Tag: irl

  • Gabber is dead

    In October 2010 I posted about Mid-Town’s Rotterdam shop closing on my personal blog. Last week however, the curtain dropped permanently for what was left of Mid-Town (the labels and webshop). They went bankrupt.

    What’s kind of interesting to see from the official papers, is that with Mid-Town some infamous labels also cease to exist: Rotterdam Records, DJ Paul Elstak’s Forze Records and Terror Trax Records.

    It’s sad to say but it’s the last in a long string of ‘gabber landmarks’ that have disappeared: the demise of the FFWD dance parade (also in 2010, while not strictly hardcore, usually had a large hardcore following), the radio program Turbulentie on the also bankrupt radio station Stads Radio Rotterdam over a decade ago and the infamous Parkzicht club. Like it or not these things were part of Rotterdam’s cultural heritage and something that gave Rotterdam a voice in the rest of the world.

    While a common slogan among gabbers is “hardcore will never die“, it can be concluded that gabber is dead. In Rotterdam at least. Or that it’s least a spirit without a body.

  • Nieuwe Electronische Waar

    Even though I hail from the South-West of the Netherlands, I was willing to travel all the way to the East of the country to go to a conference organised in Deventer by Nieuwe Electronische Waar (New Electronic Goods) next weekend. Master-classes in making electronic music, that sounds too perfect to be true. I didn’t even care that it would cost me three times more to get there compared to the ticket price. Or that it’s actually organised for musicians on the East side of the country. Why is there nothing like that around Rotterdam?!

    But as it turns out, I’m needed elsewhere that weekend. My services as server migration specialist are required at a client. IT-superhero by day, undercover DIAY electronic musician by night. No one said it would be easy.

  • Muzikantendag 2011

    I visited the Utrecht edition of the Muzikantendag and like previous years it was veeery interesting, especially when you don’t have the stress of dropping demo’s and just enjoying the lectures.

    The opening by veteran Henk Westbroek was inspiring and funny, much more so that I had suspected. It’s obvious he’s very used to the stage also when it comes to speaking out, giving a few stabs at the industry as well.

    Allan Eshuis had a few interesting things to say about composition, but got into a bit of a fierce debate with a member of the audience when the topic changed to publishing. But then Allan works for the majors and is hired for writing hits, not art. Though his opinion on sharing a little to get more isn’t that far fetched either. sounds very strategic and business-like though.

    He did however have a thing in common with veteran/poetic musician Thé Lau : they can both write a song around a single word that sounds great. In Thé Lau’s case he got famous for Blauw which turns out to be inspired by the blue tiles in a Greek restaurant. It turns out Thé Lau has quite an awesome encyclopedic knowledge of music too.  Respect!

    The Rock your English-session by Buffi Duberman was the most useful and fun of the day. She coaches Dutch bands to make their English lots less shitty both with regards to grammar and pronunciation. Apart from just having a very bubbly personality to look at, she also wraps it all up in fun games that actually get your mind going. I’m surely going to use a few of her ideas to better my English.

    Niels Aalberts (EHPO), Meindert Bussink & Claire van der Hall had a discussion on Promotion 2.0 which, knowing the parties involved boils down to the simple message: get a website, be your own warm self on Twitter and Facebook and KILL YOUR MYSPACE. You can never hear that message too often.

    Stefan Schmid from Zuco103 explained a little about how he produces and writes his music and how to find and keep the essence of a song, even though it’s changed on every side. Though I don’t agree with his remark that the sampling era is kinda over (pff, then I’ll just bring it back by myself!) and his style of music is not even close to mine, I do love people like him going off on these kind of musical expeditions and ending up with something that sounds great.

    To top my day off, I found a singer who was at an earlier edition of the Muzikantendag years ago and whom I had heard singing. I was so intrigued by her voice back then I was hitting myself over theh ead I had never figured out what band she was playing in. I got a card from her, turns out she’s in The Kroons. Ah, my mind is at ease now.

    Oh and on the way to the station ,unconnected to the Muzikantendag, there was a guerilla party going on for a dance festival. Dudes just parked  truck with speakers near the lawn and a crowd that was already gathered danced to it. A single policeman on a bike turned up and it was obvious there was nothing he could do to stop this. Lucky for him the guerilla gig by then was pretty much over anyhow and every one went home, including me. It was a great day for music.

  • Crazy pre-sales result in crazy records

    I spoke too soon in my previous post. I said: “This means the crazy situation arises that tickets for a festival like Lowlands held at the end of August 2011, might likely be sold out already before half December“. I got it wrong. When 45000 tickets went on sale today at 11:00, they were sold out in 2 hours (Dutch source). The regular tickets at least, not all of the 10000 special discount tickets are sold out, but those are only for people who have a special pass. Last year it took 8 days and by then a few names playing were already known. Not a single name has been confirmed yet for 2011.

    I will be there, by the way, I made it in time. Each year I keep thinking I should buy a few extra tickets to sell to those who were late But if I see the online auction sites where people are already trying to sell extra tickets for €400 to €1000 even (original prices were €155), I’m glad I don’t. I don’t want to be one of those sleazy scalpers. Besides, with todays digital tickets there’s way too much risk that if you buy a ticket from an unreliable source, it’s going to be an invalid ticket.

  • Muzikantendag 2010 (The Hague)

    Went to the Muzikantendag (Musicians Day), an event organised by the Dutch Copyright organisation BUMA/STEMRA (yeah, I know), which again turned out to be quite useful. It was not as crowded as last year and there was less to do, but I guess that’s also cause they split it up over two dates and veneues (there’s one in Haarlem in two weeks). Basically for most starting musicians it’s THE opportunity to give their demo’s to (Dutch) industry professionals for a listen, but I’m there for the lectures and Q&A’s. I’m glad I went this year, cause I was kinda doubting, but it worked really inspiring. I wanna make more music!

    Short overview of what I saw:

    Opening by Lucky Fonz III
    Singer-songwriter who, in my view, isn’t really a perfect musician or singer (or musically appealing to me), but he proves the point that personality is much more important. A lot of musicians for get that. He also gave a great talk.

    How do I get gigs?
    A booker from Mojo (Jeps Salfischberger) and a booker from local venue Speakers in Delft (Gideon Rozendaal) explained the mechanics of how you get booked, how much you can expect to get paid (short answer: not a whole lot and you’re not gonna get booked if you can’t guarantee a crowd will show up). They underlined a thought that I have been playing with: start small. Really small. And work up from there.

    Producing

    Dries Bijlsma, the producer of hiphopper Typhoon,  explained exactly how he made tracks from scratch (including this one). When they asked for a bpm to make a song right then and there, I suggested 140 bpm, they were kinda shocked. Sorry, I’m hardcore. ;) Bijlsma gave quite a few interesting ideas I might wanna try out myself to create beats. Had a short talk with him afterwards about rights and people helping out with tracks. Might have a few for crowdsourcing thanks to that.

    Ralph Murphy – Murphy’s Law

    Song-writer Ralph Murphy, author of Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting, gave a mini-masterclass of how to write not a song, but a hit. Though not geared to writing the kind of music I have in mind, Murphy has some great anecdotes, advices and is generally a pleasure to listen to. I like the fact that he studies music purely out of a certain scientific curiosity, some times even researching songs he doesn’t like. He also managed to make me fill up three pages in my note book worth of notes, the most of any session.

    Online Marketing & Distribution

    This session was kinda disappointing cause there were a lot of things I there I kinda already knew. Alexander Mooij had a lot of interesting things to say and I guess mentioning Trent Reznor is always cool points, though everyone kinda knows about his marketing ploys, nothing new there.  Bart Snoeren frm 3fm/3voor12 gave some really interesting insights on how to get on Luisterpaal. Andy Zondervan despite being from BUMA/STEMRA showed that their organisation is thinking about the future and more fair systems for online content. Also thanks for point out ‘I want a pony’ Krause. Name-dropping helps discovering new music.

    How do I release my own album?

    The drummer of The Tunes and Lucky Fonz III talked about how and why to release your own album, without outside help. Short story: you make more money, but you also have to do a lot of (tedious) work. And as long as you’re a small artist, that’s okay. Also, you don’t have to sign with a record company to get your album out, just getting a distributor might be enough. And lets you keep your own rights. Got some good ideas and tips out of this session, especially with what I have in mind.

    There were a few more sessions after that (about/by BUMA/STEMRA), but since I’m too cool for school, I skipped those and went home earlier for a good meal. After all I wasn’t there to drop off a demo or exchange business cards, but just for industrial espionage. LOLZ Please remind me next year, when I doubt if I should go, then I SHOULD go.

  • If all else fails, play the blues

    I usually say “if all else fails, you can always play in a blues cover band“. The thing is that blues isn’t very hard to play, even if you can barely hold and instrument. There are challenging, not-so-easy-to-play blues songs out there, but most of the time, for most songs, it’s pretty straight-forward. If you look up musician wanted ads on various websites, you’ll find the bulk are either rock/metal or blues cover bands. Most of these bands have no professional ambitions other than playing the local pub on Friday nights for fun. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

    While I have no plan on giving up on my electronic work and the ambitions I have for it, I ironically found myself with an invitation to go play in a blues cover band for this Friday. Some people at my employer wanted something different for their weekly pub evening. And since there are plenty of guitarists working there, they figured they’d give their inner-Hendrix a platform to play on.

    I figured what the hell and accepted. I’ll be alternately singing and playing the bass on a few songs. It’ll be a break from the usual and it’ll be good fun without pretensions. And without band practice. We’ll see how that works out.