Recently someone asked me if I had ever been to Madurodam in The Hague, an attraction many tourists and Dutch people visit, especially with kids, and my answer was ‘no’. Someone also recently asked me why Dutch DJs (music producers, really) Tiësto, Afrojack and Armin van Buuren were world-famous to which I pertly answered that Afrojack didn’t count in my books and that the other two make dance/trance music that the Dutch seem to make best.

Now that Armin van Buuren is just that much more popular than Tiësto and considered an export product like some sort of cheese, he’s now also featured in Madurodam.

As a DJ myself I am a bit miffed that Madurodam has set up turntables (you know, for vinyl records) as an attraction when in fact Van Buuren plays off CD players. I don’t care what he uses, but the art of using turntables is and will always be totally different than using CDs.

Madurodam, you’re willfully misleading children. It would be like giving them a chance to play with acrylic paints trying to mimic their favourite street graffiti artist.

(Link: www.omroepwest.nl, Photo of Armin van Buuren by Peter Drier, some rights reserved)

Here’s a party song called Scuba by a band called De Skaggerz.

A son goes to his father / Dad, I did something wrong / I quit school / Have been staring out the window instead / I cleaned out my bank account / Paid for everything myself / Who do you think you are? / Let me go!

De Skaggerz are, according to their own description, an “up-tempo party reggae band from Rotterdam and beyond. Up-tempo ska-reggae is our genre and because of our frequent excursions to hip hop we are impossible to pigeonhole.”

‘Skaggers’ is Irish slang for pasta, but skagging also means to come off methadone. This is according to the ever so reliable Internet so take those definitions with a grain of salt.

I heard this song last week on De Tweeminutenshow (‘the two minute show’), a program on Dutch pop radio station Pinguin Radio where bands can submit their own tracks. Each song gets two minutes on the show and the song that gets voted on the most gets played in full during next week’s show. At the time of writing you can still vote for Scuba.

(Video: YouTube / De Skaggerz. Image: crop from the video)

A musical instrument shop in Groningen, a city some call the real rock city of the Netherlands (surely a bone of contention with the people of Eindhoven), is looking for someone, male or female, to sell guitars.

They proudly tell us in their advert that their main clientele are rockers, you know, the kind of people who wear black concert shirts, have piercings and tattoos, and favour loud rock music. The shop called Tonika Music wants the ideal candidate to really look like they enjoy selling guitars, have the right qualifications, be convincing, and all the stuff you would expect from a good salesperson, but not have anything in common with the average rocker. They also mention no beards and mustaches, which potential female candidates read as not really wanting women either, but are too daft to say out loud for fear of discriminating!

Blatantly discriminating against people, which goes against Dutch law, the shop will refuse candidates with piercings, visible tattoos, ‘wild hair’ or a predilection for the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. You shouldn’t be a smoker, which they consider as being ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ in a negative way and ideally you should still play in a band and understand musicians. I am sure there are people that fit this description and want to work there, but I’m more worried about the drop in sales that is soon to follow.

A keyboard player on Facebook said it best: “The dumbest sales tactic there is, is valuing your opinion more than you value your clients’ opinion. Luckily, clients are able to discriminate and take their business elsewhere.” The company, currently being trashed on Facebook, has removed their advert, which pretty much proves how stupid they’ve been. People have offered to help them with their PR and give them social media classes. Insulting your clientele has to be the dumbest crisis move ever.

(Photo of Slash, top, by Florex007, some rights reserved. Bottom: partial screenshot of the offending advert via Facebook.)

Named after a house that is in turn named after the Prince album Controversy, the Controversy Tram Inn in Hoogwoud, North Holland features overnight stays for the entire family in city trams and railcars converted into five rooms. As well, there are all kinds of other vehicles strewn throughout their farm estate.

Frank and Irma Appel have restored a four-berth train carriage and four themed tram bedrooms in either end of two city centre tram railcars that used to run on the streets of Amsterdam and Germany. You can’t help but join in the lifestyle that Frank and Irma have created! They themselves sleep inside a London Double Decker bus, installed in the living room, and their kitchen and breakfast area is a converted French van. Their house is decorated with cars, and motor paraphernalia.

You can’t miss the house, it has a Mig fighter plane right outside.

(Links: www.controversy.nl, www.unusualhotelsoftheworld.com, Photo: Controversy Inn)

A 23-year-old guy from Amsterdam living in England with what has to be a fake Dunglish accent won a round of talent search show Britain’s Got Talent with an 80s parody called ‘Back Door Lover’.

Wanting to bring the keytar back to its former glory, Maarty Broekman, sporting a Michael Jackson style leather jacket won sympathy from jury members to make it to the next round.

He can’t sing and is pretty bad on the keytar, but for being desperate for attention, he scores pretty big.

(Link: www.standaard.be, Photo of keytar by Thomas Beck, some rights reserved)

It’s hard to believe that after eight years of international humiliation the Dutch Eurovision’s entry for 2013 actually has a chance. National rock chick Anouk made the cut this week with the song ‘Birds’, which she had lying around and not with some Dunglish-gone-wrong cultural faux-pas like many of her recent predecessors.

Although TROS television station director Peter Kuipers is thrilled that Anouk is going to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, he’s already grumpy at the idea of forking out some 10 million euro for hosting the show if she wins. TROS is currently in talks to merge with the AVRO television station to save both their financial futures.

A straightforward, well-written ballad (as in no mistakes because we’ve done that before) seems like a good choice. TROS skipped having a television show to determine who would go to Eurovision as Anouk said either you pick me or forget it.

Seems like Anouk helped the TROS save money after all.

For a quick comparison, here’s Sineke – Ik ben verliefd (Sha-la-lie) – 2012.

Here’s the “trommelende trutten’ (roughly, ‘drumming bimbos’) with their made-up language (kicks in at 0:42) Treble – Amambanda – 2006

(Link: www.welingelichtekringen.nl, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

On 30 April Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands will be inaugurated as king of the country.

The government decided on three things to mark the occasion: a book of dreams, King’s Games for elementary school pupils and a King’s Song. The latter would be written by accomplished song smith John Ewbank based on verses people from all over the kingdom had sent in via Twitter and other channels.

The Moderate Voice says of the result:

The King’s Song is, in my opinion, a delightful mix of musical genres — including traditional Dutch music and (Dutch) rap — lyrics and video contributed by Dutch artists and citizens alike and put together and performed by a score of Holland’s finest artists and musicians. It displays the diversity and the beauty of today’s Dutch people, it reflects — in the lyrics — Dutch history, traditions and struggles, such as the constant fight against the sea and the vocals are soft and melodic — something that can be difficult to accomplish with the somewhat guttural Dutch language.

Problem is, the Dutch people don’t like the song! Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition that says—in jest, one presumes and hopes—that they will renounce their citizenship if the government persists in its unholy idea to have the song sung to the prince. Linguists were dragged into the spotlight to highlight the many ills of the song; then other linguists stepped up and said there is nothing wrong with the song—linguistically speaking.

Meanwhile hateful messages aimed at Ewbank kept piling up on Twitter and at some point the author of a record number of 18 Dutch number one hits decided to withdraw the song, leaving behind a flabbergasted country—how does one withdraw a song?

So what are these mistakes Ewbank supposedly made? For one thing the song is incredibly schmaltzy. In it, the prince protects citizens against the elements—”I will build a dyke with my bare hands and will keep you away from the water”—or the other way around, the whole thing is unclear. Keeping the Dutch away from water; has the narrator gone mad?

In my opinion the problem with the song is that it is just not beautiful. You could argue whether this is due to shaky grammar, ambiguous language or to trite metaphors, or even all of the above. The song feels like Ewbank phoned it in and my guess is that a broad section of the population felt the same way.

The sentence that is the banner for all who dislike the song and that has been parodied countless times the past few days is “de dag die je wist dat zou komen is eindelijk hier”. Translated literally it means “the day you knew that would come has finally arrived.” It’s not grammatically wrong, but it uses such an unusual construction that it makes the brain sit up and pay attention to the grammar of the song all of a sudden.

Saying that the people’s objections are about grammar helps to make the problem quantifiable. You can drag linguists in front of TV lights and have them say “this, then.” And if you are a talentless newspaper columnist, it helps you in blaming a nebulous ‘cultural elite’ who ‘obviously’ care more about how a song is spelled than what it tries to express.

And what if you’re the minister responsible for this mess? Jet Bussemaker, Minister for Education, unwithdrew* the song yesterday and declared it shall be sung to the new king, but with any grammatical errors removed. Later a spokesperson for the minister said she had meant it as a joke, NRC reports.

You can find the song at YouTube.

*) Yes, I have to make up words just so that I can tell you what’s going on.

Says 3FM: “3FM DJ Roosmarijn asked a Dutch choir to make an a cappella version of Bangarang by Skrillex. She got Dario Fo to sing it in her program 3VOOR12RADIO on Wednesday 20 June [2012].”

Skrillex’ own version never got higher than 59 in the Dutch Mega Single Top 100 according to Dutchcharts.nl.

The Theatre Choir of Dario Fo, as its full name is, has a ‘making of’ video on its website.

(Video: Youtube. Image: crop of a video still.)

Frans Pollux from Venlo translated 12 Bruce Springsteen songs to the Venloish dialect.

Are the Boss’ songs uniquely tied to New Jersey or can they also be about the roads of Blerick in Limburg (just across The River, the Meuse that is, from Venlo)? The 12 track CD Pollux Duit Springsteen tries to answer the question, or at least to entertain you. The title means Pollux Does Springsteen.

Mefite Martin Wisse thinks: “Perhaps surprisingly, it works.”

The CD cover was designed by Fred Honig, also from Venlo.

International headlines have been buzzing since last night about Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicating the throne so that her son, Crown-Prince Willem-Alexander can take over the family business on 30 April, a holiday you may know as Queen’s Day (pics).

The next item of business is that as of 2014 Queen’s Day will be known as King’s Day and fall on Willem-Alexander’s birthday, 27 April. However, because 27 April in 2014 is a Sunday, the merriment will get underway on 26 April.

I kind of feel sorry for all the drag queens next year as they may have to review their party outfits. I really do hope the drag kings, a highly underrated breed, make a big royal appearance.

To celebrate Wim-Lex’s turn to run the Royals, here’s a Dunglish number I dedicate to him: