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Yes folks, it’s about that time: yesterday the Lowlands schedule was ennounced!! There is a certain routine that coincides with Timetable Day: I get up earlier than usual (a feat in itself as anyone who knows me will confirm), get the newspaper, resist the overwhelming urge to spread it out on the floor right in the newsagent’s, cycle to work, grab a cappuccino on my way up to my office, grab a pen, sit down and open the paper.
There’s a strange process that follows. On the one hand I want to devour the paper and absorb every detail immediately, but then I also wince and look away when at a glance I already see beloved band names programmed simultaneously… Well, there’s no time for denial, time to grab that pen and start circling!
Friday
Things start out well, seems I’ll be able to start the festival off in the humongous Alpha with some upbeat Pigeon Detectives and Presidents of the USA, then sidestep for the more melancholy The National, wander over to Bravo for some quality Dutch hiphop courtesy of Pete Philly & Perquisite and then see if Amy Macdonald will deliver. After this it gets more exciting, time to get some moves going with Hot Chip, I’ll skip The Ting Tings as I’m pretty sure the vocals will disappoint.
Next up I’m curious to see what raucous rock Cage The Elephant are going to serve up all the way over in the Charlie tent, but afterwards I’m faced with my first big dilemma: The Kooks (reliable good times) vs. Santogold (slightly more unpredictable, possibly more exciting?)… And then there’s another one: looks like I’ll have to skip the magic that is The Flaming Lips AND the new boys in town Late Of The Pier in order to get anywhere near Roisin Murphy, considering she’ll have the Bravo tent packed I’d say. Poor Anouk doesn’t even get a look in, despite the fact I like her new stuff. After that: free sailing, bit of Junkie XL to see if he’s still relevant, maybe catch a movie.
All in all not too bad, no severe casualties, just some cuts and grazes.
Saturday
Good god, what were these people thinking?? How can I be expected to be up, active and on terrain at 11:30 in the bleedin mornin???? Dear sweet lovely Ane Brun, I would like to let you know I would love to see you perform and you have been officially circled on my timetable, however… I have a feeling our paths might not cross that particular morning. Now Laura Marling on the other hands, with her 2 o’clock programming, she stands a much better chance! So I get a gentle female voice to wake me up after all, good news.
Then it’s time for some seriously funky stuff: De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig! Dat vind je leuk he? But now comes one of the crappiest choices of the timetable so far: Blood Red Shoes vs. N*E*R*D. In all honesty it was a quick decision: Blood Red Shoes are simply a must see for me as I’ve missed their performances in Holland so far and I saw N*E*R*D at Rock Werchter a few years ago. But still, I was so looking forward to screaming All the girls standing in the line for the bathroom!!!
Slightly less painful, but still, I’ll be skipping Kraak & Smaak and Tunng in order to go to one of my Top Five Acts To Look Forward To: Los Campesinos! If I run real fast I might be able to make it a cross the terrain to catch a full Foals set. Then, sadly, another case of Sophie’s choice. What to do? Go for the therapeutic wonderfully warm sounds of Iron And Wine, Le Le’s absolutely addictive beats and nonsense lyrics I can’t get enough of (listen to Kickstart Le Brommer one and all!) or, the most likely scenario, succumb to the Alpha tent pressure once on Saturday to get my fill of trusty Take Me Out jumpabouts and delectable new snacks from those self proclaimed highland discopunkers Franz Ferdinand? Decisions decisions…
Then a final toss up: cringe at the sight of The Sex Pistols clinging onto former glory or go for more reliable British Power Pop, British Sea Power style? Well none of this really matters considering it’s all leading up to my second must see of the day: Does It Offend You, Yeah? Thankfully not double booked with anything even remotely on the same level of interesting as far as I’m concerned. Already excited at the thought of We Are Rockstars kicking off!
So Saturday’s quite a tough day as far as timetable tension is concerned. Cloning required.
Sunday
Then the last festival day comes around, it must be getting easier by now right? Well, not much. Straight away I’m off to a crap start: having to choose between We Are Scientists and Lykke Li to start the day. In all likelihood Lykke Li will win as I’m currently addicted to I’m Good, I’m Gone, but who’ll say. Then, after a spot of lunch (breakfast more like) it’s time to bounce around the Alpha tent with Gogol Bordello! The gypsy frenzy is overshadowed by the fact I also really wanted to check out Yeasayer who share their timeslot, as well as Jamie Lidell. But Jamie I got to see at Westerpark last year and I’m not missing Gogol again. Luckily Get Well Soon are playing right after and right next door to Gogol, so I’ll stick my head aroud the Charlie tent for a bit too.
Moving swiftly on we hit our next fork in the road: rock out with The Hives or join the wacky weirdness of MGMT? I’m putting my money on the latter as I expect Time To Pretend is going to be the ultimate festival anthem this year and I want to be there. Plus they’re booked in the much smaller India tent which should make for a great gig. Sadly it looks like I’ll have to miss Elbow serving up their cocktail called Grounds For Divorce in order to run all the way to Charlie for Black Kids, even though they aren’t going to teach my boyfriend how to dance with me.
Now we’re getting on in the day and the festival is coming to an end. Personally I’m looking forward to dEUS most on Sunday night. Can’t wait to hear their new stuff live, the cd is very promising. Finishing off the festival in the Grolsch tent will be Sigur Ros. To this day I haven’t been won over by their ethereal Hopelandishness, but I might pop in for a look as so many people insist “you’ll love it!”. The official Alpha tent closing act this year is Editors, not bad, but they don’t get my knickers in a twist either. I’m sure they’re larger than life epic songs will be goosebump inducing and very suitable for closing though. But I might slip away to catch The Dresden Dolls doing their thing in the India in stead…
Well there we have it, another musical minefield of a timetable. Each year I hear people saying ” Oh the best part is just walking around and stumbling into a tent to find something amazing!”. Well, I don’t buy it. Sure, you migh spend three days walking around and coincidentally bump into Los Campesinos! and have a ball, but I can’t be bothered bumping into a truck load of hard core metal new rave crap first. Military style planning is the only way to go!
[Watch this space to see how much of this rediculously ambitious schedule is actually put into practice. I didn't really take into account the occasional stop for food & beverages might be necessary. And social interaction with your festival mates is way overrated anyway, right?...]
As I was paging through my blogstats the other day (any blogging person out there will recognise this near daily ritual), all of a sudden in dawned on me: tomorrow, July 23rd, brokenbranches celebrates it’s first birthday!! It’s hard to believe a year passed so quickly! Turns out blogging and me took to each other very naturally, it’s never felt like a chore.
When I started brokenbranches it was a bit of an experiment. I was looking for a way to do something with the main thing that gets me going every day: music! But I’m also a full time office slave and I was up against my notorious lack of discipline, which, for example, ensured the writing of my thesis was a two year process. Sure there have been times brokenbranches was in dire need of a fresh post (notably The Blogging Drought of June 2008, brought on by a slight romantic preoccupation of the author), but generally speaking writing has been a pleasure.
So how can I summarise brokenbranches’ first year of existence? Since July 2007 brokenbranches sent a total of 71 posts into cyberspace (take into consideration the author spent two blogless months lolling about in the US and New Zealand) and got checked out by readers over 12,000 times! That’s definitely something I never expected 12 months ago. The average amount of hits went from 22 a day in August of 2007, to 61 this month. Not bad for a little music blog that hardly promotes itself I would say.
The busiest day was July 3rd of this year, when a total of 179 people dropped by and most of them were interested in the review of the Radiohead show in Westerpark: A super collision with Radiohead. October of last year was brokenbranches’ traffic peak. Over 3000 people paid a visit that month, largely due to an extraordinary interest in the lyrics to the song “Dom, Lomp & Famous” by Dutch hiphop act The Opposites featuring Dio & Willie Wartaal. This post, which also gets the award for “most commented on”, caused a second surge of traffic in January of 2008. At that time the song caused some controversy in France because some people considered the video to be discriminating the French. The debate, which continues to this day, can be found in the video comments on France’s version of Youtube: Dailymotion.
Inspired by Ronald van den Berg’s incredible Radiohead tourstats, I’ve created the dorkiest of piecharts, breaking down the content of the posts on brokenbranches:
So basically I spend most of my time rambling on about new discoveries, followed by a lot of general music banter, then I obsess about Lowlands a lot and finally I write about the concerts I’ve been to and my undying love for all things Radiohead.
In the category “Most hateful comments received” there is a clear winner: the Peter Corry post. Regular readers will acknowledge I rarely post anything that could be considered bashing or vicious about any artists or music. In this sense the Peter Corry post is unique, it’s probably the nastiest piece of writing on the site. However, I stick by every word of it and I secretly cherish the vengeful comments made by people that felt it necessary to jump to Peter Corry’s defence. It’s also a joy to see that the commenters still keep a close check on any developments in the post, as is clear from my blog stats. Thank you for your repeat custom! I might reply eventually…
Well brokenbranches, here’s to you! May you live a long and musical life. As a birthday present here’s the weird and wonderful new Radiohead video for House Of Cards. No camera’s were used in this video, it’s all a lot of 3D plotting technology abracadabra which is explained here.
If there’s anyone out there who’s been reading this little brokenbranches blog since it’s conception, they’ll know what keeps me going during the (yet again pathetic excuse for a) summer, is that sparkly promise beckoning a mere month away: Lowlands!!! Indeed, due to an overwhelmingly positive response from all hangers on in the last two years, Lowlands is yet again the summer festival of choice this year. It more than delivers a long list of “up-and-comers” that satisfy the early adopters like myself, but it also has a fine set of dj’s for the groovelovers, and film, dance and comedy for culturelovers who aren’t quite so obsessed by music.
So as flatlinetime at the office commences and I deal with the fact that all my free days have already been spent in New Zealand, and that summer in Holland so far consists of an exciting mix of greyness, clouds and rain… What better way to lift the spirits than by creating the annual pre-festival-anticipation-cd!
Last year I crumbled under the pressure of indecision and finally created a double cd, including my personal favourites as well as artists I felt should be represented because they are in some way relevant to the music scene even if I personally couldn’t care less (case in point: the appearance of Nine Inch Nails and Motorhead on the 2007 edition). This year my friends made a special request: “Go back to your core business! We want to be educated under brokenbranches doctrine, impose your taste upon us!”. Right then, none of this politically correct nonsense, all brokenbranches all the way!
Based on the artists that had been confirmed by last week, I created the following 21 track compilation after a painstaking editing process (all songs are clickable for youtube clips).
LOWHOMEWORK 2008 tracklist
01 Blood Red Shoes – Say Something, Say Anything [most looking forward to]
02 The Kooks – Always Where I Need To Be [just to catchy not to include]
03 Amy Macdonald – Mr Rock & Roll [risky, could be a big let down live?]
04 Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor [can’t wait to get dancing at their gig]
05 Foals – Red Socks Pugie [most interested to see how they pan out live]
06 Iron & Wine – Boy With A Coin [beautiful song, amazing video too!]
07 Los Campesinos! – You! Me! Dancing! [all out dancing frenzy expected]
08 We Are Scientists – Chick Lit [could go either way, but like this track]|
09 Le Le – Hard [brilliant lyrics, mean beats, must see]
10 Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You
11 Sigur Rós – Gobbledigook [Sigur Rós never won me over, but this I like]
12 Laura Marling – My Manic And I [possibly hit and miss?]
13 dEUS – The Architect [dEUS back in full force!]
14 Gogol Bordello – Supertheory Of Supereverything [see 7 + pogo]
15 The Hives – Tick Tick Boom [what’s not to like? ROCK at its finest]
16 Santogold – L.E.S Artistes [more getting on of ones groove]
17 Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Dawn Of The Dead [favourite cd now, no video]
18 Roisin Murphy – You Know Me Better [the diva that always delivers]
19 MGMT – Time to Pretend [most likely to become Lowlands anthem of 2008]
20 Presidents of the USA – Boll Weevil [sheer nostalgia, ahh the nineties…]
21 N.E.R.D. – Everyone Nose [all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom!!]
Check out the custom made artwork too:
As I said, editing was painstaking and there’s quite a few gems that didn’t make the cut… The Dresden Dolls spring to mind, as do Elbow, Late Of The Pier, Tunng and The Wombats. Also in the past week the Myspace pages of Lykke Li and Sam Sparro added Lowlands dates, both would definitely have made it to the shortlist.
Feel I blatantly missed out the stars of the festival or it was a sin to have excluded someone? Editors and Franz Ferdinand perhaps? I’m interested to hear who you think should have made it onto the cd, drop a comment!!
Adele performed at Paradiso tonight, a gig that seemed long overdue since she very successfully released her album 19 in Holland back in January. Upon arrival we were afraid we accidentally stumbled into a Katie Melua concert from the look of the crowd: predominantly 40+ women, target Sky Radio demographic, gently swaying side to side during the rather tedious opening act Steye. Yikes!! Has poor Adele been overplugged on our national airwaves?
However, any fears the crowd might be a passive bunch were inmmediately taken away when Adele took to the stage: rarely have I heard an artist get such a warm welcome as she did in Paradiso tonight. She seemed a bit taken aback by it all and giddy too, which was endearing. She was very chatty with the audience, which made for a good atmosphere in the room. She joked how she thought this would just be another gig but then was shocked to see the size of Paradiso (“Oh my god I’ve never seen so many people in one room!”), and then realising it was one of the biggest gigs.
She openened the set with Right As Rain and played almost the entire 19 album in the course of the 1 hour concert (bar one of my favourites: My Same). She already won the audience over with her funny candid stories (for instance about wearing her favourite lucky knickers and big sweater, making her very hot and sweaty), but it was obvious that Adele’s talent as a singer would easily win anyone over regardless. With seemingly hardly any effort at all she sang beautifully, putting real soul into her songs. She was supported by a very decent band, including a 4 piece string section.
One or two songs that had become a bit flat to me from over-rotation of the album really got a new shine to them in the live performance (First Love springs to mind, not a peep to be heard from the audience). She also performed a few covers: The Coral’s Dreaming Of You and Bob Dylan’s Make You feel My Love which is also on the album, but the standout one was Etta James’ Fool That I Am, sung straight from the gut. Is this girl really only just 20 years of age?
On the downside she played Best For Last without the band, and I really missed the funky bass. Also, perhaps because of nerves, she ended a few songs with a giggle on the last note which was a bit of a shame. She was in such good form throughout the concert though, that these are minor issues. After the first two songs for instance, her bass got taken away by a roadie. She ran after him to get it back and said “This bass is the worst ever! I don’t want it, does anyone here want it?”. One eager fan in the front was the lucky one and she even went to get a pen to sign it for him. Later on, reflecting on all her chatting: “Forgive me, I’m talking loads of shit because I’m a bit tipsy!”.
Adele closed the show after merely an hour (“That’s it when you’ve only got one album!”) with Chasing Pavements, which had pretty much everyone in the crowd singing along. She was all smiles when she heard it and even held out the microphone for the obligatory “you sing it!”, which somehow never gets tired when you’re one of the singers-along. After the encore an unusual thing happened: rather than rushing for the door the majority of people stayed where they were and there was at least 5 minutes of shouting, clapping, hooting and hollering for a second encore. Even when it was apparent it wasn’t going to happen any more! I think it’s safe to say Adele made an impression in Amsterdam tonight.
See Adele sing Etta James’ Fool That I Am live at Martyrs’ in Chicago in March this year:
[thanks to alexandergrooves]
Lykke Li
Great news: quirky Stockholm songstress Lykke Li has posted Lowlands as one of the dates in her MySpace tour schedual, she is set to perform at the festival on closing day Sunday 17th of August. Lowlands has not yet officially confirmed Lykke Li is performing, but the festival organisation is still releasing new names in dribs and drabs.
Check out Lykke Li’s excellent song I’m Good I’m Gone in a Black Cab Session:
Finally the wait was over: last night I saw Radiohead perform at the Westerpark in Amsterdam. Conditions were perfect: an open air gig in a park with sunshine, 27 degrees and 18.000 Radioheads with high expectations. And the band delivered! What a night, what a concert and what a privilege to see a band perform so well and with such gusto. We were treated to a varied setlist, with songs spanning much of their career, and 6 from their latest release In Rainbows.
As the band came on stage I turned to my friend MB saying “I hope they open with Bodysnatchers!”, as I knew they have played it consistently this tour but never to start the show. Well my wish was heard and may I say Thom & co, what an excellent choice it was! It’s just a cracking song to kick off with, great guitar, great energy. It was worth squeezing into the front and waiting like “sardines in a crushd tin box” before the show, because it soon became apparent we were surrounded by Radiohead connaisseurs who immediately started singing and dancing like mad. Perfect!
After that the beautiful All I Need calmed everyone down a bit, only to be swept up again by The National Anthem, the dark and gloomy Kid A track that is always a winner live, not in the least because of Thom freaking out towards the end. Skipping through the setlist I would say my personal highlights were Lucky, There There, Videotape, and the amazing encores with gems like Climbing Up The Walls, Wolf At The Door (only it’s 3rd appearance so far), Jigsaw Falling Into Pieces and closer Planet Telex! And of course, the Amsterdam crowd was lucky enough to be treated to the new song Super Collider, which was previously only played during the Dublin and Paris shows.
Real crowd pleasers were Street Spirit (a massive hit here in Holland), Idioteque (nothing like a bit of techno in a Radiohead gig) and Just for it’s good old fashioned Bends-distorted-guitar-feel. Mind you, from where I was standing every single song got a very warm reception. Thom had the crowd laughing when he put on safety goggles before sitting behind his drum kit for Bangers & Mash and putting on a geeky voice saying “Safety first, safety first, that’s what I always say!”. And just before Jigsaw Falling Into Pieces, Jonny was fidgetting with his guitar and Thom joked “Hurry up Jon Jon! If you’re not in tune you’ll have to tune it. Well, it’s never stopped you before has it!”.
According to this amazing yet slightly disturbing website keeping track of the gig statistics of Radiohead’s 2008 tour (be sure not to miss the pie chart showing the occurence of animals that get lyrics devoted to them by Thom!!), the Westerpark gig gets an honourable 6th position in the Setlist Rareness Ranking out of 24 gigs so far. Not bad!
Check out some gig goodies below: a clip of Super Collider, some pictures I took and the complete setlist.
Super Collider live at Westerpark, July 1st 2008
The complete setlist
01 Bodysnatchers
02 All I need
03 National Anthem
04 15 Steps
05 Lucky
06 Nude
07 Street Spirit
08 There There
09 The Gloaming
10 Arpeggi/ Weird Fishes
11 Idioteque
12 Faust Arp
13 Videotape
14 Just
15 Bangers & Mash
16 Everything In It’s Right Place
17 Reckoner
First encore:
18 House Of Cards
19 Climbing Up The Walls
20 Wolf At The Door
21 Jigsaw Falling Into Pieces
22 Karma Police
Second encore:
23 Super Collider
24 How To Disappear Completely
25 Planet Telex
