A good weekend.

This weekend I actually had nothing to do. No appointments, no things to do at home, except what I wanted to do.

Last Friday I went to Floris, to pick our accomodation in Scotland. A couple of beers, and a couple of whiskies (Lagavuling DE and Caol Ila 18).

On Saturday Anneke and me did some chores around the house and some grocery shopping. Had to be done, but it wasn't too bad. Somewhere during the day we went back into the city to buy Anneke a new mobile phone.

In the evening we met some friend in Terminus, my favorite pub in Den Bosch. We had a couple of Guinnesses. For some reason the pub is selling old beer glasses that they don't use anymore, and my friend Joost pointed out that they had six 'half pint' Guinness glasses sitting in a box, 25 cents each. So, I am the proud owner of those glasses. The first time I have proper beer glasses.

After Terminus we went to Plein 79, a local venue in which you can simply go out on Saturdays. A couple of years I was there every week, unless I had something better to do, but I think I have gotton old. It was nice to hang out with friend, but, damn, just standing around in loud music, barely able to understand each other... Not for me anymore.

Sunday Anneke and I went to the Biesbosch, for a walk. The Biesbosch is a National Park with a lot of swamps, creeks and bits of forest. Quite beautiful, desolate and quiet. I love that kind of stuff, and we decided that we are going to do those kind of things more often.

After our walk we went for a bite in Zaltbommel. I have been working there for a year and a half, and had never been into town before. I remember why now. It is just another waterfronted town. A nice walk on the boulevard, but that's it.

So after all, we had a packed weekend, but all kinds of things we liked. This is the way to do it for us, apparently.

Blood or Whiskey

Last Thursday Blood or Whiskey played at a local venue, called the Willem 2. They are an Irish folk/punk band, in the style of The Pogues. Since I really like The Pogues, and I knew a bit of Blood or Whiskey, I had to go there with my friend Floris.

The opening band was called Filthy Nelly. They played ok, but the crowd was far from enthousiastic. They barely got an applause at all. They should have, even if it was only for the pretty violinist (yes, female).

After they left, and Blood or Whiskey came on stage, it still was not crowded, only a 150 people there I think. The mood was good though, even more so by the massive amounts of beer I was drinking.

The band didn't play many songs I knew, since I only have their first CD, and I think they have just released the third. But Irish folk music is Irish folk music, more or less, so the tunes were recognisable enough. We had fun. And € 7,50 well spent!

Infant Police

Last weekend we went to see Fiction Plane in Amsterdam, the Melkweg to be exact. Before we went there we had dinner at my sister's, where we would spend the night as well.

The band had their own DJ tagging along, who opened for them. He sucked. Bigtime. The only thing he did was put a record on which consisted mostly of 2 songs played at the same time. When the record was playing he drank a beer or called someone or did anything that had nothing to do with being a DJ. Absolutely horrible. The atmosphere was not too good then.

After way too long the band finally showed up, and started playing. The songs were just as they are on CD, which is nice... when you play the cd. For a show, it was quite boring to watch them just do their songs.

For some reason they really like to do jam sessions, which is nice if you are a jam band, or are very good. But for a starting band, which has to earn their reputation I find it not very smart to do that.

They ended (before the encore) with Two Sisters, their biggest hit. At the moment the songs started to girls from the audience showed up on stage to dance with the band members. Those girls had fun, but everybody else was wondering what the hell they were doing there, especially since the band didn't react to them at all. They ended Two Sisters with another way too long solo/jam session.

All in all, the show was a bit of a disappointment.

The coolest thing that happened during the show was that Sting, Fiction Plane's singer's father, showed up to watch his son. That was pretty cool. I hoped for a song with him in it, but that didn't happen.

By the way, the post is called Infant Police, because that is an anagram for Fiction Plane... Infant Police for the singer being The Police's singer's son and all...

Benrinnes 31!

Last week was the start of Anneke's final week of school. Tomorrow she has her last presentation, and then the only thing she has to do is some minor, unimportant presentation that does not matter for finishing school in Oktober.


The presentation is the only thing that has to happen from her side, so it was time for her to buy me a "no more school" gift. Usually that happens the other way around, but she reconed because she has been quite stressed for the biggest part of our time together (4 years and a bit), she had to buy me something.

The Benrinnes Single Speyside malt of 31 years of age was going to be that gift. Not my idea, so the gift was even better.

We picked it up last week, and the same night I drank two small glasses of it. It is just the best. No other description I can find but the best (I have ever tasted).

I only had to promise that I would finish the bottle slowly, and on my own...

Funny thing is that the Speyside usually produces very soft and easy going whiskies, unlike this one. This one burns for a while after you take a sip. The way I like it!

I just hope this doesn't raise the amount I spend on a bottle of scotch to around prices like this one's, that would be hard on my bank account.

Boschkilde

Saturday the first was the day that Last Horizon, my friend's band, had their first show. It was a four band 'festival' in town. They had to play in a line-up with all kinds of local bands, as second. nAscent was the first band, Verona Beach was the third.

Both these bands we're quite heavy metal, which made it a bit harder for Last Horizon to get a proper sound going, because they didn't have time to do soundchecks between the shows.

3voor12, the most prominent Dutch music site was quite positive, but noted what everybody thought: The technical difficulties threw the guys a bit off balance.

Looking forward to their next show though, hopefully they can do a couple more songs, and with a soundcheck. Love to see them get a bit more famous, and the material, skills and sound is definetely there.

The other bands we're not too bad, but not my thing entirely. Had a lot of fun though, the shitloads of beer helped a bit...

Lowlands part 4/4: Favorites and Photos

So, all three days have been described, but only the concerts we saw. Everything else is still a bit vague.

We went on thursday, because we want a good spot on the camping, and we like the festivities. In the train to Lelystad, we met Ziggy, or Micah. Micah is a guy from Miami, who is a professional clown at kids parties. http://www.ziggytheclown.com/!

He went to Lowlands on his own, and since we had similar priorities in seeing music and having a party, he camped with us and we made a new friend.

The first night was a calm one, with building tents, setting up camp, getting and drinking every beer we had...


The day after was pretty cool, as described and after lots and lots of concerts we went to a drum 'n bass party in the Bravo tent. Boring as hell, drum 'n bass, unlikely as it sounds, just doesn't have a proper beat to it. So we went back to our camp and drank some more beers.


The second night was wicked. There was a 90's party in the Grolsch tent, with all kinds of bad and worse songs from the last decade. So, about 10,000 people sang along to the Spice Girls, Captain Jack and other shit music. Lots of fun. Beers after...


The party on the third day was a strange one. We started out at the Grunge party, which sucked. Too monotone, too boring, not really party music. But after that we went to Kees van Hondt, a Dutch polka DJ. His music was bad, but the tent was being torn down by partying folk. Incredibly funny, dumb dances and so on.


We all had an incredibly festival, pulled an all nighter the last night and crashed as soon as we got home and had a bite to eat.


Last thing to do: a top five of festival acts. It is a hard one this year, harder than before in my opinion.

• 5. Patrick Wolf
• 4. Arcade Fire / Patrick Wolf
• 3. Rodrigo y Gabriela
• 2. the Good, the Bad & the Queen
• 1. CocoRosie

Lowlands part 3/4: Music on day 3

Day three was by far the busiest day of things I wanted to see. Unfortunately CocoRosie blocked a big part of the day, because that was planned in the only indoor tent, which means that you have to stand in line for more than an hour...

The things I saw on Sunday:

• Patrick Watson
• New Young Pony Club
• Chatham County Line
• Loney, Dear
• Orishas
• CocoRosie
• Sonic Youth
• Arcade Fire
• Tool

I wanted to see Kings of Leon, Nine Inch Nails, The Shins, The Whitest Boy Alive and UNKLE. All at the same time as CocoRosie.

Patrick Watson was great. He was described as an artist strongly influenced by Jeff Buckley, and it so happens that I like mr. Buckley a lot. Patrick Watson was very good, a good singer, great atmosphere.

After that we sat in the grass at New Young Pony Club. Didn't really catch much of their music but what I heard sounded all right.

After NYPC I went to see a few songs by Bluegrass band Chatham County Line. Nice, but after a couple of songs, bluegrass gets quite boring. Sound quality was not too high too.

A few songs in we went to see Loney, Dear. A swedish singer-songwriter, who is quite good. The atmosphere was okay, but the show was a bit ordinary.

We sat in the grass at Orishas. Cuban hip-hop which sounded pretty okay, for hip-hop that is.




We went to stand in Line for CocoRosie halfway Orishas. We had to wait for 90 minutes before the tent opened and we could get in. We had good seats and the show was awesome. They played an hour of their best songs, and it was by far the number one of the festival for me.

After CocoRosie it was time to take it a bit more easy, since I had to let it all calm down for a bit. We went to hang on the slopes near the Alpha tent, and saw Sonic Youth, Arcade Fire and a bit of Tool.

Sonic Youth was great, they really rocked. Only Anneke didn't know them at all, and was quite surprised that the singers can't sing. She talked about that a lot, which ruined the show a bit, but it was good still. Nice and loud.

Arcade Fire built up quite a show, with a lot of musicians and a lot of instruments. They played good songs, in a good way. Liked them a lot. I love their music and the show was very well performed, the volume could have been a bit higher.

Tool just ruined it. They never play very showy on a festival, but this time they just did a jam session. I liked their show on last year's Pinkpop so much more. We walked away after a couple of songs.