Geert JM Vanderkelen

The 35th edition of Rock Wechter 2009 (Belgian ‘rock’ festival) is over. It was good, great weather and great organization, but I heard often the remark that the line-up was a bit poor this year.

Simplify. My two highlights of Rock Werchter were Rodrigo y Gabriela and Seasick Steve. Rodrigo y Gabriela did it with only two guitars and no singing; Seasick Steve with a 3-string ‘piece of shit’, some other weird instruments and actually great singing. It’s surprising that such bands, with quite a simple setup and show, can do such great things and entertain lots of people.

Renew. Some bands performed better than previous editions. Placebo for example was, in my opinion, much better than few years ago. Everyone says the change of drummer did good, well, indeed! Same goes for The Killers: they gave a good show and was for me more enjoyable. Kaiser Chiefs, 4th time in a row on the main stage, were still great! Ricky lost weight, and their new songs on the newest album are much harder (I dubbed the festival Rock Kaiser Chiefs). Change is good from time to time.

Headliners. Thursday: Oasis.. booooring. Friday: Coldplay was of course fantastic! You should see them live if you can! Saturday: Kings of Leon, and I had no idea they had so much hits! Not much of a show, but it was indeed a great moment! On Sunday Metallica finished, and I must say that they sounded better than 2 years ago though we didn’t watch until the end.

Other stuff I liked. Dave Matthews Band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nine Inch Nails (farewell?), Elbow, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and.. well, I missed the Eagles of Death Metal..

Till next year!
(More photos on Flickr.)

Yesterday, Colos-Saal in Aschaffenburg became the epicenter for a select number of Editors fans. From all over Germany (and outside) people came to sweat during the only gig Editors were doing in Germany. The venue was great to get intimate.

So far all reactions were positive and people that just discovered them enjoyed. It was bringing back memories of Joy Division for a few! It was a good set, about an hour and a half, just right. You know, like a steak or paprika well done.
I made few pictures with my new, pocket camera, a IXUS 980 IS. Not matching my SLRs, but at least I could shake without worrying about the glass. Oh, and even a video!
A great evening it was! Ah, and great pizza too!

Yesterday I started playing around with Last.fm (bit late maybe..) and tried out the Last.fm Mac application. It’s updating or scrobbling what I’m playing in iTunes to my account on Last.fm.
Now, there is a feature which imports your playing history from iTunes. After digging a bit, I followed a tip clearing my Listening Data. This, however, didn’t help.
After looking around in the application I found Diagnostics which allows you to view the log of the application. That made it all clear:

  Could not open iTunes Library
      "/Users/geert/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml" 

I’m storing my iTunes library on an external drive so I can move it around easily.
To make the Last.fm application import my history I just made (or recreated) the /Users/geert/Music/iTunes directory and copied over the iTunes Library XML file naming it iTunes Music Library.xml. Starting the Last.fm application again, it asked me if I would like to import the history data: that worked perfectly now! If it doesn’t work for you, check out the logs in the Diagnostics.
I’m not sure if you can scrobble the iTunes history without cleaning up your listening data first. I’ll leave that to the reader to find out.

Got to love unicode! Importing Ken Ishii‘s Jelly Tones album (btw, I won it at Studio Brussel in Belgium sending an email through BBS, somewhere in 1995!) I saw following in iTunes:

Found it pretty cool that ケン・イシイ shows up! I’m leaving as is. The Composer field is filled with ‘Ken Ishii’, so looking it up still works.

Yesterday I went with friends, actually the full Freiwild-team, to see Sigur Rós in Schlachthof, Wiesbaden (Germany). For me it was the second time this summer I saw this spectacular Icelandic band.

Ah, I like Sophia!!

Have no fear, it ain’t a girl. It’s a band! Last year I heard them live from the AB (Brussels) and bought immediately the Album on iTunes. Now with the second album `Technology won’t save us` it’s again a hit. I’m happy Robin Proper-Sheppard didn’t stop his Sophia-project after `People are like seasons`.

I’m usually very picky about music, but Sophia just hits the spot. Don’t know, it hugs my neo-grunge dark brainwaves. One song reminded me a bit of Alice in Chains unplugged..

No, seriously, it’s great. 10 December Sophia is giving a gig in Brussels again and I’m not there. Crap! Damn!

http://www.sophia-music.com/ – Website ain’t showing the new album still. But it’s out! Spread the news!

Better go here: http://www.cityslang.com/

Couple days ago Pearl Jam released there new single Life Wasted video under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5. This means you can freely redistribute it under the conditions mentioned here.

If you want to download it you can still check it out on Google Video till 24th of May. I made a copy of it of course, and making it available on my depot. Maybe I should make a website of it stating the license, but I do hope I following the license like that! If not, please let me know ASAP.

I got this story from Slashdot, thought I really should read the news on Pearl Jam website, as I’m a member of TenClub (official fan club of PJ). The referenced blog entry comes from the CC folks themselves which you can read here.

This week I bought the latest album of Pearl Jam, which is titleless, and Tool’s 10.000 Days. They are different genres, but both where part of my rock transition back in the 90′s (damn that sounds old huh).

Most people ditched Pearl Jam after the first albums ‘Ten’, ‘Vs.’ and also ‘Vitology’. The real fans hower grew with the band older (and wiser??). I have a few life albums from Pearl Jam too, and I must say that sounds much better than the studio work.

Now, the new titleless albums is IMHO a continuation of Riot Act: a bit political laden, but more rock. Though, I got a problem Eddie’s voice: getting hard to understand him as none English speaker. Riot Act was still OK, but now I really need the lyrics written down.

I’m going to see Pearl Jam life in Europe, hopefully two times: in Antwerpen (Belgium) and Berlin (Germany). It’s the first time they come to Belgium by the way!

Tool, with 10.000 days, is just.. Tool. I think fans will like it. I’m not a big fan, but I do like them. With ‘Prison Sex’ in the 90′s and my long hair it was one of my favorite songs back then. The fact I’m not owning all albums (got Lateralus too), gives me no right to compare the latest, but it sounds good! It looks good with nice artwork and lenses!

I’m going to miss Tool at Rock Werchter this Summer as my sister needs to get her diploma that evening! But we try to still see the peppers!

Speaking of the devil, I’m waiting now for the latest of Red Hot Chili Peppers.