Month: December 2024

I came to De Staat late in life, but after seeing them live in 2022 I resolved that I would definitely try to catch them again. In 2023 they announced that they were going to try something ambitious and experimental to support their Red, Yellow, and Blue project. In a small number of festivals and venues in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, they would play a three-day concert series, with a different set list each evening to match one of the three colours. Red covers their heavier material, Yellow has some of their less classifiable tracks, and Blue is more moody and downbeat.

Paradiso was one of the venues. Although you could get tickets for specific shows, I immediately bought a passepartout ticket for all three nights. I wasn’t disappointed!

Although there were some tickets still available on the night for a couple of the shows, Paradiso was packed. Each show had different set dressing, different lighting (of course), and a different opening act. Many of the fans in the audience were wearing matching colours. On Red Monday I found a place up on the second balcony, facing the stage. Iron Jinn played a suitably dark and sludgy set. For De Staat there was a large speaker at the back of the stage for Torre Florim to perch on, and a tall pulpit that rose up from behind the curtains late in the set. As always at their gigs, there was a huge circular rotating mosh for the song “Witch Doctor”. (One of the reasons I’d positioned myself up on high…)

On Yellow Tuesday, Smudged played a wild and punky opening set, with all band members decked out in green face paint. I was on the first balcony to the right of the stage this evening. This time, De Staat had a set of stairs at the centre of the stage, leading up to a huge lighting rig. The song “Pikachu” is one of the centrepieces of their show, and as well as doing their dance on stage, Rocco and Torre took it down into the audience as well.

Dutch singer Pitou opened the show on Blue Wednesday, and she joined the band on stage for a haunting and entrancing rendition of “I’ll Take You”. The band had a second drummer on stage, and you know you’re in for a good time with two drummers. I was on the second balcony again, but this time off to the left of the stage. (Probably the worst view of the three shows, but it did give some interesting photo perspectives.)

Because I came to De Staat late, I had spent more time listening to their more recent material than their full back catalogue. They played 48 songs over the three shows, and to fill all three evenings evenings they brought out a lot of songs I hadn’t paid much attention to before. Hearing them live really brought them to life, and I think I might now rate their 2013 album I_CON as my favourite. The raucous guitar hooks on “Make Way for the Passenger”, the incredible rumble of drums on “The Inevitable End”, the Beastie Boys echoes on “Input Source Select”, and the memories of Pitou’s voice gracing “I’ll Take You” all combine to give me chills whenever I hear the recorded versions now.

This concert series was an amazing experience. It absolutely cemented De Staat as a “must see” band for me whenever they tour again.

Set Lists:

Monday 29 January – Red

1. Look at Me
2. Ah, I See
3. Life is a Game (Ladadi Ladadada)
4. Me Time
5. Old Macdonald Don’t Have No Farm No More
6. Refugee
7. Paying Attention
8. Some Body
9. Make Way for the Passenger
10. Murder Death
11. Help Yourself
12. Burning the Flag
13. Meet the Devil
14. Head on the Block
15. Witch Doctor

Encore:

16. Rooster-Man
17. Kitty

Tuesday 30 January – Yellow

1. Danger
2. Peptalk
3. Blues is Dead
4. Numbers Up
5. Psycho Disco
6. Input Source Select
7. Habibi
8. Fake It Till You Make It
9. Mona Lisa
10. Pikachu
11. Make the Call, Leave It All
12. Sweatshop
13. Get on Screen

Encore

14. Bombti
15. Who’s Gonna Be the GOAT?

Wednesday 31 January – Blue

1. Take Root
2. Devil’s Blood
3. I’m a Rat
4. Someone to Be
5. Keep Me Home
6. One Day
7. Firestarter
8. I’ll Never Marry You
9. Luther
10. She’s With Me (Torre Florim solo)
11. I’ll Take You (with Pitou)
12. Running Backwards Into The Future
13. Time Will Get Us Too
14. The Inevitable End

Encore

15. What Goes, Let Go
16. Phoenix

Why yes, I am posting this gig almost a year late, thank you for noticing.

This was my last gig of 2023. It was the end of December, dark, it had been a very long and turbulent year, I was neck deep in stress about writing my research project proposal, and I don’t think I was super excited about trekking all the way up to Zwolle. But The Cool Quest always put on a great show, and this was a home town gig for them, with a few new songs they’d released earlier in the year. I took the train, because I dislike driving in the dark.

It was also the first non-arena gig with my still new-ish iPhone 15 Pro, and its camera system that was streets ahead of my old iPhone X. (The first gig I went to with the 15 Pro was Melanie Martinez at the Glasgow Hydro.) Close up to the stage, the 15 Pro produces very noticeably better images, which is nice.

Support act was Dutch singer-songwriter MICHA, performing solo with a guitar. Not really my kind of thing, but the songs were melodious, his voice was strong, and the emotion he expressed while playing in front of a large crowd was heartfelt.

This was the third time I’d seen The Cool Quest, and they were amazing again. Their lineup had changed a bit: Vincent Bergsma (vocals), Sander Moorlag (keys), and Ilse de Vries (bass) formed the core, but Vadim Neef on guitar has been replaced by Cedric Siegers, and Mira Burgers took her place on drums. Mira was a powerhouse, and Cedric was technically excellent, but I missed the playful and intricate back-and-forth that Vadim and Sander used to have during their solos. Vincent was in fine voice, was excited to be back on stage in Zwolle, and he pumped up the audience to a frenzy. As a rare treat, they brought out two players on trumpet and saxophone to round out some of their songs from their first album Funkin’ Badass that featured horns extensively.

They’re such a great party band. Even if you’re not familiar with their music, I’m sure the energy would be infectious and you’d have a great time.

Set list:

1. Party on the Bloc
2. My Little Peace of Mind
3. Screw Up 2.0
4. Daily Grind 2.0
5. Last Dance
6. Dancing with the Devil
7. Funkin’ Badass
8. Shine
9. VIVID medley: Deadlines, Runnin’, Coastline
10. Punisher (acoustic)
11. Rain
12. You Got What I Need
13. Temporary
14. Gypsy Woman (Crystal Waters cover)
15. Dark Matter
16. Celebrate the Struggle
17. Storm

Encore:

18. Hesitate
19. Loose Cannon

After working with Linux on a day to day basis for a long, long time now, it was today that I finally clicked with the ln -s command for making symbolic links, aka “shortcuts” in the file system. When using that command with two parameters, one of them is the source/origin of the link and the other one is the target. I’ve always struggled to remember if “source” is the actual file on disk, or the place where I want to link from (the “origin” of my jumping to the destination). What do I write first? The location where I want the shortcut to appear, or the location of the actual file?

Well, I struggle no more. (Probably. It’s very possible that I’ll forget this in a week.) It’s because when I checked the documentation (for the n-th time) today, I saw that the ln command can take different forms depending on the number of parameters you feed it:

• ln -s <file> This will create a link to <file> in the current working directory
• ln -s <file> <place> This will create a link to <file> in the place that you specify as the second parameter

The thing that caused it to click for me was realizing that the second parameter is optional, which means that the first parameter logically must be the actual file.

It all makes sense if you stare at it for long enough. Say, 25+ years.