Sunday, February 19th, 2006
Well, I’d been warned that I might see all sorts of odd and kinky things in Amsterdam, but I don’t think anyone expected that that’d happen not in the Red Light District, but at the Artis Zoo. I was having a wander through the reptile house I noticed one of the giant tortoises (exact genus/species unknown, sorry) actually moving. That in and of itself was exciting, since they’re not really the most mobile of creatures. Well it turns out Mr Tortoise had some good motivation to move as he (slowly) mounted the other tortoise and went to town, makinig really loud bellowing noises all the while. It was really something to behold, not only for the zoo guests but for the other tortoises as well – even the kids came wandering around to watch the commotion. I played animal pornographer for a couple minutes and then left before the lowered the curtain over the display and made us pay again to see more.
It was actually decent weather yesterday, which made for good zoo weather as the animals were out and frolicking. Something about Amsterdam must be conducive to animal sex because there was no shortage of baby animals – the baby monkeys, chimps and lions were especially precious. They also had penguins, which wouldn’t be so noteworthy if not for the fact that the Toronto zoo no longer has penguins. Apparently we traded them to another zoo for something. Hockey pucks? I don’t know. And it was kind of funny to see raccoons as zoo animals. One continent’s vermin…
After the zoo I moseyed up to the Waterlooplein open air flea market, which offered a good selection of junk and crap, and then got lost again in the city centre. My usually decent sense of direction is totally messed in this city. The canals are poor landmarks since they’re everywhere and run concentrincally from Centraal Station, tram lines run in all directions, often on the same route, and really – everything sort of looks the same.
And an interesting thing about traffic in this town – though it is sort of pedestrian-friendly, there’s a lot of pedestrian malls and walkways, those of use on foot are definitely at the bottom of the food chain and those higher up aren’t shy about reminding us of the fact. Sidewalks are often incredibly narrow, and if you happen to step into a bike lane, God help you. Cyclists may ring their bell, but they’d just as soon mow you down – slowing down or stopping does not seem to be an option. Throw in cars and trams and buses all sharing the same the same space, top off with a deficit of traffic lights (and the ones that are there are confusing as hell) and street signs in a foreign language and you’ve got a recipe for dead pedestrian. Serves 8.
Last night turned into something of a blogger summit amongst some of those in town on the Bloggers In Amsterdam ticket. A bunch of us went out for dinner and ended up seated next to, well, a table of overweight, ill-dressed superheroes. And one villain. Truly the damndest thing.
Photos from the day at Flickr.
No music news to report today, but come on – tortoise sex. You can’t beat that.
np – The Zephyrs / A Year To The Day
Saturday, February 18th, 2006
Seeing as how I am on this trip ostensibly as a music blogger, it seemed appropriate that I would do some actual local music blogging. In this case, trekking down to Utrecht, about 30 minutes by train south of Amsterdam, with Coolfer to catch Swedish troubadour Jens Lekman at Ekko, a small cozy club in town. Lekman and his band were their own opening act, performing some instrumental jazzy numbers led by the horn section. By the time Lekman took the stage as headliner, the club was pretty packed with punters.
It’s been almost a year since I saw Lekman last, and I’d almost forgotten what an entertaining performer he is. He played a mix of new songs and old and interjected them with charming little bits of storytelling, including stopping “Do You Remember The Riots” halfway through to ask the crowd if we knew the story behind the song, telling it, and then picking up right where he left off, and explaining why the t-shirts he had on sale said only “2006” on them (“it’s going to be the best year ever – the shirt is for the optimists, and in the future, the nostalgists”). It was also especially nice to see him playing with a horn section, as it really helped recreate the album arrangements (“You Are The Light” just isn’t the same trumpet-less) and bring out the Motown-ish feel of a lot of his songs. The set was a little brief-ish at just an hour, but even though he suggested he might continue playing songs out on the sidewalk, we opted to grab the train back into the city.
My first transoceanic gig photos! I have to say, I was amazed by the cameras at the show – at home, everyone is wielding little pocket digicams but last night, it was DSLRs all around – some with some pretty intimidating lenses. I guess people on the continent take their photography a lot more seriously.
So you’d think that commuting to another city to catch a late night rock show would be the most adventuresome point in the evening, wouldn’t you? Not so much, as it turned out. The Amsterdam trams stop running at around 12:15AM, and since I opted to grab some shwarma after getting back into Amsterdam Centraal, I missed the last one. No problem, they run night buses, one of which appeared to pass through my neck of the woods. Well funny thing about being on a bus at 1AM in a city you really don’t know at all… I thought I knew where we were, but after about 20 minutes of riding in relative silence (no stop announcements from the driver or onboard PA, just over-loud cackling from kids in the back – teenagers really are the same the world ’round), I asked the driver if we were going to be passing by the Lloyd Hotel anytime soon, pointing out my destination on the map. He just stared at the map bewildered for a few moments. Never a good sign. As it turned out, the bus had made a hard left right before it would have hit familiar territory and I was now on a bus bound well out of Amsterdam to points unknown.
The driver told me that he’d be circling back after he finished the route and I’d get back eventually. The end of the line, however, turned out to be way out beyond the boondocks. Like a construction site along the water where they were just starting to build the middle of nowhere (or where I later learned was called Haven Eiland). Needless to say, I was the last one on the bus and as it tried to make a fifteen-point turn through the dirt and sand to get back on the road heading into the city again, it occurred to me that this would be an ideal place to rob/murder/dispose of a solitary Canadian tourist. They’d never find me. Who would think to dredge the IJ Canal? Not me, that’s for sure, and I’d be at the bottom of it. But Mr Bus Driver was as good as his word and eventually got me back to within a couple blocks of the hotel and I got back, safe and sound – but what would have been about a 3-minute ride if the trams were still running turned out to be an hour-long trek into terror. Okay, not so much terror as agitation. But still. Gonna have to pay much more attention to where that night bus is going, if I ever end up on it again. Which is entirely possible.
Mogwai bitch about this and that to Gigwise.
Metric have completed a second video from Live It Out for “Poster Of A Girl”. Watch it at Muchmusic and read about it at Filter. Via For The Records. Metric are doing a two-night stand at the Kool Haus next weekend.
np – My Morning Jacket / Z
Friday, February 17th, 2006
“The only girl I’ve ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes,
But then they buried her alive one evening 1945 with just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone,
Now she’s a little boy in Spain playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun all sing to say my dream has come.”
– “Holland 1945”, Neutral Milk Hotel
Okay, update for days one and two, starting with two. Most of today was spent a) sleeping in, and b) wandering aimlessly through the city. Both were incredibly easy to accomplish since a) I was jet lagged, and b) it’s an easy city to get lost in. Impenetrable street names and countless identical-looking canals arranged in circular fashion equals something something. I did manage to take in two impressive sights, though. The first was the Anne Frank House, which was as solemn and sobering an experience as you might imagine. I was actually somewhat surprised how large the annex where she and her family hid from the Nazis was, but maybe it’s not so spacious with eight people in it and if you’re not allowed to leave for two years. Photos weren’t permitted inside, hence my use of an old picture of the secret bookcase entrance to their hideaway for this post.
My other stop was to the Foam photographic museum, which was featuring an exhibition of the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I was not familiar with him before seeing this exhibit but am absolutely going to rectify that – his photographs taken all over the world throughout the 20th century were nothing short of amazing. I’m still new to this photography thing, but his work was really inspiring.
Last night was spent in the company of Pink Is The New Blog and Rachel And The City, both of whom are my hotelmates out here at the Lloyd. A quick stroll through the notorious Red Light District was kind of disappointing – very tourist-y and not nearly as seedy as I’d expected/hoped. What was a little surprising was to see the working girls still at work early this afternoon. I don’t know how short a straw you have to draw to end up with the 1PM shift on a Friday afternoon, but it can’t be an especially choice time slot.
Also last night was an after-gig show/party in the hotel lounge by Belgian band Zita Swoon. Honestly, it sounded like a big hippie jam-fest to me, but the crowd was pretty excited about it. I’m more interested in zipping down to Utrecht tonight with Coolfer to catch Jens Lekman. Fingers crossed that we can find the place and it’s not sold out!
The weather has been pretty dismal while I’ve been here, so the camera hasn’t been getting a real workout. Besides not wanting to get it wet, the grey, overcast skies don’t really inspire. But I’m putting the shots I do take up on ye olde Flickr page, so have a boo over the next few days if you will.
I was very excited to see the first draft of the SxSW schedule go online yesterday. Most of the big-name showcases don’t have set times yet, which makes planning still something of a crapshoot, but since getting into the big shows is a pain in the ass anyway, it’s a good start for figuring out where I’m going to be and when. And since the schedule also comes with band profiles and some audio samples, it also allows investigation of new and interestingly-named bands.
Torontonian Anglophiles will be happy to hear that Elbow will be in town April 17 at a venue to be determined. PopMatters has an interview. Also new – Editors at The Phoenix on March 24 and Nine Black Alps with Giant Drag at the ElMo on April 4.
And in town next Saturday, Carl Newman of The New Pornographers talks to The Calgary Sun.
np – The National / Black Sessions 2005
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
“Hello Amsterdam my name is Fernando
Hello Amsterdam I bet you’ve seen my kind before
Another sad tourist with his eyes rolling in his head
Another sad tourist who never had a drink before”
– “Hello Amsterdam”, American Music Club
So hi from Amsterdam. I’m not entirely sure what day it is… The flight out was pretty uneventful, I slept through pretty much all of it. I may still be jet-lagged though, I’m really not sure. I guess I’ll find out tonight. The photo was taken out of a window at the Lloyd Hotel, where I’m staying. It’s pretty nice here – I’ve got a view of a canal. I suspect I’ll spend most of the rest of today puttering about and planning the rest of the trip properly. Hopefully the weather will be a little less damp and blustery, but I somehow doubt it. Either way, I’ll surely have more to report tomorrow, but for now I will sign off on the travel end and rattle some music news.
With the release of The Cardigans’ Super Extra Gravity in Canada, there’s another flurry of press with the band – here’s an interview with Nina Persson with JAM!.
Chromewaves faves She Wants Revenge are at the Horseshoe on April 9 and super-heavy but still somehow indie-friendly Isis are at Lee’s a fortnight later on April 27.
There’s now an e-card for Trespassers William’s Having, allowing you to preview a few tracks before the record is released on February 28.
Drummer Murph talks to Pitchfork about zombie Dinosaur Jr’s recording plans – “just kind of hanging out, getting ready, jamming around…” So don’t get too excited about a new album just yet.
From the department of broken-up bands: Luna’s farewell tour DVD Tell Me That You Miss Me will be out in May on DVD but first premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival at the end of April. And around the same time, The Delgados will release a double-disc collection of all their Peel Session tracks. And Emma Pollock’s website finally has a little content to it, and an opportunity to sign up for her mailing list and get an exclusive MP3 for your troubles.
np – Olympic Curling / “HAAARD!!! HAAAAAAAARD!”
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
So today the blog shifts back into travel mode for a week. I’m off to Amsterdam as part of the Bloggers In Amsterdam promotional junket thingee, so if you didn’t like my posts from abroad last September, well, come back in a week or so. This is actually the first of a few trips I’ll be taking in the next little while – in mid-March, I’m off to Austin, Texas for SxSW and then a week after I get back from that, it’s off to the other side of the world for a couple weeks in Japan and Taiwan. There’s no hitch with that trip, it’s just family and vacation and whatnot. By my math, I believe I will actually be out of the country for fully half of the next two months. But I figure to still be posting dispatches from the Far East when the opportunity presents and happily, I will still be online through this week in Amsterdam because unlike the last time I went to Europe, it won’t be costing me $0.25 a minute to do so, so in addition to thoughts on Holland, I’ll be keeping tabs on music land as well.
This trip comes not a minute too soon as the past four months have been really intense as far as work goes, and last three weeks in particular I’ve been working almost non-stop, every day. But I’m now officially emancipated (read: unemployed) again, and not a minute too soon. I’ve barely been managing to keep my head above water the last month and it will be good to have some time to sift through the general state of bedlam that is my life. Like, seriously. You should see my room.
If you’ve sent me email for mp3 requests or submissions, or CDs, or whatever, and haven’t heard back from me, I apologize but answering email that wasn’t a matter of life and death has been pretty low priority for me. Hell, sleep has been a pretty low priority. But with luck, after next week things will settle into a more bearable pace for me and I’ll get back on top of things. And, as you would expect, there will be no 24 commentary next week. Or it’ll be late.
And now I will clean out the last bits of music news I’ve got before heading off.
New York’s Ambulance LTD have released the title track from their forthcoming EP (due March 14) for download:
MP3: Ambulance LTD – “New English”
The release date of Drive-By Truckers’ A Blessing And A Curse has been moved up a week to April 18.
KyndMusic talked to Broken Social Scene’s Andrew Whiteman and Justin Peroff before one of their recent shows at Webster Hall in New York City.
Matt Pond PA, continuing their North American tour on borrowed gear and good vibes (their gear all got ripped off in Brooklyn) speak to hour.ca. Via For The Records. And Bradley’s Almanac has their show in Boston last week recorded and up for grabs.
Snow Patrol are doing one of those preview tours in really small club things for their new album Eyes Open, out April 11. In Toronto’s case, they’ll be at the Mod Club on March 30. Tickets are on sale Friday for $27.50, but you know it’s probably already sold out.
Billy Bragg, whose Volume 1 box set is out next week and who will be at the Opera House on March 11, puts together a recommended listening list for Amazon.com. Via LHB.
np – Raised By Swans / Codes And Secret Longing
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