May 24, 2009

First edition of Ascension Day festival was smashing

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 1:34 pm

The kids just loved watching all that old junk get totally trashed! For the very first edition of the Hemeltjelief Ascension Day festival in Amsterdam North, hosted by Cafe Noorderlicht, all kinds of crazy stuff was going on. I was a DJ at the event during the day, so I watched all that smashing from the newly built wooden stage they set up outdoors.

On a sunny day, albeit it with too much wind to actually play vinyl without the needle skipping, all kinds of cool stuff was happening outdoors. They had freshly baked pizza, fresh oysters and bright coloured ice cream for the kids. There were several stages with bands, some strange artist making a human-sized spider web with huge amounts of transparent tape between some trees and a workshop where kids could make their own musical instruments. I missed the evening activities, but they included some seriously bassy reggae, bonfires, car bashing and alcohol.

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May 16, 2009

French week with Yves Duteil and others

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:17 am

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(Photo: Yves Duteil tuning and retuning, Leine’s second gig of the night)

The city of Amstelveen, next to Amsterdam, has been playing host to an entire week of French cultural events, the Festival Alliance Française. It was opened on Tuesday by the mayor of Amstelveen who lovelingly prepared a 15 minute speech in French. I listened because he mentioned my name as the MC for last Thursday’s evening of French music, starring French legend Yves Duteil.

My co-blogger said he’d woken up this morning withto the sound of a woman DJ from the radio talking about how nice the concert was. The week isn’t over and the 26th French song contest winners will be crowned tomorrow with Yves Duteil on the jury.

Last Thursday, three former winners of this French song contest performed and received serious applause: Sjors van der Panne, Sandra van Megen and Guido van de Meent.

The rest of the evening featured a mixed bag of local favourites Philippe Elan, Ben Cramer, Leine, Ralph Rousseau and David Vos, as well as Parisians Peppermoon. DJ Guuzbourg was in the DJ booth and wonder planner Frances Gramende who organised the event was enjoying the fruits of her labour.

One of the jokes I cracked backstage was that I felt like Kermit the frog at the Muppet Show. Leine laughed at that one because she finished the evening on stage with a French version of ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’, a coincidence.

Yves Duteil also jammed it out on guitar with a Dutch alto sax player of house band Omnibuzz and they then did that on stage which was very nice. When Yves told the audience he’d been giving shows in Paris recently and that there were Dutch people every night in front, someone yelled out “I was there!”.

The improvised duet of the song “Allez viens on danse/De Clown” by Ben Cramer singing the Dutch version and Philippe Elan singing the original French version was a crowd pleaser. The writer of the original French song, Georges Châtelain, came all the way from Paris and was in the audience. It was a perfect evening all around.

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May 11, 2009

Nice guys French music compilation in May

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am
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Although I often say that promoting French music in a country that’s wired into Anglo-Saxon culture is like putting a square peg in a round hole (and hammering that thing in like there’s no tomorrow), I can safely say that the edges of that same square peg are finally getting smoother.

Dutch journalist, DJ and ‘zuchtmeisje’ (girls that sigh when they sing) enthusiast Guuz Hoogaerts (aka Guuzbourg) will soon release his third compilation of French music called “Garçons Gentils”, the male equivalent of his first two compilations, Filles Fragiles.

Some tracks were specially recorded for this album by lesser known bands, but there are big names in there as well. First, we need to get through the summer.

(Link: Filles Sourires, Image by Studio Garcia)

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April 17, 2009

Dutch Project Gutenberg reader for April 2009

Filed under: Animals,Literature,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:37 pm

What is it with adventurers and gadgets? Do they need the distraction when all there is between them and a 2000-metre drop is an almost negligible amount of tent cloth? Or do they feel they have to be at the frontier of everything, including that of technological advances?

This photo shows an early iPod, 1909, used by Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole. As you can see, there’s only one earbud—which is rather large, the idea being that the music might be shared with penguins this way. Shackleton failed his bid but did set a record for going farthest South. When he came back later that year, he wrote an article about his adventures which got translated into Dutch and published in De Aarde en Haar Volken.

My Nederlandse Project Gutenberg Reader for April (Dutch) dips into a number of translations, among which translations of the chapter Birds of Brehms Tierleben, of Durch das Land der Skipetaren (Karl May), and of Erasmus’ Morias Enkomion (The Praise of Folly).

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April 15, 2009

Haarlem to audition street musicians for permits

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:53 pm
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Co-blogger Branko has a Dutch saying when he hears a bad street musician: “Net zo irritant als een straatmuzikant” (Just as irritating as a street musician). Of course, there are good ones and I sometimes give them money, but summer has a nasty way of attracting bad street musicians as well as gypsy children forced to play in order to earn money for some conspicuous adults. It’s basically child labour, but then with an accordion. I saw a gypsy child playing the accordion once in Den Bosch and saw her on the news the exact same evening with a man taking her earnings away. According to the Dutch children protection agency, the kids are 10 to 14 years old and earn money for their family. They are allowed to play within the EU and so it’s not illegal somehow.

The wealthy city of Haarlem claims it is being invaded by “untalented Eastern European musicians” and next year, it plans to audition them so they can get a permit. City council believes in musicians on the street, but not so many bad ones, or “beggars with an instrument”. This would make Haarlem the first Dutch city ever to impose permits on street musicians.

My guess is the musicians will just play elsewhere… like Amsterdam.

(Link: depers.nl)

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March 18, 2009

Singer claims he’ll win song contest he can’t even enter

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 2:15 pm
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My very talented friend Frances, part of the organisation of the Concours de la Chanson de l’Alliance Française (French Song Contest of the Alliance Française) here in the Netherlands was at the hairdresser’s this week and grabbed a tabloid while she was waiting.

Claude Francis, a Belgian singer who apparently sings international musical numbers in French, claims that he’ll win the above-mentioned song contest because he’s better than all the silly Dutch folk who know squat about French music. It may not read this way word for word in Dutch, but the repeated phone calls Frances received from this man pleading to be entered into the contest in order to win it kinda point that way.

What’s the big deal? It’s a Dutch contest and so you have to live in the Netherlands to enter it. He claims to have a girlfriend in a Dutch town and so he’s often in Netherlands, and he thinks that’s good enough.

Already claming to win a contest you can’t enter is just stupid — unless he was misquoted. Time to get a manager who can communicate, methinks.

(Photo: Privé, 11 March 2009)

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March 13, 2009

Companies to pay for employees’ (already paid for) music

Filed under: Gadgets,Music by Branko Collin @ 10:56 pm

Judge J.H. Huijzer has ordered in what must be one of the silliest court findings of recent times that companies whose employees bring iPods to work, must pay copyright collectives for the music.

In practice that means you’re going to pay several times for the music you listen to. Imagine you’re listening to the radio on your Digital Audio Player. First, the radio station had to pay for buying the medium. Then they have to pay for broadcasting the song. If they burn a back-up to CD, they have to pay for that too. If you bought your DAP in Germany you paid a copyright fee on the hard disk, and now when you listen to the radio at work your boss has to cough up some extra cash.

I wonder why people download their music so often instead of buying the CD. Hm…

The court’s very tortuous reasoning goes like this (Dutch):

4.3. The judge finds that the mere fact that employees are allowed to listen to music during working hours, even on an iPod or mobile phone, means that Suplacon [the defendant – Branko] has an interest in its employees listening to music. After all, happy employees work harder. This means that publication of music as defined in article 12 of the Auteurswet has taken place.

(The Dutch copyright law, Auteurswet, distinguishes between publication and copying, both acts forbidden by the law unless you have the author’s permission or unless you cross the palm of copyright collectives with some silver.)

BUMA, the rights organisation that brought the case, says (Dutch): don’t cry, the judge did not mean it like that, and we’re not going to collect money from companies where employees listen to their iPods. If the judge didn’t mean it like that, then why did he say it like that?

I imagine the next Eddy Murphy movie to be called The Nutty Judge, based on true events. Eddy, let your people call my people, I can have this peach of a script ready in no-time. All I ask is that you pay me upfront, and then when the movie is shown in theaters, and then when it is brought out on DVD, and then just because I feel like it, and then when it’s a Monday, and then when I see three pigeons in a day, and so on and on and on and on.

Via Iusmentis (Dutch) and others. Photo: Universal.

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March 8, 2009

Impromptu concerts by floating organ

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 8:30 pm

I ran into the good ship Notedop today on the Zuideramstel Kanaal in Amsterdam. It’s basically a floating organ, and I can tell you from personal experience that it can be heard loud and clear dozens of meters away. The Notedop (nut shell) and its owner Reinier Sijpkens can be found wherever they have a canal and a bridge and where good cheer is in need. Sometimes even a swimming pool suffices.

On his website Sijpkens writes (Dutch/English):

I made a small boat, “de NOTEDOP”, designed a miniature church organ and had it built by Henk Smit. Next I created all kinds of mostly classical arrangements “in a nutshell” of 1 or 2 minutes for organ, trumpet and surprise instruments that sound well against a water city backdrop.

I brought odes to people on the bridges of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Gouda, Enkhuizen, Alkmaar, Venice, Oudewater, Bruges, Hoorn and many other cities. You can experience this yourself if you book my water concert or happen to run into me.

Thank god for URLs on the sides of boats. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I forgot to talk to Sijpkens when I had the chance.

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March 4, 2009

Heavy metal is bad for kids and my beauty sleep

Filed under: Music,Religion by Orangemaster @ 10:09 am
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In the growing catergory of the War on fun and religious people publically showcasing their crisis of faith to the media who enjoy running with it, let’s take a stab at a golden oldie target-wise: heavy metal music.

A local religious association from Middelstum (Stichting de Cederborg), some 15 km from Groningen, is protesting against a pop event called Sunsation that’s been around for years. They claim the music pushes kids to suicide and oh yeah, they make noise. “Rap and pop rock have a negative influence on children and heavy metal is really focused on suicide. And we have church on Sunday. It’s important to get a good night’s rest.”

I’m totally down with that last bit (the rest part), but the first bit is top quality bull, and not a good way to win an argument in 2009. The organisers of the event explain that the Cederborg people are trying to draw attention to something the event has nothing to do with. The organisers are also avidly looking for a better location.

(Link: rtvnoord.nl, Photo: treehugger.com )

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February 18, 2009

Limburg carnival protest song written by policitians

Filed under: Music,Shows,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:27 am

The Socialist Party (SP) in the southernmost province of Limburg have written a carnival song protesting against the upcoming sale of the province’s share of utility Essent to the Germans. It is called ‘Zoëlang um maar get te zoepe haet’, which is in Limburgs dialect and probably means ‘As long as you havehe has enough to drink’. This is co-blogger Branko’s mother tongue and he speaks the Venlo variant. You may notice the softer sound of the gutteral ‘g’, which is the dead giveaway.

Carnival is just a few days away (22- 24 February) and what better way to express your anger than to get everybody drunk and singing along, protesting against losing more local clout during a recession. You may notice German is also being sung in the video, making it a multicultural all-arounder.

I can’t help but point out that many people in the northern part of the country (there’s this invisible line somewhere near a river or two) don’t celebrate carnival at all, which is seen as a more Catholic shindig, but have utter contempt for it because it’s just a huge piss up with a dress up flavour to it. Oddly enough, the same argument goes for the national holiday Queen’s Day and major football matches, but apparently some parties are more equal than others.

(Link: rtl.nl)

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