January 2, 2015

Dutch band Kane stops, many rejoice

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 2:52 pm

CD-rack

It didn’t take a million likes on Facebook to get the Dutch band Kane to stop producing music, only 17,000.

On December 27, the English-singing rock band from The Hague decided they had nothing more to say, which according to many pundits was the problem from the get-go back in 1998. “As someone who was on the Kane shit list earlier on and stayed on it permanently, I would like to say, ‘good fucking riddance’. […] Kane never wrote, I repeat, never wrote a single song that has any hint of staying power,” music columnist and friend Guuz Hoogaerts wrote recently on Facebook. Another friend in the music business, Marco Kalnenek, said that Kane’s Kane’s frontman, Dinand Woesthoff’s voice sounds fake and that his accent doesn’t help the music either.

The dislike of Kane can be compared to that of Canada’s Nickelback or Britain’s Coldplay: sappy, devoid of real emotion and uses clichés that sound like other music. If a radio station plays something often enough, the general consensus is that it must be good. To paraphrase famous Dutch band Doe Maar, ‘Hey, there’s a switch on your TV’, as in, if you don’t like it, turn it off.

Of course there are fans who were sad that the band stopped, like with any act. Personally, I’ve managed to ignore Nickelback (I can’t name a single song), but I know my co-blogger gets hives when he hears it. I get a rash when I hear Coldplay and I wouldn’t recognise Kane because I don’t listen to Dutch commercial radio.

Have a listen to Kane for yourself with ‘Shot of the Gun’. Why it’s not called ‘Gun shot’ I don’t know, but it has a Dunglish ring to it.

(Link: www.nu.nl, Photo: ‘CD rack for your Kane collection’, anonymous)

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January 21, 2013

Message to Kane: stop making music

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:45 pm

Dutch rock band Kane is being targeted by a Facebook page in Dutch called ‘A million haters can’t be wrong: at a million likes Kane will stop. We’re assuming.’

Branded as the Dutch Nickelback, a Canadian band that has no unique qualities of its own either according to its online reputation, Kane’s music although in English generally does not take a stance on anything but lovey-doveyness.

“They use slogan-like lyrics with no depth of meaning and nothing they do hasn’t already been done before by countless native English-speaking bands,” says a Dutch friend. “Some people have a lot of ambition, but no talent. Kane is an example of a collection of people with a lot of ambition, but no talent, ” Dutch weekly HP/DeTijd wrote after hearing about the Facebook page.

To back up this Dutch phenomenon of trying to sound American through self-effacing behaviour, famous Belgian artist Ton Barman of the band dEUS, quickly earning European fame already back in 1991, had this to say about the differences between Dutch and Belgian artists (and I paraphrase):

“Dutch artists seem to feel more of a need to mimic Americans, while in Belgium it’s not cool to sound that what at all. A band like Kane would flop in Belgium, as it has no self-awareness, no irony and is too serious. Sure dEUS has some Captain Beefheart and Velvet Underground in it, but it also has some Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg. The Dutch unfortunately aren’t lucky enough to be lodged between the French and Dutch culture like we are, which is very important.”

There are tons of excellent Dutch bands who sing in many languages and dialects, but this wanting to be more sterile than a hospital operating room can’t be a good thing for posterity.

(Links: ‘A million haters can’t be wrong: at a million likes Kane still stop. We’re assuming.’, Barman quote)

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