Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Soundwave 2008



About a month ago I had the pleasure of heading off to the Soundwave Festival in the wilds of the West Coast of Vancouver Island with my Brother Eric. It is a long drive from anywhere to there, but well worth it just for the scenery alone.

We camped on the beach, met great people and danced until we could dance no more.

Respecting the wildlife we made sure not to feed the bears or gorillas, but happily shared out habitat with them.


The stages and bars were made with natural resources such as driftwood found on the beach and it was a wonderful place to enjoy the party especially since the sun shone non stop the entire time. I have been told in the past it has also been known as Drownwave, and having lived up in that area for a time would not be surprised that it can get really really wet at times but lucky for us it was the perfect weekend with great tunes, people and fun. One of the best parts was catching up with my super duper cool buddy John after all this time and meeting the lovely Sarah in the process.



Since I have been going to parties in Germany like this for many many years, I was thinking nothing could impress me in the back woods of Canada. I was wrong!


The party had first class music, laid-back people and great scenery, even the Girls of Soundwave calendar crew were there to head things up before Fame Corp met for their annual stakeholders meeting.
The music came from far and wide. Dirt Crew from Berlin, Death to Sexy from Victoria, Ink Well & Long Walk Short Dock from Vancouver and many more that impressed me greatly. Unfortunatly we only arrived on Saturday afternoon so had already missed a whole day of fun.
I also had the pleasure of meeting a few new people with whom I hope I will be friends with in the years to come. Perhaps is it just because it was my own country and language but it seemed people were much easier to talk to and get to know.
Either way it was a great weekend and I hope that I will make it back for the next one.


Hopefully see you at the next one.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Xavier Rudd

Last night I went to a concert at the Paard van Troje in The Hague at the urging of my friend Martin. Martin is always on top of great music and keeps me in the loop so I was happy to oblige.

Anyway last night was Xavier Rudd from Australia. He had an amazing set up with percussion instruments, guitars, didgeridoo (3), and some other noise making things. He also had a drummer on stage with him for about half the show it was pretty great and you could tell from his songs and style he was speaking about a much bigger issues in the world, Martin later told me he was an enviromental activist & Surfer. His quieter songs reminded me of Paul Simon. I was very impressed and will be looking out for him in future.

Anyway I just wanted to put this out there and ask the question to the few hundred Cloggies that attended, 'why do you feel the need to chat and talk all the way through the gig?'
I can think of better uses for paying money for a ticket and to have a musician from the other side of the world come in and you chit chat like he is just the background music for your conversations, and it is bloody annoying! I hate to say it that it was not just this gig but every gig I have ever attended in Holland that I have been in the audience that people feel it is alright to chat their way through the shows. It is rude and shows a complete lack of respect to the artist and musicians on stage. Grrrr!

Anyway if you want to hear more and perhaps missed his songs last night due to the extreme rudeness visit his My Space for some tunes http://www.myspace.com/xavierrudd