The More You Live, The More You Love

  Last year my friend and I visited the concert of Clock Opera at the Paradiso. They played the small hall that evening in October 2012, but it turned out quite disappointed because of the worse sound. Still we decided to visit them again when they played the Bitterzoet. And This time no disappointments. What a gig. With again the full debut album Ways To Forget, but also three songs released through the deluxe version of the album on iTunes. The sound was suburb, the atmosphere eclectic, and the crowd went crazy. The band has certainly learned from the touring in the past year, since the setlist was build to a climax which the crowd could feel from the start, when first single White Noise opened the set. It was great to hear the extra songs like Let Go The Lifeboats, New Arrivals and Alouette to be performed. After them they build up to a climax, while the crowd certainly was longing for the singles Once And For All and Lesson No 7. The latter played as a last encore, bu...

Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, 11 March 2013. I received the album Arc for my birthday nearly a month ago, and discovered their concert at Bitterzoet on the internet shortly after. So last Monday me and a friend visited a sold out Bitterzoet and saw Everything Everything in top shape. At a quarter after nine they climbed up the stage and opened the set with Undrowned. From the start the crowd was enthousiastic, as were the band. In five quarter of an hour they played a diverse set from their two albums, with a focus on their just released album Arc. The set contained most of my favourites from this new album, and I saw that I wasn't the only one enjoying it to the max. The sound was very good and well balanced. Every detail was heard and the vocalist Jonathing Higgs established a great performance. The band had hired an extra keyboardplayer to meet the standard of the album. It was over much too soon, but for sure they showed their capabilities. What a band, what a performance...

Thursday 17 Mai 2012 and going to Amsterdam for a concert of one of the greatest synth-pop artists of the eighties Thomas Dolby. We took an early train to spend some time at the Arendsnest , a pub which only serves Dutch beers. The cafe has got more than 120 bottled beers and 30 beers on draft. We sat down at a table where an Irishman was sitting, which drank his beers in a brisk pace. He followed the line of the right part of the board, and didn't bother about the alcohol percentage. After a couple of beers and a talk with the Irish guy we turned to Bitterzoet, the venue, for the performance of Thomas Dolby. At the venue I noticed the signs but since already people were making pictures and even filming, I decided to do the same. At nine the concert started and Thomas came on stage with his band immediatly opening with Commercial Breakup from his successful first album The Golden Age Of Wireless. After apologizing for not have played in Amsterdam for 28 years, some of the c...

A-Ha live at the HMH, Amsterdam on 10-10-2010. The support Jimmy Gnecco, and his band Ours which helped him to perform his first released solo-material, had just flown in the other day, maybe in the same plane as the one where Solomon Burke died in just before landing. They were given a change to start up the crowd with a performance of fourty minutes. As said they played material from Jimmy's first solo album The Heart, which sounded very promising for a first listen. At nine o'clock the lights went out and a classical intro was played, after that a keyboard tune followed with Morton singing short phrases over it as if he was practising his voice. Then the band came on and opened with The Sun Always Shines On T.V. It took them three songs, in which Morton wore his sunglasses, to get into the mood. With Scoundrel Days the voice was warm and the band relaxed as if to say the professional photographers are gone it is time to start the party. What followed was a show with a lot of...

Ultravox, 26 April 2010 at the Paradiso in Amsterdan The third time in a year that I saw the "classic line-up" perform. The 2CD and DVD of Return To Eden, the registration of the Return To Eden concert at Camden Roundhouse, which I visited last year April, hadn't been out of my players, after they arrived in early April and the released setlist through the forum of the Ultravox website promised a nice evening of great music. And it turned out to be a great evening. This time the Belgium violist Sonja Haering, known for her contributions on records of André Rieu turned out to be a much better support, than the singer of last year. Her performance was static, but the songs were promissing. At 8:30 Ultravox opened their set with New Europeans, one of the "new" tracks compared to the setlist of last year. It turned out the opening of a very strong concert. Midge Ure's vocals were great, certainly he has grown during the year. Even the high pitches of Vienna and ...

Simple Minds & Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark Heineken Music Hall, 26 November 2009 An evening of music of two bands I follow since the early eigthies. I became interested in the Simple Minds with the release of New Gold Dream in 1982, and already knew Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark with their great album Architectury And Morality, which are both albums that I count in my list of top albums if the eigthies. So it wasn't hard for me to get some tickets, when I learned during the Lokeren Festival, where Simple Minds performed with Ultravox, another great eigthies band, that Simple Minds would return to mainland Europe with OMD as their secial guests. At half past seven OMD took of with a setlist mainly filled with singles. It was nice to see the band again after a two hiatus, at least for me. They are working hard on a new album for a release in late 2010, but meanwhile it was a nice surprise to see them on stage again although only for an hour. At nine Simple Minds took of...

A couple of days ago I was finally putting my vynil records in a cupboard again. On the attic we have created a nice listening and relaxing room with my old audio tower, a television, a DVD player and my old collection of vynil records alongside my collection of music DVD's. Going through my special singles collection I discoverd that behind every single there's a story. In the mid eighties I organised trips to major Dutch cities with friends to go on record hunting. Those days it wasn't just the big chains of stores you have nowadays. The Free Record Shop, one of the biggest in the Netherlands these days, was a small one those days, which offered the music lover a lot of import 7" and 12" singles, mostly not available elsewhere and sometimes hardly heard on the readio (I bought all my regular Marillion 12" singles there). They only had shops in big cities then like Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht to mention some. Nowadays every small city has one and you fin...