Lousy work

I set up the lighting for the Hellbound house party in Amsterdam. What a lousy day. I worked for more than 14 hours. My brain is pulp. But I know a bit more about lighting, and rigging. Stuff that matters in a big production. One of my colleagues was Natasha, who is first technician for club venue Effenaar in Eindhoven. The crew was ok. But the boss... :-(
Tomorrow we got to unplug everything again. Let's hope things will go faster then.

Pfaff...

Pfaff is a band with one guitarist who sings like Frank Black, and two drummers. Yesterday they were able to breathe new life into indiepop, and into my soul. Check them out, they'll be playing in Paradiso on Queen's Day. That's April 30, at 4:30 PM.

I rehearsed with Club Midi yesterday. Club Midi is my latin-trio, and I'm singing in it. I also do a little percussion, but most of the rhythms will be produced by sequencers. Up till now, we're still using an old drum computer, but we will have beter stuff later on.
Singing in Spanish is a real challenge for me, because I can't speak it yet. I'd like to learn, but haven't done so yet. I hope singing it will increase my feeling with the language...

Riverdance

Saturday evening I got a call from Tuur, my contact for local crew work in the Rock&Roll business. Could I work for the Riverdance production in the Heineken Music Hall? Of course I could! I haven't worked in this line of business since December 2003, because there's not that many gigs at the moment. In 2003, I worked for acts like The Strokes, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Nickleback, Nelly, 50 Cent... but this year was nada up to now. When I got there, I noticed that most of my teammates also didn't have much work yet this year. Let's hope it'll get better.

Normally, you're able to watch the show beforehand, but this time they completely sealed it off. I didn't care much, because I don't like Riverdance that much. OK, it's entertainment. But it feels watered down to me. I prefer to watch the original Irish dances.
Every major touring production breathes it's own atmosphere. The hiphop productions are characterized by a road crew that is utterly bored by the music, but professional and friendly nonetheless. Crews that tour with oldies like the Stones or Bob Dylan, are proud they can work with the artist. But they are also professional enough to never show that too openly... In both cases, the production is professional and behaves like a perfect machine.
The Riverdance production had none of that. There were too many loose objects that you had too tuck in somewhere. Like you were packing for a holiday without planning. The production manager sounded like he walked off the 'Allo 'Allo set, considering his German accent. And he was a bit too tedious and a control freak...
But never mind. It's only 3 hours of work, with a fine team. I was a bit anxious if I still knew how to do this work, but I managed alright.

Minority loves Da Garv

It's not a normal minority, but it's a Silent Minority! They realy loved the latest release of Fiel Garvie, and want to support us in promoting it. Time to make an appointment with them...
Thanks André of LVR, for giving the music to Silent Minority Records :-)

Vinyl for Lawn

I gotta dash right now to our distributor Konkurrent, to give them some vinyl records of Lawn. We of [drga-drga] are bringing out the vinyl versions of their last album Backspace. They will be available this week. You can buy them in the record store for about 14 euros. There's only 200 of them, so be quick to buy one!

Cover up

Been busy the whole day to download covers from Kazaa and WinMX. I'm going to start up a cover band with some friends. Me is going to sing. I always loved to do this, singing my favourite songs with a band. I already play in the accoustic trio Moon About, but that's different. Fun, but different.

Carmenkata is winning

Tonight we won the Mooie Noten singer/songwriter contest. Next stop is Paradiso. I feel sorry for the artists that didn't make it. It's a lousy business sometimes. But this time we won, so I won't complain.
But it's definitely the last time we'll do music contests. It goes so very much against the grain of everything I believe in. I just can't help it, but I'm releaved when I see some artists are doing bad on stage. That means more chance for us to win. I hate that killer mentality of myself, when it's related to music that is. I wish I could just enjoy making music with likeminded people. Normally I do, but when it's a contest something inside of me wants to give way to backstabbing. Fortunately, I can constrain myself. But it doesn't feel right.

An ambitious meeting

Marten and I talked to some very ambitious and driven people, of the Extract Project. They want to organize a festival in September, which combines experimental electronic music with interactive objects. If it all works out, this festival could be bearing the torch of music a bit further. They want to write software that lets the music and lighting react on the movements of the audience. Already a few hitech audio and lighting companies have pledged to cooperate. Of course, the whole show will be in 5.1 surround sound.
Marten and I recognized a few pitfalls. September is real early. And what about the budget? But the whole project is very exciting... They want us to coordinate the fund-raising. We would also like to contribute a few acts to the festival, and take care of some follow-up. I mean, we think big party organizers such as ID&T could be interested in taking over some of the concepts we'll have developed.
This is all heavy talk, and I'm quite aware that there's little time to do things right. We'll have to make up our minds on this in the couple of days to come.

Carmenkata - Live in the Livingroom pic

This just in: the pic Sander van den Berg made from Carmenkata, when we played LitLR in Haarlem. I have my darbouka drum between my legs, trying to look cool when Carmen is doing magic with her accordeon. The apple you see on the pic is not a real apple, it's my favourite shaker...

The Honeybees starting off

Tonight I witnessed the first gig of The Honeybees. I happened to be the hired percussionist of the lot. Great music, both commercial and deep. I'll definitely play more with them.

Rightful Owner also played, reminding me of an accoustic version of Coldplay. They are looking for a drummer. Of course I applied. But we'll first have to talk about priorities and ambition. These are tricky subjects.
The Rightful Owner guys were very surprised to find out that I was the proud and rightful owner of a Pale Package. It's a cd containing three singer/songwriters, including them. Only 35 of them were ever made. I got my copy from Arthur ten Cate, also playing on the cd. It's a small world.

Live in the Livingroom is the new cool

Forget about the clubs, forget about loud bands and the audience chatting through the 'softer' songs. The place I went to yesterday was a livingroom. Of a person with a lot of sisters, and according to one of the playing artists Marijn "only condoms and no tampons in the bathroom". Yes, it gets that personal. The sisters had done a great job cooking all kinds of snacks. After you have paid your entrance fee of 10 euros, everything is for free of course.
And what about the artists? They shone a thousand times brighter than I have seen with a band. Even though they were all "very scared" of playing for an audience in absolute silence, they worked the better for it. There were Rutger of Flemming, Marijn (organizer of the KHL singer/songwriter evenings) and Marien of the band Moss.
I kinda dislike Flemming, but Rutger was great last evening. He has a natural way of setting the audience at ease with his talking. And the songs are very diverse, commercial little diamonds. Marijn resembles a combination of Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams and Joni Mitchell. Her remarks between the songs were both hilarious and witty. The songs were excellent, by the way. Marien played the most experimental songs, without losing touch with the audience. He does great stuff with his voice. The music reminded me a bit of Radiohead.

Well, I guess you already figured this one out: leave the clubs alone and go to Live in the Livingroom! Your life will never be the same!

Carmenkata gig in The End

There was a small but positive review of our Carmenkata gig in Café The End. There were only 4 people there, so it's quite astonishing there is a record of it ;-)

Playing in Utrecht

Last Saturday I rehearsed with The Honeybees. It's a band from Utrecht, with André from King Me (a non-retrievable site, they should fire their webmaster). They asked me to do the percussion for an accoustic gig in Café Flitz, Utrecht. We rehearsed in dB's, a revelation to me. So it is possible to have good amps and drums and lots of rehearsal rooms in one place!

Friday I was already to be found in Utrecht, playing with Come Again, an accoustic trio playing only covers. From Hazes to Oasis. That should say it all. We played in 't Oude Pothuys. I hadn't played covers in a long time. It was fun to do that again.

Lawn goes electronic

Throw away all the guitars and drums. Leave only the vocals and dress it up with samples The Notwist could have used. Lawn has remixed their prize-number 'Fix'. It will appear on their single 'Fix'. 'Fix' will be accompanied with a video.
It took them a while to make the decision, but I'm sure it's not too late. After all, they have big plans for Germany.
And now you would like to listen to the remix, of course. I've just listened to it, and it sounds great. It's on the internet allright, but am I allowed to give the URL? Let's ask. Job says no. :-( He's got a good reason for it, he wants you to BUY the single instead of download it. I'll keep you posted!

Beautiful Notes?

Went to the first round of Mooie Noten, the Amsterdam singer/songwriter contest. Carmenkata will play there too, on the 17th of April. So I was checking the competitors. Well, from what I saw in that first round, I think we should be able to make it to the semi-finals. Semi-finals, what a lousy word to use in the context of music. I know, the music industry is a competitive business. But to make a contest out of it... The people seem to love it, though. I said it before and I'll say it again (and this time I mean it ;-)

I'll never play in a music contest again.

There was one singer that actually stood out above the rest: Janne. No web appearance, I'm afraid. She sings like Norah Jones. Actually, she could be the blonde half-sister of Norah. Better give a call to Ravi Shankar...
I think she could really make it in the big world. I only wonder what she's doing in a singer/songwriter contest, it sounded more like jazzpop to me.

I also liked Summers, a Tori Amos clone. She played piano, of course. And she had the best songs. Because I didn't hear too many of those last night, I'm afraid. And people should get their English pronunciation straight. Janne got that perfect.

Oh, I could go on and on about Mooie Noten, but the bottom line is simple. I don't like contests and I think the overall quality level of the artists is low. The few exceptions couldn't revive my temper :-(

And I still have to play there...

Networking=everything

Went to 'De Waag' in Haarlem yesterday, to see Kees and Rick play. Kees is one of the organizers of Live in the Livingroom, and Rick is the singer of The Chimney Brothers. It was their first gig together. They played mostly covers, ranging from Tom Waits to Neil Young. It was fun to watch. I especially like the voice of Rick, and Kees plays great Rock&Roll licks on the piano. Kees told me Simon&Garfunkel once played in this small venue. I gave a demo of my accoustic band Moon About to the bartender. I shure hope we can play there...
I also heard that I need to apply for gigs myself at the LitLR-website, they won't do it for me. Well, that's ok. I always wanted to order my gigs by web :-) LitLR is trying to get a show at Parkpop this year. Well, that is to say, they were asked by the Parkpop organization. As you might know, they have already done shows at Noorderslag and are going to do one at Motel Mozaïque. But these gigs were in livingrooms and Parkpop wanted to have the shows on the festival ground. So they found this skateboard-shack... Lots of things to sort out though, so it's very unsure if it will actually take place.

Later that night I went to café Meander, for a gig of Xander Hubrecht. He's a busy man, but he finds time to do a monthly gig with his hobby-band. He's also doing A&R for Carmenkata, no strings attached. But I love to have him as a sounding board for our more commercial excercitions. He didn't find the time yet to listen to our new songs. Skiing and playing for Idols can be time-consuming. We've recorded a new song ('The way you are') and I promised to email it to him. Of course I'll post the song here as well.

Arthur ten Cate pics

These are long overdue, but very much fun: the pics of the already famous Arthur ten Cate live show at Breathing Bijlmer. That was more than a month ago. He played his songs with a semi-professional soul-jazz combo. Some of it was truly amazing. There you had a white singer/songwriter, playing his songs with a multi-cultural soulband in front of a black audience. And only a few hundred yards from my home! The crowd loved it, by the way.
You can listen to the live track Happy Hangover.

Fiel Garvie pics

I've got me a very big camera nowadays. It's that big that I don't dare to put on my flashlight yet. That's why these Garv pics are a bit dark, but I actually like it that way...