Dutch house DJ and producer Fedde Le Grand has his own iPhone application, iFedde, available in the app store.
“Anything you can do at Fedde’s website, you can do with the app. You can upload and share pictures, chat with friends, find out what Fedde’s up to and send him direct messages.”
I can see why the community aspect of this application is very important. Now I want to see other artists come up with apps and what will happen when 100 of your favourite artists want you to use their specific app!
There I was, just popping over to the Turkish shop across the street when I noticed that the billboard on the corner had changed adverts.
And there I was trying to find a link between Vancouver and The Netherlands!
I know that this advert would never be accepted anywhere in Canada and that it’s no big deal here and simply funny. There’s a cultural difference right there. No freaked out parents claming this traumatises youth. It’s a nice change from the usually photoshopped tits and ass featuring underaged girls for useless products. As if the men’s speed skating outfits weren’t revealing enough.
On February 6th, Dutch singer Stef Bos was awarded a prize in Pretoria, South Africa for his contribution to the Afrikaans language and music. It was the first time ever that a foreigner has received such an award.
His new CD ‘Kloofstraat’ which will be out in March will have songs that are almost completely written in Afrikaans, a language Stef must speak quite well since he lives half the year in Cape Town. The rest of the year he lives in Antwerp, Belgium, as do many Dutch people.
Here’s Stef Bos singing his first Dutch hit from 1990, ‘Papa’ that seems to be a classic song dedicated to fathers.
Filed under: Music, Shows by Orangemaster @ 12:36 pm
Eurovision is the fast food of music. I don’t even understand how non-Europeans can get into this exclusive club, unless they pull strings like French Canadian Céline Dion did to sing and win for FranceSwitzerland in 1988 or lobby very hard like Israel did to be able to participate. Maybe that’s why I like this strain of gossip.
Although The Netherlands won the Junior Eurovision 2009 and apparently are able to put on a show non-Dutch people like in Dutch rather than English (or Dunglish), the adult version has been digging its own grave and may have hit China already.
Pierre Kartner (aka Vader Abraham) who is a international song writer and singer wrote this year’s song ‘Ik ben verliefd’ (Sha la lie) (I’m in love Sha la lie) and is being dumped on by the bucketful. The song sounds like it was written eons ago when the Dutch had no knowledge of the outside world, while the subject matter is the safest choice imaginable. The video above is a demo version and will be sung by many different artists.
To make criticizing him easier — and the detail has been corrected — Kartner wrote about the city of ‘Leningrad’, Russia which is now called St Petersburg. Kartner changed the problematic lyric and turned it into Moscow, which I’m sure was not politically motivated and tickles my Russian heritage.
The Netherlands hasn’t made the finals in five years going on six and their last win dates back to 1975, and before that 1969 when only a few countries ran the show. The Dutch often say they should just stop, but I say if Finnish heavy metal can win, the Dutch can surely get back into the saddle somehow.
So let’s go back even further, 1957, and listen to Teddy Scholten sing ‘Een beetje’ (A little bit) about being ‘a little bit’ in love, the Eurovision Song Contest winner of that year and ponder where did it go wrong. Teddy Scholten even sang a French version of the same song.
Tim Knol is a 20-year-old Dutch singer from Hoorn, North Holland who really looks like the Dutch guy next door, complete with nonchalant lumberjack wear (Neil Young comes to mind) and a no-nonsense Dutch manner. As of late, he’s been playing shows and concerts in the Netherlands and on 18 January he was on a Dutch talk show that breaks Dutch acts, De Wereld Draait Door (linked song starts at 1:42).
The video here above was taped outdoors in guy-next-door style. Tim is playing A Song for You by Texan singer Townes van Zandt.
The question buzzing around is why do people like this guy and his cover music? Besides an obvious good voice and good English pronunciation, what do you think is special about him?
For a long time the band Normaal symbolised music from the sticks, the ZZ Top of the Achterhoek (literally: back corner) sang in their local dialect about beer, women, and any combination of the two. Then in 1985, the Limburg band Rowwen Hèze was founded, and suddenly people were speaking of a trend.
Like Normaal, Rowwen Hèze makes good party music, based oddly enough on the continental immigrant music of the United States: Tex-Mex, polka, fanfare, Irish folk. They take standards (or songs that sound like they ought to be) and add silly local texts to them: Enselma becomes Bestel Mar (order up), and Ay Te Dejo En San becomes Kroenenberg (a place name). Of course, when they sing Los Lobos’ and Flaco Jimenez’ songs, they invite these guys onto stage too.
The other side of Rowwen Hèze (named after a local tramp) is introspective:
Saint Anthony was said to know
– dear friend, he wrote, it is true –
it can be better to lose something beautiful
than to never having had it before
Kyteman’s Hip Hop Orchestra won the Popprijs 2009 (’Pop prize’) in Groningen last Saturday.
The 12-piece-band won one of the most prestigious pop music awards of the Netherlands for its contributions to the genre. The chairman of the jury, Hans Kosterman, called the orchestra “authentic, a source of inspiration, strong-minded and very successful.”
The prize consists of 10,000 euro and a statuette. The annual award was introduced in 1986, when it was given to singer Mathilde Santing. Despite having 10 MCs, the band is perhaps best known for its instrumental, Sorry.
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone Happy New Year! Our resolutions for 2010 are to take more pictures and make more videos, and continue to post the good stuff. Please send us more stuff, too!
BUMA/Stemra has decided not to pursue its blogger’s tax of 160 euro per 6 embedded songs for 2010. At the same time, the collecting society for composers and performing artists has closed a deal with Youtube, allowing the Google daughter to serve videos containing music to a Dutch audience.
After a storm of protest, BUMA/Stemra cancelled its tariffs for non-commercial users earlier, leaving blogs like 24 Oranges in the cold, because we run Google ads. Now Webwereld reports that commercial users will also be exempt for one year, while BUMA/Stemra tries to iron out any legal glitches. I guess that is a step forward from past practices, where the society would start lawsuits against pretty much anyone and use the resulting jurisprudence as either law, or as a springboard for further lawsuits.
Music Week reports that the new licensing agreement covers “professional or user-generated video hosted on and streamed via YouTube in the Netherlands.”
Odd, then, that I still come across notices now and again that music has been removed from a clip after complaints by somebody pretending to be a rights holder (typically one of the Big Four). Let’s see how this will pan out in 2010. My guess though: Google will be paying lots of money for nothing in return.
Meanwhile the union for musicians, Nederlandse Toonkunstenaarsbond, has urgently requested that BUMA/Stemra apologize over the heavy-handed manner in which it introduced its tax for embedded videos. Chairman Erwin Angad-Gaur fears the society’s tactics have damaged the reputations of musicians. He told VPRO’s 3 Voor 12: “Musicians are not against copyright fees, to the contrary. But we do want more flexibility.” For instance the flexibility to decide they want money for certain songs only.
Fed up of the same old Christmas songs on the radio? Then go and download your free copy of Christmas Candy from the Netherlands, a mostly English-language affair from up and coming indie bands that was put together to counter that horrible stuff they dish out on Dutch radio ever year.
BUMA/Stemra has decided not to pursue its blogger’s tax of 160 euro per 6 embedded songs for 2010. At the same time, the collecting society for composers and performing artists has closed a deal with Youtube, allowing the Google daughter to serve videos containing music to a Dutch audience. 
