GIG REVIEW - 30th April

My distaste and distrust for other people’s music abated last week, which resulted in my attendance at a gig. The place? MusicOn; situated on the event-horizon of the black hole known as “Suburban Den Haag”. The date? 30^th of April, otherwise known as Koninginnedag. The Bands? Het Glimlicht, Hyperbowl, DUF.

Het Glimlicht.
Which translates to ‘The Glow’. One of these guys’ fathers has loads of money and has selflessly spent it on the band (sound like anyone we know? – self ed.). Two drum kits (one digital, one analogue), cymbals made of two cymbals stacked on top of each other, pedal-boards the size of my big fat schlong, keyboards, two basses, two guitars. Knowing his dad would buy him another one, guitarist #2 attacked his guitar with a screwdriver and a violin bow. He didn’t wear any shoes or socks. And he had TWO Books of Rock from which he read some spoken-word shit about islands. Their other guitarist had either severe-acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) as he was forced to wear a face-mask throughout Glimlicht’s performance. Tom suggested it was in homage to Melt Banana, but I doubt this, for no reason whatsoever.

They were nice lads, and great musicians. They played all their stuff well. The maladies from which their music suffered are maladies with which all bands of their genre are plagued. These are: repetitiousness, inability to engage with the audience/put on a show (they were seated FFS!), an inability to sustain the perfect loud/quiet dynamic required of Post-Rock, humourlessness. Having seen a troubling number of Post-Rock bands in my time, I think that Glimlicht carried the PS flag with aplomb. 7/10.

Hyperbowl.
Which translates to ‘Voorhout’ in Dutch, which means ‘foreskin’ in German. These guys played Post-Rock of a very different kind: the super-rad kind. I loved this gig from start to finish. It was awesome, and they are awesome. From the moment they starting playing all these BABES flooded into the venue and just started getting FRESH. Instead of throwing their underwear on the stage, these babes were so INTO IT that they took off all their clothes and threw their hot naked bodies onto the stage, whereupon they writhed around on the floor in paroxysms of ecstasy and delight, screaming ‘rock on! Rock on!’It was then I knew that this was the best day. 11/10

DUF
Things slowed down somewhat for DUF – an amalgam of band members’ initials; Daisy, Ursula and Fanny. Daisy, whom I assume was the leader singer and guitarist, was a slight young lad of around 17, who wailed the blues forlornly in a Claptonesque manner. The kid had some clout: I was extremely impressed. Then, as the classic blues numbers continued (Jimi, Johnson, self-composed stuff with Led Zep riffs), I got bored. I don’t think this kid should care about that – he will make a shitload of cash playing Festival dates for the next 20 years. He is a better musician than I’ll ever be, so no disrespect to him: it’s just that I’ve seen people perform those songs just as well before. 8/10.

Until next time,

J. E. Griffiths

LRC Update- Hyperbowl's New Demo is Out!

Hey Guys,

Today is a rad day in the history of the LRC. Hyperbowl spent last Tuesday recording with Chris Schut, our friend from Holy Water. The results are freely downloadable below. 

1. Every Six Seconds

2. B Movie

3. The Long Game

4. England!

With the help of Tommy Quist, we will also be making CDs to come in boxes, with a cover, extras and other great stuff. This will also be free. Post here, on 'Leiden Rock Company' facebook or on www.myspace.com/hyperbowlband to receive one. (In the unlikely event of someone not in Leiden wanting a CD you might have to pay postage.)

In other news, podcasts have been recorded and will be online asap.

Rock On!

A Slacker Guide to Leiden Living

Chapter Drie Klavers

Ok. Ok. 

There comes a time in everyone's life when one thinks they need new clothes. I was talking to a friend of mine, who said she wishes she didn't care so much about fashion but I think it's great. Everybody knows that clothes are only a small part of style but it's how you wear them I guess. Apparently, I need new clothes because I've lost weight and my trousers are falling down. Well I'll go along with that...

Unfortunately the best shop for clothes has been closed down. Some loser politician decided that the squat/great bar/great venue/cinema/free shop was a menace to society. I'm not even going to comment. The free shop was open on thursday, friday and saturday and 'sold' general bric-a-brac, clothes, bedding and other useful stuff. It was always great to go get some stuff from there. I got my mattress, a tshirt for my mate, a DVD, books etc. but the best thing was seeing everyone there- the regulars, the people who thought it was amazing (like me), the lovely people who ran it and others just having a good time.

I hope the whole Bar'n' Boos complex finds itself a new home because it was great and if the politicians came down from their ivory tower once in a while they might realise that too.

In terms of paying chain shops, the best is Zeeman. There are about 6 in Leiden but I go to the one on Haarlemmerstraat. The staff are really helpful. First time there was when I needed a white shirt for my job and knew no Dutch at all. Since then, I've bought a few t-shirts, slacker shirts etc. Tom says the best jeans he ever got are from there. We have a song called 'Girls of Zeeman' in homage to this great shop. Check it out!

Het Warenhuis, mentioned in Chapter Twee Spieghels is also pretty rad clothes-wise. 

I'm really tired now so I'll write more some other time. 

 

A Slacker Guide to Leiden Living

Chapter Twee Spieghels

People who haven't been to Leiden find it weird how I ended up here. I literally hadn't heard of the place till I decided to come. I didn't know anything about the place. But when I got here the general reaction was 'Oh cool, great idea'. The thing I have realised after six months is there are loads of people who just ended up here. It's a bit like purgatory. Or the Road. except better and less effort. 

An example of a guy who ended up here is a Geordie who liked PSV and had Dutch blood. Now he lives in Leiden with a family. Another guy came for a wasted weekend in Amsterdam post-divorce and has been here for 14 years and plays in a cool band. I met a guy from Stoke the other day who delivers posters for cultural stuff who came on holiday when he was 16 and is still here. That was the 70s by the way. 

You might think its because people like smoking weed or whatever and then stay here because of that. I was kind of worried my first night here when I met an old stoner from england who lived in his friend's box room and had lost it a bit. But luckily Leiden is actually just a magic oasis of calm, near enough the real world for those who care and far enough away for those who don't. And the best thing is people are liberal in the proper way. Do what the fuck you want as long as you don't bother me. Are you listening England? 

That might be a bit harsh, maybe I'll delete that...

Ok so a list of things to do when you arrive.

1. Station- the station is probably where you'll end up. It is quite crap like all stations so it might be better to come in on a bike. I came in the first time on a bike from the beach in Noordwijk. You'll quickly discover the Beestenmarkt and Haarlemmerstraat. If in the summer leave the waterfront seats to the tourists and get Patat met fritesaus from Multi Snacks on Haarlemmerstraat. Maybe throw in a kroket too (a kroket is fried grey shit and tastes great)

Once you've spent some time in Leiden you might want to try a Mc Kroket from Mcdonalds but stick to the indie stores for now. Pannenkoeken taste good but are a rip-off.

2. Hang out in the middle of the Beestenmarkt. I unfortunately met a boring Italian who ruined my cigarette by telling me about how much sex he has with his Dutch fuck buddy. What a twat. But the statue in the middle looks like a dildo so that's cool.

3. You need somewhere to sleep? Travelling types go squatting but it appears like a massive effort. TNT did couchsurfing with a legendary Leiden Man called Tommy Quist. He is great. Even if he himself is travelling, usually hitchhiking East or to Scandinavia, he'll let you crash his house for as long as you want. He has a great computer and will plug you in to some local shit. Mostly pindakaas-based. Believe what he has to say about hot Dutch female students. I didn't. 

4. Need a job? Every slacker needs a job. On the second day we went and got a job at a Greek restaurant on the waterfront of Beestenmarkt. In the summer it's pretty easy to get a waiting job. They hated me so I worked in the kitchen- or maybe it was because I burnt a businessman's cock by pouring coffee on his crotch on my first shift. I won't mention the name of the establishment because it isn't totally legal labour... Once you're settled there are much better slacker jobs but especially in the summer you can carry dishes over a busy road to a boat for less than the minimum wage. What is there not to like? 

5. Need beer? At first we got 1 euro beer from some dodgy Turkish place. Don't bother with the North End English pub apart from for sport by the way. It is whack. I wish someone had given me the following advice. GO TO ALBERT HEIJN (supermarket at end of Haarlemmerstraat) GET EUROSHOPPER BIER for 40 CENTS. This is generally acknowledged to be the best cheap brand but Ikea beer from Super De Boer is also fine. A later chapter will be dedicated to a cheap beer taste-off.

6. Need food? Met fritesaus 29 cents from all good retailers. or pindakaas, banana and marge sandwiches. check lord round's blog. also albert heijn does a good range of free cheese.

7. Need fags? If you have the money and are one of the beautiful people get Gauloises Red. They're better and cheaper than American brands. Of course, get shag most of the time. I'm on 'Words' off Harvest by the way now. I'm trying to decide whether to listen to all of Journey Through the Past. The first song is rad but afterwards I might just skip to On the Beach.

8. Need coffee? Don't pay. Every Albert Heijn has free coffee. TNT depot has coffee for 10 cents and free in winter. Hoogvliet has free coffee but sucks as a shop. The winner is Het Warenhuis though. It's a furniture store where the workers are actually certified retards. It's in a kind of industrial shithole estate but really near the centre. If you don't fancy coffee, you can get hot chocolate and then hang out on a sofa or a bed if you like. You'll need a bike though to get there.

9. Never fear- Carlos the Bike Thief is here. He will sell you a bike that he got in Haarlem supposedly for 10 euro. You can even push him to 5. He will probably steal it back off you but then you can ring him up and buy the same one again. I see it more as renting. Compared to renting a bike for one day from the station for 7.50 the bike thief is much better. Get a lock tho. Tom still has his original Carlos produce. Mine was stolen but I hadn't locked it so that's what happens. Oh god, gotta change to On the Beach.  'sooner or later it all gets real. walk on' oh yeah fuck the man. And that's what Carlos does. 

10. Need a night out? Go to Sub 071 on a Tuesday. it's cheap, you can get some dumpster-based very tasty veggie food from the restaurant and it's right next to the station- which you know. Getting in can be hard. It's opposite ING on Schuttersveld and is basically a massive skyscraper next to the jobshop which is a bit run-down. It's a squat where people live and it's difficult to get in but hey just hang out for a bit and you will. Once there, say hi to Marcel, maybe Graham too and listen to rock in a room. There are even babes sometimes at rock shows here which leads me to my last piece of advice on arriving here. 

11. You thought there would be 10. But above 10 there is off the dial. This is represented as 11. I'm talking about the babes. I've been to the US, Russia, London, I've seen the queen in her darned undies, all those places have babes but Leiden is the best. The typical is an 8 with long legs, blonde hair, that kind of snootiness that gets you going and then there's the elevens. I work on Haarlemmerstraat every day and see an 11 most days. Jdog says the law library is where it's at. When arriving here just take a while to hang out and watch, especially when on their bikes. If you think I'm being sexist, I'm not. Girls can also admire natural beauty. Embrace your inner lesbian! 

Welkom in Leiden!

Still to come: where to 'buy' clothes and bric-a-brac, sunday night furniture 'sale', finding a place to live, more rock venues, where to find the LRC, good bars, bad bars, minerva and how to tell a duck's arse, more babe-watching venues, hof tours, coffee shops, print shops, exercise and the best slacker job in the world.

A Slacker Guide to Leiden Living

You probably know the myth of how Lonely Planet was made. Two dudes were travelling and realised a way they could avoid getting a proper job. (I say the word 'myth' because it was probably all made up by a guy with James' glasses in a backroom of an advertising agency in Hoxton or Orlando).

Well I am pretty well qualified to do a similar thing. How to live or just spend a few days in Leiden. This isn't for people who are into spending money on useless things like cars and clothes, or for people who think a good night out consists of standing in a darkened room with loud, crappy music and trying to look cool, but failing miserably.

It is for those who like hanging out, taking it easy and most importantly adventure. Of course, if you are actually adventurous you don't need a guide, but I see this more as something to do while I go through the Neil Young discography I downloaded yesterday. I'm on 'Cowgirl' by the way... 

Chapter 1

Amsterdam

If you have not been to Leiden, you will fall into three categories.  

1. You are Dutch and should know better.

2. You are foreign and ignorant. You are aware of Amsterdam, some of its history, the fact New York was called New Amsterdam, there is a place called Harlem in Holland, you can smoke weed, there are canals and it is cool. I don't dispute any of these facts, but I am too lazy to do the big city too often.

3. You are educated, maybe interested in Dutch 'culture' or the ICC (International Court of Cunts not International Cricket Council) and therefore know that a lot of hot shit goes down in the Hague. You might extrapolate that Leiden is essentially a posh suburb of the Hague in Yank terms, or might know that the former 'man' of NATO went to Leiden Uni. Maybe you lived in Oxford and know Leiden is twinned with it or that Einstein hung out here. 

Overall though, tourists, travellers and 'alternative TM' people just see Leiden as a smaller version of the big city. As my hombre Lord Round argues, this is true but it's better. It's like the Dam but no shit, fewer cunts, fewer tourists, fewer drug shops and more community.

I propose you get to Schiphol (great airport) and go to Leiden.

If you need to do Amsterdam, there is of course a list of things to do.

1. Near the Heineken Museum, on most tramlines down the big canal there is an area with a few rad guitar shops. The most Radstock is called de plug www.deplug.nl

The dude in there is fuckin' a. Some old guitars, he gets you a beer, sounds like a cockney, ask him to play a song and he'll play you something he wrote which sounds a bit like Village Green-era Kinks. Sacksioni over the road is less rad but still good. 3 of the 5 times I have been to Amsterdam have been guitar shopping and the other times were very forgettable.

2. According to Lena, Grant and Stephanie the Jordan area is cool. There are lots of alternative clothes shops and good Thai restaurants. Well, Leiden has 4 Zeemans and Thai food is for gays. I haven't found it yet though so I'll reserve my final judgement till I do but I imagine it will be crap in the way that the crap bits of London like Camden are.

3. The Paradiso- great venue of rock (and other stuff reportedly) I saw the Jesus Lizard here. They rocked. David Yow is a rock god and the guitarist is an accountant. Fuckin' a. I had never even hear them before but luckily my friends are great. Pavement is sold out for May which sucks. You can get tickets in the Free Record Store in Leiden for everything good in the Dam.

4. The Melkweg- we'll probably go see The Brian Jonestown Massacre here. I am also going tonight for a fantabulously overpriced night of a guy playing records I most likely won't enjoy but a great chick I know invited us to drink at hers before. Maybe I can sneak Vieux (cheap Dutch brandy-see later posts) in with me. There will probably be lots of wailers there but as Brenno said there are probably more babes in the law library in Leiden. 

5. um, have a wank in the cubicle of a peepshow like Kenny. 

So thus finishes Chapter een. Chapter Twee Spieghels will start on my first impressions of Leiden and the great things and people I discovered in my early days here. You'll find info on cheap drinks, floor crashing, getting a crap job, squat venues, getting a bike, hanging out and the rock, obviously. 

As ACDC didn't say I'm back in Slack, got a pain in my crack, would have a heart attack, i'm crap in the sack etc.

LRC Update

Ok. Ok. Piece of shit.

First, thanks a lot to everyone who came to the show last Saturday at the Twee Spieghels. Hope you had a good time and please let us know if there are any songs you want us to play. Unless they are 'Wild Horses'.

Special thanks to Ian for his sterling camera work, Sharon for her paracetamol and Lena for her red pill. 

My hard drive was unfortunately pronounced dead recently but the replacement is pretty rad- except that it is devoid of garageband. So no new radio shows till next week at the earliest. I only lost a bunch of songs and one radio show and at least it's better than getting your guitar stolen or getting fucked over by some snooty cow. 

No shows for a few weeks. Some work to be done on B.J. Law and general reflection/ non-rock related activity but pencil in Feb 20th for the return of the LRC to your otherwise pointless lives. 

We are also making a rockumentary and have a name for the second Hyperbowl LP so all is good in the free world. 

Rock on! 

Review of Lost Bear at the LVC, 08 Jan 2010.

Ok, so it’s the 15 Jan 2010: a good day for work-shirking. I’ve got this squib (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_(linguistics)) to finish for today, which won’t happen. When about to tackle the real meat-and-two-veg of the whole thing, any avoidance tactic may be employed.

I saw Lost Bear at the LVC on 08 Jan 2010. Here’s my opinion of them. I can’t remember how tanked I was for this one. I assumed I’d put away a gallon or two though.

“Lost Bear and beer”

Equipment: Loadsa Dutch guys, squirming about the stage like big blonde liberal ants. Trumpeter, two guitarists, singer, bassist. Two drummers. The existence of the second, ‘auxiliary’ drummer was only made clear to me after the gig had finished. That I didn’t see him (or her), and most importantly didn’t HEAR him (or her), indicates to me his (or her) worth to the band. Negligible.

Sound: Cohesive. The lank-haired buoys on the sound-desk done good. The trumpeter was a clever addition. They played mid-tempo, mid-90s, mid-American Emo-Indie. On some of the more melancholy numbers they sounded like American Football, the one Emo band I like. The singer possesses one of those squeaky voices which warbles and struggles up and down scales in a way that says ‘I’m fragile’. Such a voice has the advantage of being instantly emotive, inviting, unthreatening and confessional; but it also has disadvantage of being unable convey any of the cool emotions like lust or anger. Consequentially the band will never sound like anything but a C.S. Lewis book: humourless and full of Christian guilt. To me it doesn’t matter what the lyrics are intended to convey, Lost Bear’s songs will always be about how depressing it is to be an underdog. That the vocal delivery makes lyric-deciphering impossible will not help change this impression. Another thing, Tom thought the singer sounds like the guy from Counting Crows. But I don’t think so particularly.

Songs: They have a knack for songwriting, I must admit it. They can shift between passages of loud and quiet seamlessly. More than anything that impressed me was their sense of dynamics. For example, they know how long to play an instrumental part before bringing in the hook. Although this sounds pretty basic, you’d be surprised how many bands are unable to get it right. Fortunately, Hyperbowl are not one of them. Not now we’ve got a Big Muff.

But every coin has two sides. With a fluid structure comes a lack of grounding. Where were these songs going? To where were they leading? Fuck knows. The band seemed to know, because after a while they’d get heavier and then stop.

Performance: Ok. They were pretty mobile considering they were playing to about 15 people. Nothing spectacular though. That they were on a stage four feet above the audience didn’t help. And the smoke-machine didn’t help tear down that barrier between band and audience either.

Overall: As I retired to the bar, my thoughts were thus:

“Yeah, they’re reet. Bit of a girlie affair. They play music dead well though – great musicianship.”

“Lost Bear and coffee”

Only 3 songs on the myspace, which is a shame. They are in the process of recording though, which should reconcile this problem. The intro of the first, which is entitled ‘Hope you’re No Diana’ and is about a car-crash in a tunnel (I assume), is stolen from Pavement. The outro bit of the second song ‘Cheerful Abortion Clinic’ is stolen from American Football. I guess there’s nothing wrong with plagiarizing your heroes – hell, loadsa great music is made that way. But I wouldn’t do it. Hyperbowl don’t do it. If someone mentioned to me that a Sex Pests riff sounds like such-and-such a band, I’d first of all insert a broken bottle into the face of the little weasel that said it, and then run home and flagellate myself all night.

The songs are really well recorded and sound great. I think they are a great band, just not my cuppa tea.

3.5 wobblies.

J. E. Griffiths