Posts Tagged With: Music

Koninginnenacht 2013 (Or: The Hague)

Last night Marco and I went out to enjoy Koninginnenacht, or the night before Queen’s Day. (If you live in The Hague you should really drop the ‘t off nacht, but I digress.) In The Hague you have several stages set up throughout the center of the city, with 7 stages this year. You have various musical acts throughout the night, generally lasting 45 minutes to an hour each.

Even Google got into the Queen’s Day festivities…

Google logo for King Willem-Alexander van Oranje

Hovering over the Google logo gives you: Queensday 2013: Best wishes to King Willem-Alexander!

Marco said that a few years ago (or so) they made the cardinal mistake of only having a few stages and advertising a rather popular band to the main stage at some point in the night. The result was chaos as hundreds of thousands of people tried to converge on the main stage. Since then, they have increased the number of stages and used slightly less popular bands.

Hommerson Casino Koninginnenacht The Hague 2013

Hommerson casino decorations

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Categories: Holidays, The Hague | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

BRAD concert (Or: At the Boerderij in Zoetermeer)

As I mentioned earlier, we went to a BRAD concert on Thursday night. This concert featured Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam. The opening art was the New Killer Shoes (why don’t they have a Wikipedia page yet?!)

setup for the New Killer Shoes band

setting up for the opening act (New Killer Shoes)

A piano solo (YouTube)- “Crown of Thorns” – from the night we went. The singer/player is Shawn Smith from BRAD. Much different from the rest of the songs which had the guitars and drums you would expect. 😉 There’s some history to the song – it used to be sung by Mother Love Bone until the frontman Andy Wood passed away. Most of the band’s members went on to form Pearl Jam.

soundboard at BRAD concert

The crazy soundboard from the concert. I never know how they know what button to tinker with. Maybe they just tinker randomly to make it look like they know what they are doing. 😉 Oh wait. That would be me.

And on the way home, in the tram…

Dutch tram door with smiley face

Do you see the smiley face?

Two different designs for the check-in/out machines. The one in the back has the phrase kaart hier, with a hand holding the card and two arrows pointing where the card should be placed. But still, it’s easy to forget where the card goes. (In my defense, I haven’t had any trouble in the last 3-4 weeks.)

Categories: Zoetermeer | Tags: | 1 Comment

Butterfly effect (Or: Appetite for Destruction)

From Roger… (!!)

Let me paint a picture. 1987, just got out of the ‘brugklas’, and school was starting again.

I had a new class-mate. We did not really hang out much that year, since loads of my brugklas mates were still in the same class, including a friend I had had since kindergarten so I did not really need new friends.

We part ways the next year since I went to a different class. Then Appetite for Destruction happens.

Significant in many ways.

For one, it is arguably the best album in the history of rock, but also since I was one of the first ones that had the album in my ‘circles’.. (yeah right like i was ever part of any circles). I did not have a cd-player yet, so I purchased the album (that was the era when people paid for music, you young folk!) on cassette tape (uhm, look it up on Wikipedia, young folk!).

The other significant thing that the album made happen was sort of like a like a butterfly effect.

That one kid that I did not really hang out with when he was in my class all week long got wind of the fact that I had the GNR tape as we now like to call it. He asked me to borrow it and the rest is history.

Marco and I quickly became best friends. Together we have been through a lot. The butterfly effect I meant was that if that album did not happen to be in my possession we would not have started to hang out, would not have bonded over wrestling, hockey, music etc.. we might not have gone to the US to go to said wrestling and hockey and who knows, Marco might not have ended up meeting the lovely Niki.

So on this, the 25th anniversary of Marco and I meeting, his life is about to change again, this time really for the better, when his fiancé moves across an ocean, to a different continent to be with him.

And perhaps all because of one cassette tape.

02-10-2012

Roger

Categories: Friends&Family | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Dutch music (Or: Pondering the concept of time management)

It has been a productive weekend in some ways, not so productive in others. But do you ever have a day or two where you say “Okay, no matter what, I am putting my enjoyment first?” That was pretty much theme of this weekend. I think I did pretty well.

Usually there’s projects that need to get done. Sometimes this means I work on them from dinner until it’s about time to go to bed, minus a bit of time at the end where I write the nightly ritual of an email to Marco of course. Occasionally with a cup of tea and speculaas cookies. But after a week of 2-3 hours a night, I said no más! The weekend is mine.

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Categories: News | Tags: | 6 Comments

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