February 16, 2014

Hieronymus Bosch’ buttock music brought alive

Filed under: Art,Music by Branko Collin @ 11:22 pm

garden-delights-bosch-pdTumblrer Chaoscontrolled123 decided to transcribe the music written across the buttocks of one of the characters in Hieronymus Bosch’ famous painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. You can hear the results here.

Chaoscontrolled123 appears to be unimpressed by the tune but I see promise in it. Surely techno DJs or metal band Within Temptation should be able to do something with the melody?

Hieronymus Bosch was a mediaeval painter who was born and lived his entire life in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (hence the last name Bosch). The Garden of Earthly Delights is perhaps his most famous painting consisting of three panels, the right-most of which depicts hell. Our trouserless friend is part of a scene in which the sin of lust is depicted as music—Wikipedia says lust was considered the ‘music of the flesh’ in those days.

By the way, I don’t know if any art historian ever noticed this, but there is a diptych in the right panel of the triptych. Huh-huh.

(Link: Trendbeheer; illustration Hieronymus Bosch)

Tags: , , , , , ,

February 11, 2014

Colonialism and cannibals: deconstructing a Dutch tourist attraction

Filed under: History,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:30 am

The brouhaha starts with the pot calling the kettle black: although she had a great time with her kids, an American journalist managed to find fault with a Dutch amusement park ride from De Efteling called ‘Monsieur Cannibale’ (yes, that’s French, explanation coming up) that features an African cannibal-like character with a bone through his nose by calling it ‘a racist throwback’. America’s Disney is already a cesspool of throwbacks, which dilutes the journalist’s comment as much as a useless homeopathic remedy.

The ride has been around since 1988 and regardless of what people think of it (‘racist throwback’ vs. ‘mythical character’), taking issue with it now is very lame, especially making a totally unproven connection between the offensive character and Dutch colonialism just to drive a point.

And it gets more odd at least for me.

A few years ago, there was an advert on Dutch telly with small children dancing around a room to the song ‘Monsieur Cannibale’ by Sacha Distel. I couldn’t understand why a song about a cannibal was deemed fit for dancing kiddies. My co-blogger pointed out that the Dutch knew this song from De Efteling.

Problem is Distel’s song is about a man captured in Africa by cannibals who thought he was a spy, trying to politely plead the head cannibal (hence addressing him as Monsieur) not to eat him, but negotiates his way out of it by offering him porno magazines. The head cannibal laughs, brings the guy back to his harem for a week after which the guy lose 20 kilos, refuses to leave and wants to stay with the harem, which we can easily assume are a whole bunch of naked, ready to go women.

You can imagine my surprise at seeing dancing children associated with trading porno magazines, something I bet most of you didn’t know. Well, now you know and you won’t be able to unknow it, just like me.

And if you want some French-style throwback, watch how Sacha pulls the side of his eyes to designate speaking Chinese in the video at 0:25 for starters.

(Link: www.nltimes.nl, Photo of an Efteling dragon by Jeroen Kransen, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

February 4, 2014

Las Vegas club bans and bashes Dutch DJ music

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 2:56 pm

DJNatashka2010

I shared an article on Facebook a few days ago entitled New Las Vegas Club Will Ban “Mainstream Records” And “Lazy Artists” because I noticed five of the fourteen mentioned were Dutch. Regardless of people’s taste in music, this hit list just proves how popular Dutch DJs actually are. In fact, just last summer you could enter a contest to be married by Tiësto in Las Vegas.

Dutch hits:
Hardwell is from Breda, same as Tiësto.
Chuckie is from Surinam, but lives in Aruba.
Afrojack is from Spijkenisse.
Martin Garrix is from Amsterdam.

Speaking of lazy, shame on you TV station AT5 for claiming that these are “Amsterdam DJs”. Check your facts and don’t be douches yourselves. This kind of gratuitous appropriation is exactly why the rest of the country likes to bash Amsterdam.

(Link: whiteraverrafting.com, Photo: Amsterdam’s DJ Natashka in Munich)

Tags: , , , , ,

December 30, 2013

Artist records the sound the Earth makes 9 kilometres down

Filed under: Art,Music,Nature by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

6067747103_95924a9689_m

Amsterdam-based artist Lotte Geeven has recorded the sound the Earth makes from the ‘deepest hole in the world’, which is apparently nine kilometres deep, near the Czech border. Seismologists, geophysicists and engineers helped her with this project, resulting in a series of sound installations.

It reminds me of some classic industrial music, probably Lustmord or a loop of 1980s Zoviet France. It’s soothing but eerie at the same time.

(Link: www.designboom.com, Photo of Seismograph by Hitchster, some rights reserved)

Tags:

December 25, 2013

Longest concert ever in Leeuwarden

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 3:47 pm

logo-serious-requestMore than 400 bands broke the world record for the longest concert last Saturday by playing 363 hours (15 days and a bit) consequetively in Leeuwarden as part of the Serious Request charity event.

The record attempt produced 17,000 euro through ticket sales for fighting lethal diarrhoea in Africa and Asia. The entire event, which takes place annually while three 3FM radio DJs lock themselves up in a glass house in order to be the focal point for all kinds of spin-off charity drives, produced over 12 million euro for the good cause.

Leeuwarder Courant writes that after the record was broken, the success was celebrated by having a band—the Broken Brass Ensemble—play some more music.

(Illustration: 3FM Serious Request logo)

Tags: , ,

December 2, 2013

Singer Gordon accused of manipulating Top 40 list

Filed under: Music,Online by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

One of the authoritative hit parades of the country has accused artists such as Gordon and record companies of manipulating their positions by buying their own products, according to the chairman of the Dutch Top 40 foundation, Erik de Zwart.

Who’s Gordon? He’s the culturally insensitive talent show jury member who fired off ‘racist’ Chinese jokes on live television recently that in the end were indeed insulting to the Chinese candidate.

When determining the Top 40 airplay is also taken into account, contrary to another well established hit parade, the Single Top 100, making it susceptible to manipulation, De Zwart says. Gordon comes in at 38, 27, or not at all on major radio station lists. De Zwart believes that it doesn’t jive that Gordon is at Number 1 for weeks on the Single Top 100. Gordon’s response was that De Zwart was envious of him and trying to ruin his good name.

(Links: radio.nl-1, radio.nl-2)

Tags: ,

November 20, 2013

Racist remarks on television fuel discussion over Dutch intolerance

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 6:10 pm

The racist sounding jury of televised talent show Holland’s Got Talent has actually managed to outdo itself stupidity-wise after recently failing to recognise one of their most established singer-songwriters.

This time a Chinese immigrant speaking better English than the Dutch jury was poked fun at purely because of his ethnicity. Xiao Wang is asked his name before singing an opera aria by Verdi and once he says his name, a woman on the jury answer’s “no matter”, reassuring him that his Chinese is not a problem. The crowd sounds shocked, but laughs. A little later, Gordon, the same pop singer we mentioned earlier this week , asks Wang, “what are you going to sing? Number 29 with rice?”, obviously referring to the fact that many Chinese run take away restaurants in the Netherlands. After Wang’s performance which was surprisingly good, Gordon says “that was the best Chinese I’ve had in weeks”. I stopped watching after that.

This video has decent English subtitles, which will have you facepalming in no time:

Tags: , ,

November 18, 2013

Talent show jury ignorantly trash established singer-songwriter

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:05 am

The show may be called ‘Holland’s got talent’, but the jury recently made it clear that they don’t exactly have proper knowledge of their own musical culture. Jury member Gordon himself a Dutch pop music singer basically told Joop Visser, who has been performing since the mid 1960s, that he sucked. “The lyrics are reasonably well thought up”, which was not said very nicely and “your voices are horrible together”, which is harsh. In this video Joop sings with Jessica and yes, the song is very well written, which is why anyone should listen to Joop Visser in the first place.

To understand the full extent of the cock-up, imagine if Bob Dylan with nobody recognising him went on stage and sang a new song and got told that his voice range was poor and that his look was outdated. Or imagine telling Leonard Cohen that he doesn’t have any moves and needs to get a makeover, something crass like that.

Visser seemed to have had a good laugh once they realised that the jury had no clue who Joop was and didn’t hesitate to be flippant right back at Gordon. Gordon also asked them both how old they were and when Jessica answered ‘old’, as in, it’s irrelevant, Joop said how old he was and Gordon told him he looked older. All I can say is Gordon was never particularly smart and just got dumber and ruder.

Here’s a Dutch song many of you can relate to called ‘Heineken is een harddrugs dealer’ (Heineken is a hard drug dealer):

(Link: www.welingelichtekringen.nl, Screenshot: YouTube)

Tags: , ,

November 5, 2013

Lou Reed’s Perfect Day rings out in Groningen

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 10:36 am

The story goes that the late Lou Reed was in Groningen in November 2008 for one of Laurie Anderson’s (one of his wife’s) concerts. He was invited to visit the Martini tower to have a look at its carillon. The city’s bell ringer Auke de Boer gave Lou and Laurie a tour and let them play the carillon. Lou was very interested in this historical instrument and later gave his permission to use Perfect Day for a special event on the carillon. The tribute was played on Saturday 2 November 2013 exactly 5 years and one day after Lou and Laurie visited Groningen.

The bells kick in at 0:27.

(Link: trendbeheer.com)

Tags: , ,

October 13, 2013

Merch tip: short haired Barbie sells the least

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 10:42 pm

The Dolly Dots were a Dutch girl band from the 1980s with a string of hits. At the height of their success the six singers had their own sitcom, feature film and even their own Barbie dolls which, according to the I’m Like: ‘Oh My God!!!’ blog, were not very life-like.

The Ria doll at least included her trademark short hair. “All the dolls were hits, except the Ria one […] because it had short hair. You cannot comb a Ken hairdo.”

In this video from Avro’s TopPop Ria still had long hair—she is the one with the purse:

Having found only one source I have no idea whether this story is actually true, but it sounded too good to have it stay at the Dutch language part of the web.

(Photo by TROS, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , , ,