I'm finally back home now with some time on my hands. It's a nice feeling, actually.
In August, I went to see Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan in Tivoli in Utrecht. I don't know what it is about Mark Lanegan, but I find him and his demeanor very interesting. It's like he lives in a world of his own, closed off to the people around him. Rather introverted, moody, but attractive in the enigma kind of way. I loved his pairing with Isobel Campbell. Unexpected and on paper, it seems an almost impossible combination. But it works incredibly well. I think I have raved about teir oh so different voices before. Isobel's almost fairylike fragile voice, and Mark's deep and dark voice. Their song Deus Ibi Est is incredible.
I'm not entirely sure why these pictures took so long to put online. It just happened. I took them with the EOS350 I borrowed of Caroline and my 50/1.4 lens. I think a possible explanation about why it took so long is that I wasn't too happy with these pictures in general, but there's a couple of okay ones.
And then I went to see Hard-Fi. I took de D40 for a testrun. The gig was at the Melkweg, which should have alarmed me, but I figured I'd give it a try anyway. After shooting throughout the gig, a HUGE security guy came up to me and directed me to a dark, run down concrete area. Gulp.
Next their tour manager comes up to me and gives me a big lecture about how I can't shoot with a camera like that, and he'll need to have me format the card. Left very little options, I chose the only remaining one...stay polite, grovel and beg. And behold! It worked! So Mr. Hard-Fi tourmanager is now a very cool guy, and I was a happy camper.
Listening to the radio, I just heard a band called Okkervil River. "Okkervil River should appeal to people who like Arcade Fire... they even get a little Nick Cave-esque at times" said Jan Douwe, one of few remaining radio DJs that actually know their stuff.
I looked them up and rather liked them. And whaddya know, they're playing Crossing Border in November... Good thing I got a passepartout ticket already ;)
I bought tickets for the Crossing Border Festival, a festival I have been meaning to attend again ever after seeing Gavin perform at it. I never did though. For some reason there was always someone else playing, something else going on, or just general other commitments keeping me from going.
The lineup this year is just too brilliant to not go though. For a mere 60 euros (and a bit) I'll be treated to Patti Smith, Malcolm Middleton, the Super Furry Animals, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Windmill, Kula Shaker and Andrew Bird, just to name a few. Then there's the interview with Rufus Wainwright, and something called "Meeting Salman Rushdie" which I really want to go to. Time, location and ticket sales will be announced at some later point. Wicked, some excitement in art!
However, before all that bursts loose, I'll be going to the London Calling Festival. It's always been pretty indie, unknown and underground, but just about everyone and their little doggie seems to have discovered it now, which instantly makes it mainstream and impossible to get tickets for. I had to scrounge the net for one, and managed at only a tenner on top of the original price. Oh well. Bands performing there are: New Young Pony Club, Black Affairs, The Hours, Reverend and the Makers, Jack Peñate, the Wombats and many many others.
So a lot of great music coming my way. It's been a while!
I just decided to listen to some online KinkFM, because everyone is out of the office (headphones are a pain in an office).
They're currently doing a program called Kink 1212. The 1212 best popsongs ever according to them. I fell right into Nick Cave's "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side". How cool. He's in there about 9 times or so, and Bowie about 12 times.
I know what I'll be listening the next couple of days :-]
I found out MySpace isn't all that bad. I popped of a message to Fiction Plane on it with a link to the pictures I took and promptly got a reply from Joe. He really seemed to like them and asked me whether he could put them on their site. I decided to be cheeky for a change and say "Sure! Can you fix me up with tickets for the Antwerp show?". Then he said "Sure!", so I may be going to see the Police again. How cool. I'm quite thrilled.
Even cooler is it to see the comments people leave on my pic on Fiction Plane's MySpace site. A nice little ego boost :-]
Other than that, there's miserably little going on in life at the moment. I did fuck all this weekend, slumming around the house doing the standby duty for work (which basically means doing fuck all all weekend and making 300 bucks doing it). Did some minor shopping in preparation of Halloween this weekend. Found some really nice fabric swatches in a local shop, which will do me just fine. Some dark blue velvet, bright red cotton and some white fabric, which has a plasticy layer, which will do great for varnishing and making it shiny. The idea is to make a Union Jack coat, and go with a bit of a Dr. Who theme. Maybe a Seven of Nine-like eyepiece and a mini Dalek to follow me around. We'll see how it works out. I'm looking for a second hand sewing machine at the moment, which is faintly amusing as I have never learned how to use one :-P I'm a wee bit late this year starting preparations, and the cats aren't helping. But we'll see how it goes.
I managed to find a ticket for the London Calling festival on Marktplaats. There aren't a lot of bands playing that I now, but it usually ends up being a lot of fun regardless, and 6 months later, half of the bands have had their breakthrough. Such as Kate Nash, whose picture I took at the March edition of the festival earlier this year. Sadly enough, I failed to get me a ticket to her show at the Melkweg november 29. Shucks.
Fiction Plane proved to be quite a fun band to testdrive my brand new Canon 40D. They played the Melkweg a fairly small club in Amsterdam. Joe's daddy was cool enough to wander into the club to watch his son play.
It's been a bit of a rough week this week, leaving me a little tired. Right now I'm trying to keep my eyes open, while I'm supposed to be digging through some software configs. I've been a little fluey the last couple of days. Not sick enough to be sick, but just annoying enough to be annoying.
Yesterday I had a dinnerparty with my colleagues. We went over to this place called Bazaar, which serves Moroccon style food. What I never expected possible in my previous job, happened just now. It was interesting to find out the person behind the colleague. I've always kept work and personal life firmly apart, because, well, the people in my previous job weren't really people I'd normally spend a lot of time with. We ended up in a pub and I spent most of my night talking to a colleague about the goth culture, roleplaying and going to festivals. Oh, and some technobabble too, but it's hard to avoid, I suppose.
Last night I went to see Joan As Police Woman at Paradiso. Last time she played there, it was in the little upstairs room. It didn't sell out this time, but I'm sure it was close. I went in straight from work, and had some really nice sushi beforehand at Moshi Moshi. Apparently well known at the Paradiso too, because Joan's bassplayer and sound engineer were there too. Duh.
The gig started off a little rocky. Paradiso can be really, really noisy, especially around the bar. Joan has a strong, powerful voice, but her songs are soft, more voice than instruments, which means the talkers at the bar become disturbing. Add the plastic unbreakable glasses Paradiso uses and you can imagine what it sounded like. Joan joked about it sounding like she was playing at a wedding.
However, her songs became so quiet, so full of raw emotion and power that while the set went on, even the most die hard smoker, drinker, talker and screamer shut up. I even stopped taking pictures, as my (relatively quiet) shutter just sounded disturbing to me. Stupidly enough, the only sound coming from the audience was the beep-beeping of people taking pictures with their camera phones. Very strange and mildly disturbing.
There's a lot of things to be said about Joan. She's a striking presence, often dressed a little over the top in sparkling dresses or (in this case) MC Hammer like jumpsuits. She's an attractive woman and I am sure her choice of dress or materials that offer a hint of see throughess captures the imagination of many a bloke there and possibly a couple of girls. Then there's her behaviour on stage. She's joking around, sometimes throwing in little anecdotes that only make sense to her and then bursting out laughing in a little party of her own, only to launch into the next dead serious song.
The audience loved her and just got won over more and more. The applause before the encore was spontaneous and kept going well after what's considered polite, only to be repeated in full force after she had finished her set.
For a moment she seemed to bask in the afterglow of her performance, while the audience virtually carried her on their hands, only to then finally disappear. Not for long though, because even in the 1000 headed Paradiso, Joan is kind enough to pop into the merchandise stand to sign anything people ask her to.
It's amazing how Joan Wasser has grown, from being one of the backing band for numerous people to a somewhat fragile support set for Rufus Wainwright, onto the 300 head room in Paradiso, and the 30 people FNAC in store in Paris I was at last year. And then finally this powerful performance in a well filled venue all of her own. Just excellent and quite a feat in her genre.
The Patti Smith gig the other night was in one word: Amazing! I had never seen her before, liked the last album Twelve, but mostly went to see a legend without really knowing what to expect. I ended up being treated to a show full of humour, emotion, good natured banter and even some sing alongs. The Paradiso was well sold out, and it was crammed tight from fairly early on, though I must admit I came in much later than I had intended.
It was kind of funny seeing the mix of people there and how after a few years of going to gigs, you start recognising the faces all around. I ran into a couple I met last year at a Nick Cave gig in Antwerp. Then a handful of others I met at the Joan As Police Woman gig in Haarlem last year. One woman I meet just about everywhere, but mostly 16 Horsepower, Peter Hammill and John Cale related things and there was one girl I swear I met at a Bowie gig in 2002. Quite a diverse audience, so.
The evening went all over the place. Up, down, left, right. From sweeping trashing sound to tender ballad, from Hendrix' "Are you experienced?" to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" (after a long story about getting lost AGAIN trying to get to Rembrandt's House, finally finding it and having a moment of philosophical insight, then turning around and wandering on to the BlueBird cafe for two cups of mint tea and some cake...).
Then there was the story of being online with Gabriel Byrne the night Keith Moon died and how he looked so handsome and she kept buying him hashies, hoping that if she gave him enough he'd think she was a boy.
Also there's the girl that climbed up on the stage to give her a hug, taken into her arms like a grandmother taking in a long lost grandchild. That image gets scattered a little when she jokes "What can I say? I'm popular with the girls" though.
Peter Buck of R.E.M. is playing the upstairs room with Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus Room later that evening, but joins Patti for a cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Highlight of the evening, however, comes when he sticks around to join in on a unrehearsed cover of.... R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts". Nevermind that she forgets the lyrics halfway through... the audience happily takes over. Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven.
All in all, probably one of the most memorable concerts I have been all year, and a perfect night to test my new lens.
Making a little sidestep to the photography end of things... The music mag setup I am involved in is taking shape, and the layout I have seen so far looks promising. It's kind of nice to be involved in something like that, and it's kind of making me a lot more motivated as well.
This is probably the reason I spent most of my day yesterday putting together a little gallery of pictures. Call it a portfolio if you wish. I may actually set up a website again and pimp it a little, though my site programming skills are rusty. Oh well, it doesn't have to be slick, it just has to be functional.
Tom just got in touch with me too for a copy of a picture I took of Bowie in 2003. It's actually one of my favourite pictures ever. He wants to use it for an article they're doing on his work and it will probably be printed in international engineering mags. How cool is that? Frankly, I'm glad I can finally return a favour to him! I do want a hardcopy though :-]
All in all, life's pretty smashing at the moment. I have actually booked a little holiday on Texel in a few weeks, since my mum wants to celebrate her 60th there, with all of the family. Sounds like an accident waiting to happy, but I am taking Solon as well, so I don't have to spend all my time with the rest of them.
One of my German friends just texted me to say Arcade Fire is playing there August 22 and should she get me tickets. How nice! Some of my Bowie related UK friends will come over for that too, so it'll be a nice little reunion.
And once again, summer is shaping up nicely (and quite unexpectedly!)
It's amazing how chaotic I can get when travelling places and still have everything work out alright. I ended up booking a place to stay at the very last minute in Bristol and was still packing my junk a 1 am the day before I was due to leave. Through a slight miscoordination, I managed to drop my favourite 50mm lens to the floor, which mercilessly broke to bits. That's only the second time I did that :( So no pictures whatsoever, and there won't be any for a while, because I don't really have the money to replace it and for some reason I didn't get the end pay out money from my previous job yet (a pay out of remaining vacation days). I'll probably be getting a 50/1.4 and a 85/1.8 when I do.
The place in Bristol was very basic, but the people were kind. I looked around for a camera shop to replace my lens, but they were so overpriced that I just didn't bother and decided against taking any pictures whatsoever. I did some shopping and ended up buying far more stuff than I needed, including a Paul Smith sweater. What the fuck did I need that for? Whatevah. It's actually kind of simple but nice and washes well and I ended up wearing it a lot over the weekend. Caught up with a friend for dinner, which was cheap and cheerful and went to bed early.
The next morning we got up early to go to the busstation to head over to Butlins, Minehead for the festival. Strangely enough, I ran into someone I know at the busstation. I met this guy about 4 years ago, when I was travelling around the UK to see a couple of Dirty Three gigs. I ended up in the pub with them and they gave me a ride from Leicester to Leeds, along with some musical tips. I think Nina Nastasia was one of the artists they recommended me. An alright guy, but also one that seems to be on an eternal monologue for some reason. He's now a writer for a UK mag and a couple of online mags, and is actually quite knowledgable about music, aside from being a real character.
Anyway, after a rather uneventful busride in a bus full of gothy trippy looking people, we arrived at Butlins, which was something that would feature a prime spot in my worst nightmare. It's something like a run down seashore resort, aimed at families with small kids. Insert Pizza Hut, Burgers Kings, mini golf, 3 different slides in the swimming pool and a huge music stage set up between something called The Puppet Palace, Burger King and a sweet shop, intermixed with slotmachines and fun fair rides, and you get the picture. Very surreal.
The lineup was amazing though. The Dirty Three were curating this version of All Tomorrow's Parties and they did a real good job at making it very diverse. There were really some very highly skilled musicians there, including the usual suspects, eg, all things Nick Cave related (Neubauten, Mick Harvey, Conway Savage, etc). The good thing about an All Tomorrow's Parties festival is that you get to stay in your own little chalet, which means you don't have to mess around with tents and bad hygeine and all that. Very convenient...
The downside is that the smallest chalet I could book was a 2 person's one, and I was only on my own. Through the Nick Cave site, I had found someone who needed a place for a friend, but in the end his friend didn't show up, and I was out of 120 quid, with the guy taking no responsibility whatsoever. I was quite pissed off about that and it ruined some of my Saturday.
Somewhere along the way I ran into my mate Gary with his wife Fiona. I met Gary at a Dirty Three gig at the huge town of Dundalk once, where it basically was just Gary, Christian and me, a little pub, and not much else. Since then, I keep bumping into him at Nick Cave, Dirty Three and somewhat related gigs.
The gigs themselves were amazing though. It was so great to see the Dirty Three again! It's been a while and even though they are touring later this month, chances of me actually getting to see them are really slim. There was also the live premiere of Grinderman, the new Nick Cave band and a really strange Neubauten set, which started at 1:30 am and lasted until 3:30 at which point most of the audience were sprawled around the floor sleeping. Very strange indeed. The schedule was slightly mad and there were some real nasty overlaps, which meant sometimes it was a tossup between two bands I /really/ wanted to see. In those cases, I opted for the bands I had never seen, rather than the bands I have seen plenty of times before. I kicked off with the Only Ones, followed by a Dirty Three set, then Psarandonis (amazing musicians), Devastations and last but not least Josh Pearson.
Saturday I started off slow, seated on a bench with a coffee and paper, enjoying the sun and the horrendous surroundings. Strangely enough, I was interrupted by Mick Harvey and his kids going nuts at the tin can alley stall. I went on to see some of Joel Silbersher (small guy, huge voice!), then Felix Lajko, who I've been dying to see for a long time. He's a genius on the violin, but doesn't seem to play in this neck of the woods much. Alan Vega was up next, whose genre has really changed over the years. I rather enjoyed his set. I caught a little bit of Mick Harvey then set off to the Nick Cave/Grinderman stage. The Nick Cave set was alright, then they went off the stage and came back as Grinderman, which possible confused a few people. Frankly, the set seemed a little shaky, and it was clear they weren't used to the new songs as much yet. A nice little bonus was Bobbie Gillespie on backing vocals though. I've never seen him so together before... the last time I saw him with Primal Scream, he was clinging onto the mic stand for life. After that I went on to see Youpi Youpi Yeah, The Drones, Nina Nastasia and the Neubauten as aforementioned. I more or less collapsed after that and fell sound asleep.
Sunday started off much the same way as Saturday with a paper and some sun. A little Roscoe Mitchell (experimental jazz), some more Dirty Three, Mary Margaret, a little Joanne Newsom, then onto Cat Power another Nick/Grinderman set, Tara Jane O'Neill and topped and finished by the Tren Brothers. Mary Margaret's set was interesting. They started off without a bass player and kept asking for someone to join them, if they wanted. Then at the last song, the bass player finally showed up, after having been stuck in traffic. Mary was vaguely disorganised, but it's part of her charm and reminded me of Cat Power in a way. Cat Power, however, has changed. Where she was totally untogether, chaotic and self conscious before, she now takes the stage with a completely different attitude. The new band (including Jim White) works much better I think. The Nick/Grinderman set was amazing. For some reason they got into it much more, and connected with the audience much better who went completely nuts. It absolutely rocked... Finally the audience got moving, and frankly, I got a little hyper myself, which resulted in me playing footie with a beercan and a couple of guys I had never met just before Tara Jane O'Neill was to start.
All in all, I had such a great time, much better than I expected from the first time I saw Butlins. All the musicians and their families were staying at the chalets too, so it just happened that you'd be sitting in the grass outside your little chalet, and have Blixa Bargeld walk by. Or you'd spot Nick sunbathing (I kid you not) outside his (not so little chalet) on your way to the pool, where Josh Pearson would be whooping and hollering down the slides. Just imagine what the filters on that pool must have looked like after all the bearded gentlemen had been through it!
Much time to bask into it's fully glory I didn't really have though, as I started my new job the very next day. Time just flies when you're having fun huh?
The new job is amazing. I spend most of the past two weeks getting up to speed with architectural drawings and getting to know the systems. The atmosphere is much better than in my old job though. The people are younger, for starters, and mostly come from a creative and/or technical background. Of course the company is much smaller which means you just get to know everyone much more quickly. Also their lunch setup is quite cosy with two big tables just dressed up as brekafast tables, with everyone gathering around it. It's quite good as you get to mingle quite a bit. It's also much better foodwise than the last place I worked at, with salads and all kinds of different breads and stuff to put in. There also seems to be a stash of candy just about everywhere and a weekly drinking session on Friday afternoon. Aside from that they're heavily into making their employees happy, which is such a different approach than what I am used to. I'd never have considered having drinks with colleagues before and actually found the colleagues I had quite dull. So upto now, all is good... Hopefully it'll stay that way.
In the meantime I also saw a lot more gigs... Some more Cat Power, The Drones and Moke. Strangely enough, a lot of the ATP bands added another few dates elsewhere after the festival. I meant to go to Low and the Handsome Family too, but just couldn't find the energy to do so. Tonight it's dinner & Interpol, courtesy of Jeroen.
If it hadn't been for the new job, I would now have been at Bowie's Highline Festival, but I pulled out of that, because he said he wouldn't play it anywhere. Some of my Bowienet friends are there though, and their reports are fun to read. I wouldn't mind seeing a lot of them again, but c'est ca. Fun though, is that Bowie is really excited about it and is posting all over the Bowienet forums again. I rather like his enthusiasm about things, even when I don't always share it (Polyphonic Spree?). I really do hope we'll see a bit more of him this year, but that's fairly unlikely, unfortunately.
That's that for catching up. If you made it all the way here... wow, you have stamina!
