February 8, 2019

Carnival songs 2019: beer, fries and sex

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 10:59 am

First, there was Dutch percussionist Steven Brezet performing in the Brazil carnival, now it’s back to the Netherlands, mainly Noord-Brabant, to listen to 71 carnival songs and pick out a few good ones.

Everything I’ve heard so far is quite ‘politically correct’, a sign of the times, except for the usually tits & ass comments that are part and parcel of this genre. A few songs are in English, but they sound like watered down American music, trying to audition for something other than carnival – avoid those. Two songs off this list rip off A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’, at least two rip off Queen, while others went with the Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II, Russian folk song Kalinka, Paul Simon, and some bits of modern pop and hiphop.

This one sold me in 30 seconds: disses the Randstad folks (of the bigger cities above the Maas river) and wants to ‘kick them back over’. I immediately sent it to a friend from below the river for approval. The band name, C.V. De Kapotte Kachels, stands for ‘Central Heating, the broken heaters’:

Gebroeders Rossig (‘The Brothers Rossig’) give us ‘De Strijkplank’ (‘The Ironing Board’), which they praise, use to put beer on (instead of the traditional waiter’s platter) and also decide it’s a dance… sort of.

There’s only two songs sung by women (!), but one of them has the dirtiest double entendre of the list hands down : Sjansjee, with ‘Ik Wil Je Pijpen’ (‘I Want Your Pant Legs’, to sew them, but actually saying ‘I want to give you a blow job’ since ‘pijpen’ is both the plural of ‘pant legs’ and the verb ‘to blow’ as well as a plural noun for a small glass of beer, making this a bold move.

Vieze Jack, who never disappoints, rips off ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe and asks you to get on board his train and I kind of want to.

(Link and image: nieuwstehits.nl)

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January 23, 2019

First ever Dutch musician to play in Brazil carnival

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:22 am
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At the end of February, Rotterdam resident Steven Brezet will be the first ever Dutch musician to perform at the world famous Brazilian carnival in Salvador da Bahia. Brezet will be performing on the truck of Brazilian artist Denny Denan as a percussionist. Millions of people attend carnival in Brazil every year: it’s the biggest outdoor carnival in the world, and Salvador is said to be the third biggest in Brazil.

Brezet was asked by Denan himself to join the band. “It will be 10 days of hard work and not much sleep. The entire country works towards this period of the year, as carnival is important to everyone. I’m very curious as to how the audience will react to me”, explains Brezet.

Brezet is a known percussionist in Brazil where he often gives workshops and performances, but this is carnival and it’s an honour to be able to be a part of it, says Brezet.

(Link: rijnmond.nl, Photo of Dutch carnival in Maastricht)

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January 24, 2018

Sexist carnival theme gets students’ funding cut

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:07 pm
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The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Eindhoven University of Technology, Jan Mengelers, ‘blew up’ at a student association for using a sexist and ‘rapey’ carnival themed party on campus entitled #nietoo intended as a play on words and a rhyme of #meetoo.

Translated into English, the theme is ‘What women want doesn’t count’ (‘De wil van de vrouw doet er #nietoo’), with a wonderful image of a young woman with tape over her mouth and #nietoo stamped on it. These are future engineers in the making; their parents must be proud.

Mengelers gave the representatives of this student association, which I have a feeling has little or no women in it, a stern talking to on the same day he found out and in true straight up Brabo style told them this conversation wasn’t going to be a long one and told them their annual funding has been cut off.

The student association plans to publicly apologise, cancel the party and investigate internally. In one month, these morons will have to talk to Mengelers again and see if they’re still the cavemen they’ve shown us they can be.

update: The poster in question (see link), which was a bit tough to read, also reads ‘for 18 years and up and 5 years and under’ which shocked a lot of people more than the sexist remarks.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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January 11, 2018

Carnival song targets violent former minister

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:39 pm

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Dutch carnival season always brings out the best of the cheesiest carnival songs, and this year we start with an on topic tune that pokes fun at Camiel Eurlings, former Minister of Transport and CEO of KLM who has been prosecuted for assaulting his former girlfriend, “giving her a concussion [that still is an issue today], a broken eye socket and a broken elbow”.

With the name ‘Blond & Blauw’ (‘Blond and Blue’, instead of ‘Black and Blue’), the woman sings ‘Losse Handjes’, (‘loose hands’, which in Dutch implies ‘flying off the handle quickly using one’s hands’ = hitting someone. Eurlings is not explicitly mentioned, but it is very much about him. As well, Eurlings happens to come from Limburg, a part of the country that celebrates carnival wholeheartedly and recently quit his cushy side gig at the International Olympic Committee trying to not become the Dutch #metoo poster child, but it’s too late.

All kinds of good jibes in there: ‘if a woman says no, keep your paws/mits to yourself’ and ‘it’s always the same song [story]’. And this video is really not about the music.

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February 3, 2017

Carnival hits 2017: Mexicans, firemen and a favourite

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 6:18 pm

Nothing divides the Dutch like carnival. This year’s harvest is more about drinking and not thinking, but here are two pre-screened videos for your cringeworthy enjoyment, and a classic that I like to sing along with.

1. Watch ‘Mexicans’ build a wall, with English subtitles in ‘Trumpet’ (Grab ‘m By The Pussy)’ by the Bucket Boys ft. DJ Maurice. This hopefully needs no explanation.

2. Vieze Jack with ‘Brandweerman Jack’ (‘Fireman Jack’) is funny enough to actually watch because he’s so over the top. This time all the dirty lyrics are about being on fire and long nozzles while ripping off disco hit Ma Baker by Boney M.

3. ‘Zachte G harde L’ (Soft G Hard L) by Joss van Oss. The Dutch of the South speak with a less guttural G and considered soft, while the L refers to his dick, as the Dutch word is ‘lul’. Put the rest together yourselves.

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February 8, 2016

Carnival hits shunned by Dutch radio

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:34 pm

Although carnival is winding down, the plethora of hits used to prop it up over the past few days never made it onto the Dutch music charts. The song ‘Feestmuts’ (‘Party Hat’) from the Snollebollekes was the exception at No. 86 in the GfK Single Top 100 (video below). It’s apparently fine that tons of businesses make good money off carnival music, but it’s shameful to publicly recognise that it does because radio stations would, what, rather push the Dunglish they pass off as third-rate American music?

Carnival music executive Van de Berk of Berk Music is outraged and blames the rigid rules of radio stations for ignoring them, while some 5 million people celebrate carnival in The Netherlands and hundreds of thousands watch all kinds of carnival YouTube videos. “We understand that radio stations don’t want to play carnival music all day, but one number here and there should be possible. Maybe the broadcast tower should move from Hilversum to Eindhoven! (The Dutch media is concentrated in Hilversum, North Holland as opposed to carnival-savvy Noord-Brabant where Eindhoven is located).

Berk Music has recently awarded the Lawineboys a gold record for 15,000 sold copies of their hit ‘Sex Met Die Kale’ (‘Sex with that bald one’), an adapted cover of ‘Sex on Fire’ by Kings of Leon.

If you like videos shot in mini-vans, watch Snollebollekes do their thing. Beer helps.

(Link: www.entertainmentbusiness.nl)

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January 18, 2016

Carnival song says refugees came for the beer

Filed under: Food & Drink,Music by Orangemaster @ 12:45 pm

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Noord-Brabant student singers Grenzeloos Gek have made the news with their carnival song ‘Vluchtelingen uit Aleppo’ (‘Refugees from Aleppo’). They can’t sing on key and dance around a touchy subject, but so far they’ve not caused any actual controversy except for fueling the annual carnival lovers vs. carnival haters ping pong online.

Here’s a rough translation of the chorus:

“Refugees from Aleppo, over the mountains so high
Refugees from Aleppo, farmers, bakers and biologists
They’re coming here for four days of beer.”

It’s about a bunch of white male Dutch students drawing attention to themselves with a sub-par song using a ripped off melody and a hot topic. It’s about drinking beer and having fun and singing as flat as a carnival beer. The song amusingly implies that refugees drink beer when in fact a lot of them probably don’t and didn’t flee for their lives for a few watered down carnival beers with frat boys. I’m still wondering if this would have worked with a bunch of white Dutch girls: depending on their looks, they’d been written off or tolerated because of them.

Last year we had a few zingers. We’ll keep you posted this year.

Refugees from Aleppo is sung to the tune of the famous Dutch song ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ by George Baker Selection, better known by the younger generations for ‘Little Green Bag’.

Listen to ‘Refugees from Aleppo’ at your own risk, I couldn’t get through the video.

(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Maastricht carnival 2008)

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January 11, 2016

Amsterdam gets its own carnival name

Filed under: Dutch first,Event by Orangemaster @ 1:47 pm
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We’ve written quite a bit over the years about carnival music (here and here), but this year a carnival party crew has kicked up a notch, giving Amsterdam a carnival name.

And that name is ‘Gròòtgragtegat’, roughly ‘big hole with canals’, a name given by Alaaf & Kicking, a party organisation made up of people from Noord-Brabant living in Amsterdam who will be holding a carnival party on January 22. They actually held a vote for the name, as other contenders were ‘Amsteldonk’ and ‘Poalkesdurp’.

Pronouncing ‘Gròòtgragtegat’, with the typical hard gutteral ‘g’ sound of Amsterdam residents is tough even for Dutch people and great practice for anybody else. Here’s a whopping list of Dutch cities that get carnival names according to Wikipedia. Amsterdam isn’t on it – yet.

(Links: www.bndestem.nl, at5.nl)

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February 20, 2015

British show mistakes Dutch for German

Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am

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Last week on British television show Room 101 Dr Christian Janssen Jessen claimed to hate German pop music, which he can get away with because his father is German. “It’s sung by what mainly look like, sort of middle aged men having a massive mid-life crisis,” he explained. Host Frank Skinner managed to sing the praises of this happy and silly music, calling it ‘Europop’, as if the UK wasn’t part of Europe, adding that maybe Brits take music “too seriously”.

However, of all the German music they could have played to illustrate his point, ignorant researchers used Dutch music, which was easy to recognise by the language and the Dutch television logo when they played the clip. Janssen and the other guests didn’t even bat an eyelid when hearing something that was not German, although Janssen later claimed on Twitter that he hadn’t chosen the music. He did, whoever, keep quiet, entertaining the idea that it was German. Connect Four host Victoria Coren, who should have known better as well, also stayed very quiet.

The Dutch carnival song ‘Bam Bam (Bam)’ by Snollebollekes, which read out in English sounds like ‘Snol Bollocks’ and could be a reason for having chosen it is for adults only on YouTube. The part they played on telly is basically about ass shaking and shagging.

British television show Room 101, season 4 episode 6 aired on 13 February. The German pop music rant about Dutch music starts at 26:26, while the music kicks in at 28:03.

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January 21, 2015

Carnival hits 2015: swearing, creepy fitness and fake leather

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:24 am

Carnival is less than a month away, so it’s time to fire up some wacky carnival hits for 2015.

FeestChaos (‘Party Chaos’) starts us off with an English-language carnival song called ‘Who The F*** Is Alice’, a reworking of Smokie’s song ‘Living Next Door to Alice’ from 1977 and Nijmegen band Gompie’s next level 1995 version ‘Alice, Who The F*** is Alice?’. You’ll see cafe singing, drinking and dancing, a Hummer limo, children swearing and some serious devoicing of consonants, which makes every ‘s’ sound like that snake in the Jungle Book.

Vieze Jack (‘Dirty Jack’) gives us the corny pun named song, ‘Jump 4 Jack’. Dirty Jack looks more like a zombie than a pervert, but acts like a pervert channeling a blond version of Elvis imitating a zombie. You’ll see men in drag, tits, ass, balls, and a Scotsman with a kilt, bagpipes and no underwear. The song is not too bad, the lyrics are all easy sex puns and the bagpipe riff works for me. Contains 1980s style sexual harassment at the gym and, as an added bonus, some zoophilia.

Although the song is unoriginal, Alberto pokes fun at the very recently former mayor of Maastricht, Onno Hoes. Alberto probably refers to Hoes’ ex-husband Albert. The song is called ‘Onno (mag ik je toyboy zijn?)’ (‘Onno, can I be your toy boy’?) and relates to his recent demise. The unfaithful and not very discreet Hoes was hanging in there as the mayor until some young ‘toy boy from Almere’ told the media stories about him and Onno getting together. The mayor’s exuberant sex life led to a vote to push him out of office. He survived the vote, but eventually resigned.

You’ll see some of the Village People, carnival costumes and a disco ball effect. The idea of the song is better than the song or the video. The lyrics are a bit nasty, but points for being ‘politically relevant’.

(Link: nieuws.nl, Photo of the carnival Prince in Sittard, Limburg throwing oranges)

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