July 9, 2016

Christmas music terrorises Arnhem shopping mall

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

24o-xmas2014

There’s this weird tradition at camp sites where I’m from in Québec called ‘Le Noël des campeurs’ (‘Campers’ Christmas’), which is basically celebrating Christmas in July at the camp site, where some of us spent our entire summers because that was the family vacation. I especially remember Santa Claus on the back of a pick-up driving slowly through the camp site throwing candies at us kids, not unlike the Pieten do at Sinterklaas.

The Netherlands doesn’t do Christmas at the camping, but shopping mall Rijkerswoerd in Arnhem has been forced to listen to Christmas music for three weeks now, which is horribly annoying to customers and shopkeepers alike. Thanks to the incompetence of a manager in solving the problem and a florist seeking media attention to get it fixed, the entire system was replaced and there’s normal hits coming out of the music system as of today.

After three weeks of chanting ‘we’re looking into it’, the manager in question had announced that the problem had been solved on Thursday, but on Friday, Jingle Bells and Last Christmas were back in full swing. On Friday afternoon, cables were yanked out of the system to be repaired to make sure Driving Home for Christmas hit a brick wall of silence before the florist got too creative.

Mood Media, the company who supplies the tunes, has apologised for the music terror and placated the shopkeepers with actual Christmas-themed gifts, which went over well.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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July 6, 2016

Opening the racist door: Monsieur Cannibale part deux

Filed under: General,History,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:02 am

The ball of this story got rolling back in 2014 when an American journalist was ‘shocked’ at an amusement park ride from De Efteling called ‘Monsieur Cannibale’ (French – new and improved explanation coming up) that features a black cannibal-like character with a bone through his nose cooking up unsuspecting children.

The racist door has now opened up as the Stop Oppressive Stereotypes (SOS) group published an open letter to the amusement park accusing it of featuring racist rides, one of which is Monsieur Cannibale and the other Carnaval Festival that features Asian stereotypes. However, Efteling asked SOS for a sit down and SOS haven’t responded yet – to be continued.

One side is telling the other to get a life and ideally a job and the other is having a ‘hey’ we never really saw things that way and it makes us feel uncomfortable moment, akin to the debate about Zwarte Piet. The Efteling says it mostly gets complaints about serving unhealthy food, but not about racist stereotypes.

I love Sacha Distel, the French singer and guitarist who sang this 1966 racist and sexist song that the Efteling chose to subject to children: it matches the ride perfectly in its bad taste. Distel’s song is about a white man captured in Africa by black 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 and refuses to leave. The man basically shagged all the presumably black ladies who were all “hungry for it”.

Here’s a version of the song with a decent Dutch translation:

And since the French playback performance I posted in the original post was removed, here’s the same offensive performance sung in Spanish. He still pulls his eyes sideways to indicate the Chinese language at the beginning, so the Asian stereotypes are conveniently addressed by Distel as well.

(Photo: Photo of an Efteling dragon by Jeroen Kransen, some rights reserved)

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July 1, 2016

Rotterdam gets piano stairs in metro station

Filed under: Architecture,Music by Orangemaster @ 6:57 am

Piano stairs

First Rotterdam Central Station had the giant staircase built by architectural firm MVRDV that goes from the station’s plaza all the way to the top of Rotterdam’s ‘Wholesale trade building’ (‘Groothandelsgebouw’), and now the entrance to Rotterdam’s Central Station’s metro has piano stairs as well.

The whole piano stairs affair started in Stockholm, and now there are quite a few of them around the world. Apparently, more people will take the stairs instead of the escalator or lift if they can make music, 66% more as was the case in Stockholm.

Rotterdam’s piano stairs, which will remain for one year, are pre-programmed with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, although you can compose your own number. Rotterdam alderman Hugo de Jonge would have rather had ‘You’ll never walk alone’, but then said the programming sounded a lot more difficult that you’d think. “The idea is to get people to smile when they use the stairs”.

(Link and photo: www.rijnmond.nl)

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June 9, 2016

Playing the drums on the motorway

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:32 am

traffic_jam

Nobody likes a long and hot traffic jam due to an accident, and neither did Adriaan Stoop, drummer of the band The Moods from Eindhoven, who pulled out his kit from the back of his truck and jammed it out on a Dutch motorway last Sunday.

“At first, I didn’t want to do it, but people were saying ‘go for i!’,” he told the AD newspaper. “I saw the queue of cars and figured it was going to last quite a while, so I started drumming on the motorway.”

(Link: www.francetvinfo.fr)

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June 1, 2016

There’s a Dutch rap song about Max Verstappen

Filed under: Music,Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:42 am

By now Formula 1 fans around the world have heard that Dutch-Belgian F1 driver Max Verstappen, the son of former Dutch F1 driver Jos Verstappen and former Belgian kart driver Sophie Kumpen, is the youngest winner of a Formula 1 race at age 18. According to Wikipedia, he’s had a bunch of other firsts before that, but some firsts are more interesting than others.

What better way to celebrate than with a song, which is exactly what Dutch rap duo Dos Hermanos decided to do, inspired by Max Verstappen. Dos Hermanos from Haarlem are currently participating in a talent search show and their assignment was to write an ‘anthem’. Apparently, they didn’t have to think about it for very long. “There’s one person who deserves an ‘anthem’ and could use one! That’s why we chose the young hero Max Verstappen.”

Even if you don’t speak Dutch, every speaks F1 motor noises.

(Link: 1limburg.nl, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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May 10, 2016

Dutch Eurovision rehearsal video leaked by Russia

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 1:29 pm

We told you about the Dutch Eurovision entry from 23-year-old Douwe Bob from Amsterdam and we thought this year there wouldn’t be any fuss about wardrobe malfunctions or plagiarism, but oh no, there’s a scandal.

Apparently the Russian jury members leaked a video of them rating Douwe Bob’s entire performance at the general rehearsal, which was not supposed to happen. Большое спасибо, Russia!

Some people are pissed that the video was leaked, others like the bookies get some inside information about Douwe Bob’s chances. As we said recently, ‘Slow Down’ is nice, but not an earworm.

UPDATE: Douwe Bob has made it to the final.

Here’s the leaked video:

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(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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April 27, 2016

Alternative King’s Song by Truus de Groot

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 11:02 am

kings-song-truus-de-grootTo celebrate Willem-Alexander’s inauguration as king of the Netherlands in 2013 a song was commissioned, the King’s Song, which turned out to be quite the disaster. The committee of wise people asked to initiate the festivities decided that everybody and their dog should be in the song and as a result, the song became a hodgepodge of ill-fitting and often downright ungrammatical phrases.

Truus de Groot felt the song was “rather dreary” and chose to write her own version. De Groot, a Dutch experimental musician living in the US, is known for playing the kraakdoos. In the late 1970s she was a member of the Foolsband, which would later become famous under the name Doe Maar.

(Photo: crop of a frame of the video)

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April 23, 2016

Dutch Eurovision entry is nice, but will it do?

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:58 pm

This year’s Eurovision Song Festival entry is from 23-year-old Douwe Bob from Amsterdam who will perform his song ‘Slow Down’, which is in English and sounds a lot like country music with a touch of the 1970s. He’s popular, has won a lot of prizes, seems really positive about his chances, but his song is not an earworm. I do like his pronunciation, although his lyrics are too simplistic for my taste. Then again, that’s probably good considering the level of people’s English at Eurovision.

The comments on YouTube are very positive and we’ve been wrong before. I can’t seem to remember the song after a few listens. Problem is, ‘J’ai cherché’, the French entry by Amir is an earworm for me even though it has a television commercial quality to it, and the chorus is in English. A few others have more sticking potential like ‘You Are the Only One’ by Sergey Lazarev of Russia, a typical dramatic Eurovision techno song, with a break, a bridge, and the almost obligatory modulation near the end.

Will it blend or not? Give Douwe Bob a spin:

(Links: www.eurovision.tv, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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February 25, 2016

Singing off-key is also a thing in the Netherlands

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am

The Netherlands has had the imported idea of a choir for people who can’t sing since at least the summer of 2015, according to newspaper AD. The band of bad singers is called Geen Gehoor, a great Dutch double entendre roughly meaning ‘nobody hears you’ (also ‘not getting an answer on the phone’) and ‘it sounds terrible’. The choir mostly attracts the 50 plus set, and the choir practices in the Westland area near The Hague.

Founder Nico Meijer makes an excellent point: people who can’t sing should be able to sing somewhere. And the Internet will tell you how much singing is good for your mood even if you sing off-key. It also makes for a great comedy show.

Have a listen to their first ever live show:

(Links: www.ad.nl-1, www.ad.nl-2, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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February 18, 2016

Learn good Dutch grammar with rock music

Filed under: General,Literature,Music by Orangemaster @ 5:12 pm

Dutch spelling is often a headache for many people from foreigners to children because it officially changes a lot. A series aimed at children called ‘Snap je?’ (‘Get it?’) deals with the dreaded conjugation of verbs where after the root of the verb there’s a ‘d’ or ‘t’ added to it, something that is tough to get right.

Dutch verbs with a stem ending in ‘d’ add a ‘t’ for the second and third person singular, but it does not change the pronunciation because ‘d’ at the end of a word is pronounced like a ‘t’, while ‘dt’ is pronounced as ‘t’, according to a quick explanation from Hear Dutch Here. In other words we often can’t hear the difference between the ‘d’ and ‘t’ at the end of any word because ‘d’ is voiced and ‘t’ is voiceless and it gets worse when you have ‘dt’ together. Getting any of this wrong is commonly referred to as a ‘d-t mistake’ in Dutch. It also makes a difference in tense in some words, so it is a big deal to get it right.

For anyone who knows French, when we get stuck with how to write the ending of a verb in the right tense we use the verb ‘vendre’ (‘to sell’) as a default and then conjugate our chosen verb accordingly. The Dutch in this video suggest the exact same with the verb ‘lopen’ (‘to walk’). And then there’s the fact that the band from Nijmegen De Staat wrote the music behind these fun grammar lessons, so give it a whirl.

(Link: www.ed.nl)

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