MusicMusic is very important in my life. From Supertramp through Genesis around my sixteenth I encountered music by Van der Graaf Generator, which still is one of my favourite bands. Since then I have grown to like more and more obscure music, more avant-garde or underground or whatever you'd like to call it.
It is important to me that music I listen to is honest and serious. If that is the case, I am all the more able to see through mistakes or a recording quality that is less than perfect. Here you'll find a list with descriptions of some artists and bands that are of importance to me now.
My most important source for music used to be the public music-library, and I went there quite often to borrow albums which I taped at home. The most beautiful ones I later bought on vinyl. I sold all my vinyls in 1994. Until recently I had a collection of around a thousand cassette tapes, but in 2006 I threw almost all of these away. All my music is now on my hard-disk or on cd's.
Some of my cassette tapes in May 2004.
In time I've grown more interested in live performances of music and less in studio-recordings. Studio-albums to me often sound 'fake', too little alive. If I am well aware of the music a band or artist has composed, I invariably want to know how this music is performed in a live-situation. Are there different instruments used, are there different musical arrangements from the composition as they appear on the studio-album? Also I want to know which songs are performed live by a certain band and which aren't (and preferably also why that is so). Live-concerts can be very exciting and surprising.
Genesis in 1986 was the first large band I saw play live. It was a disappointment, because they didn't play any of the older, more complex music and because I had the feeling they performed using an automatic pilot. Later I discovered artists who are not at all interested to know what an automatic pilot might be. For instance Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, but also Peter Hammill, with concerts that are each time different from the last. It is very well possible, even advisable, to go and see them play several times in a row, because each night is a wholly new occasion, with new emotions, new songs, sometimes completely new musical arrangements.
Here you will find an incomplete list with live-concerts I've attended.
Mr Averell, Hugh Banton and John Ellis live at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, 8 November 2008.
In the beginning of the nineties I used to listen a lot to the music-programme Grand Disco Classique, on Dutch radio (announced as "the only show with a name that does not describe the contents"). It was broadcast weekly by the VPRO at night, from four until five o'clock, put together by Berry Kamer. Every week I stayed awake especially for this show, taped it and copied the most interesting parts the next morning to an other tape. A number of years later I had many cassette tapes with experimental music. Thanks to Grand Disco Classique I got to know music by the Tall Dwarfs and Chris Knox, by Gastr Del Sol, Steve Albini, Sol Invictus, Lydia Lunch and many others. I once wrote a letter to the programme, asking them where I might go and buy Chris Knox's albums, to which they answered my question to my satisfaction and remarked: we're very glad to find that we've at least one listener!
I very much love music that's out of the ordinary. Both Grand Disco Classique and Soulseek (see below) were real revelations to me. In a common shop it is not possible to find music by for instance Chris Knox or Gastr Del Sol (nowadays it is even hard to find a music-shop at all). Not so long ago I discovered what is called the 'Nurse With Wound-list,' a list with artists that was mentioned in 1979 on the first album by Nurse With Wound (a Steven Stapleton project). I knew a relatively large part of the music from the list already before I knew about the existence of the list (which is to my pleasure). The following quote is from Wikipedia: "The list was compiled [...] as a homage to the obscure music which influenced the Nurse With Wound project. It has since become a type of 'shopping list' for collectors of obscure outsider music." There are no album-titles on the list. That's one of the reasons why here you'll find a summary of the bands on the Nurse With Wound-list together with the albums that probably were the strongest influences on Nurse With Wound.
Chris Knox (photo from a magazine I scanned).
Nowadays I find lots of new music online, for the most part through the p2p-programme SoulSeek and on the torrent-website DimeADozen. Peer to peer (p2p) means SoulSeek connects my computer to other people's computers who are running the programme as well, so we can download eachother's shared files. On DimeADozen's website are torrents, that point to downloads of unofficial recordings (a torrent is a sort of ticket or arrow that points my computer to other computers). Through this website I found dozens of very special live-recordings, mostly made by someone in the audience. Recordings like that are often called ROIO, recordings of independent origin. If a certain band or artist does not want their music to be shared, they can let DimeADozen know, so that torrents for their shows will not be accepted anymore there (a relatively small number of artists did so; you'll find their names here).
In 2005 the book Van der Graaf Generator - The Book was published, a history of the band Van der Graaf Generator, written by Phil Smart en Jim Christopulos. I compiled the index for that book, which can be downloaded in pdf-format here. The same index can also be downloaded from Van der Graaf Generator, Phil Smart's website.
Pages about music:
 | a list with descriptions of some artists and bands |
 | Nurse With Wound-list |
 | Peter Hammill gigs, listed by date |
 | list of concerts I've been to |
 | some CD-covers I made |
Reviews of concerts-performances:
 | Peter Hammill in Tivoli, Utrecht, 24 October 2000 |
 | Judge Smith in Cobden Club, London, 6 May 2005 |
 | Peter Hammill, Mr Averell and Van der Graaf Generator in the Theater aan het Spui, Den Haag (at Crossing Border Festival), 19 November 2005 |
 | Arthur Brown in the Spirit Of 66, Verviers, 27 May 2006 |
 | the Gong Family Unconvention in the Melkweg, Amsterdam, 3, 4 and 5 November 2006 |
 | Sleepytime Gorilla Museum in the Bimhuis, Amsterdam, 20 April 2007 |
 | Mr Averell, Hugh Banton en John Ellis in the Orgelpark, Amsterdam, 8 November 2008 |
 | Judge Smith in USF Verftet (The Climber), Bergen, Norway, on 9 May 2009 |
 | Alamaailman Vasarat at Dunya Festival, Rotterdam, on 31 May 2009 |
Other:
 | review of Judge Smith - The Climber |
 | review of Van der Graaf Generator - The Book |
 | index for Van der Graaf Generator - The Book (in pdf-format) |
