Like Adam Neely, they clearly get people encouraging them to cut costs by forcing themselves to work under worse conditions:
Often when this conversation is had in the public domain, people will make statements like, “you can save money by sleeping in the van, or crashing on someone’s sofa” attempting to turn things into the dril candles meme. To those people, I say “grow up”.
I love music, and I love seeing artists play live. I kinda hate that the economics of this work out so poorly for them. The best I can do for them most of the time is to buy their music on a platform like Bandcamp (instead of, or as well as streaming it, because streaming is pretty convenient), showing up for them when they’re on tour, and buying their merch at the gig. (I’m very good at buying the merch.) But I wish that the music business was healthier, and could provide a more stable living for more people.
The single most ridiculous aspect of human history is how much of it has been driven by the goal of allowing a tiny portion of a large population to live in luxury. This is a theme found, to varying degrees, in society after society across the world: A lot of people with a low standard of living working in service of the goal of raising the standard of living for some sort of ruler or supreme leader and his family and allies. I understand that this is not some sort of revelation. “You’ve discovered class,” you are now saying in a mocking tone. Beyond the social and political and economic dynamics underlying this process, though—things that make up magisterial fields of inquiry—I think that every once in a while it is well worth taking a moment to gape at the basic ludicrousness of this fact. As societal goals go, an honest reading tells us that we are often not aiming for “better technology” or “philosophical progress.” No, the reality is that, thousands of years and around the globe, the primary purpose of all the work that everyone is doing is “allowing a few jerks and their unbearable kids to live lavishly.” Countless millions through millennia have suffered, dragging stones to build pyramids and losing fingers in dirty factories and getting black lung so that Some Guy Somewhere can sit on a soft pillow and enjoy delicacies.
What an absurd, idiotic goal to organize human society around. Wow!
I think I first came across Bilderbuch in 2015 or 2016; I remember sharing their track “OM” in a “New Music Monday” collaborative playlist at work. Their rich, genre-bending pop sound invited obvious comparisons with Falco, and I loved it. When I visited Julian in hospital in Austria at the start of 2019, I remember seeing their name on a poster in Innsbruck. It was probabaly for a gig or an album release. I jumped back into their catalogue, and found myself listening to “Checkpoint” on infinite repeat on my train journeys through the snow for the rest of that trip.
Since then I was waiting for them to play a show somewhere closer than Cologne, and last year they finally touched down in Amsterdam in March. I was still in deep burnout at work, and despite loving the band, and having bought a ticket as soon as I found out about the gig months before, I wasn’t excited on the day. I had to force myself to go into town. I skipped the support act (Kässy). As a latecomer, I had to squeeze myself into a corner of the Oude Zaal at Melkweg to get a barely decent view.
The gig was good, though. They kicked off with the powerful riffs and playful solos of “Softpower”, and carried on with the groovy “Dino”. Singer Maurice Ernst started off in a shirt and tie. He teased and flirted with the crowd and lost the shirt part-way through, but then gained a tight black crop-top. There were a ton of German fans in the audience, and a lot of singing along. Their live version of “Aber Airbags” is an extended, slow and trippy guitar solo tour that turns lively and up-tempo half-way through a 15-minute run, bursting with exuberance and a driving, bouncy beat. And of course they played “Spliff” as well. Amsterdam, innit.
Concert series poster on the wall outside Paradiso. Note how the different colour images feature all five band members equally: a nice touch.
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…)
De Staat at Paradiso, Red show
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.
De Staat at Paradiso, Yellow show
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.)
De Staat at Paradiso, Blue showDe Staat at Paradiso, Blue show
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.
Why yes, I am posting this gig almost a year late, thank you for noticing.
The Cool Quest at Hedon Zwolle
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 Questalways 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.
MICHA at Hedon Zwolle
Support act was Dutch singer-songwriterMICHA, 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.
The Cool Quest at Hedon Zwolle
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.
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.
