I have a paper calendar. It hangs on the wall. I draw things on it, like 🎜 Kladderadatch, to remind me where to go of an evening (or this afternoon). At the end of the year, with that calendar and my ticket history from Doornroosje (a music podium in Nijmegen) I can reconstruct my concert visits of the year. Here’s my year wrapped.

  • Roos Rebergen & SunSun Orchestra Roos is always really peculiar, and did not fail to deliver. The classical string quintet as band worked well. It’s quite different from her pop recordings. I saw Roos in 2006 or so when she played in a local school, and it’s always stayed with me.
  • Politie Warnsveld + Misprint POPO! It’s like Doe Maar has reincarnated. Happy ska, although now they have a bigger setlist it is a little less wild. This was also a sad concert because of the death of a concert-friend – she was a big POPO fan – in an accident a few months earlier.
  • De Kift “Ik heb rood haar, en lees wel eens gedichten” It’s a punk-jazz-improv group. Live they’re weird, but I did miss listening to the actual words.
  • Parker Millsap Blues country, now as a solo show instead of with a band.
  • Stippenlift Dutch-language electro-pop about his depression.
  • ELUCID Rap, old-school.
  • Dorpsstraat 3 Dutch indie.
  • The Vices I’m pretty sure that during this concert I ended up thinking about the font-kerning in their logo, more than the music. Meh.
  • Rats on Rafts I have no real recollection, it might have been boring.
  • Ghost Funk Orchestra Jazz. If you asked me beforehand about a trombone solo, I would have said “probably boring”. Afterwards, fuck yeah! Trombone solo! They were amazing on stage.
  • Girls to the Front A triple show with L.A. Sagne, Death Sells and C’est Qui? I’ve seen Death Sells a couple times after, they’re fun and personable.
  • De Roos van Nijmegen is a yearly battle-of-the-bands, and I go with the kids, and we Have Opinions about things. It’s spread across 3 nights and the finals. I voted for PORTRAY. I thought Grandad was pretty good in the first round, and boring in the finals. The peeps from Pomme Grenade are the ones I run into around town most often. Liz Beekman was, as singer-songwriter, the odd-one-out in the first round, but I quite liked both her music and relaxed podium presence.
  • The Ex + Brader MĂ»sikĂ® More punk-jazz. Brader was a totally new Kurdish-language experience for me. The Ex was weird and experimental and the broad grin on the drummer’s face as she puts in more cowbell in The Apartment was magical.
  • Tramhaus had a lot of social message that I agree with, but not amazing.
  • Place to Bury Strangers I saw them in “old” Doornroosje, with my friend Armijn who described them as “ear-bleedingly loud”. Regulations prevent that now, but they were great and the round-through-the-crowd is a lot of fun to be part of.
  • Elephant is a big-ish name and had a lot of radio play, so that’s why got tickets. I have no real recollection, it might have been boring.
  • KNIVES Absolutely wild live-show, amazing energy. I told them I thought they were “amazeballs” after the show, they called me “old”. Love you too! I was here also because of Death Sells opening.
  • Crash Fest Organized by Outahead – an indie band that don’t do it for me – but I went because Lodyne and Death Sells were playing and I’m into naked bass players.
  • Alice Faye The first of a week of singers-songwriters. I don’t remember anything particular, but I do know I liked it for being a relaxed night out instead of sweaty and loud.
  • Tara Nome Doyle Second one of singers-songwriters. I remember her being very chatty and open about the songwriting process and what things were about. That’s one of the nice things in a really small venue, the artists are there and all themselves.
  • Stereolab The crowd was all fans, who could sing along with every song. I could tell they were having a ball, but it did not land at all for me.
  • Heather Nova in the park, in the rain, with a rainbow, with ducks waddling across the stage, and a spider that dropped onto her hand during Like a Hurricane. As a consummate performer, she put the spider away and picked up the chorus again.
  • The Hard Quartet This is a supergroup, I guess you could call it. I saw Pavement back in the day, and when Stephen is at the mike, it’s like a Pavement song. And when someone else takes over, it’s a different band. This was good to see for being a bunch of really experienced and work-well-together musicians.
  • Bassolino Italian funk. It was funky, but the funk did not reach my hips. I’m way too much a white boy for that – put me in a mosh pit instead.
  • Magic Bullet I have no recollections of again. It was possibly boring.
  • Rosalie Cunningham I did not expect a ’70s hardrock revival on stage. It was amazing. She has wonderful eyes. Roscoe can sing that one song pretty good. And it was a party for all.
  • Dick Move More punk bands should sell hot pink T-shirts. This was a blast.
  • Preoccupations I figured “band from Calgary”. There was a Flames T-shirt on-stage. They did their thing. They left. Very little interaction with the audience.
  • Misprint They were with POPO earlier this year, and I kept bumping into their bass player at other concerts, so it was the least I could do get tickets for their own show. Kind of middle-of-the-road, good enough.
  • Early James Blues from Alabama. He did a nice closing number with his girlfriend, it worked pretty well as a duet.
  • Gill Landry Blues from Louisiana. This was very personal, and you can tell Gill was a street performer before moving on to the stage. One to re-visit if he comes back.
  • Joachim Cooder Son-of-Ry, playing an electric thumb piano. This was very much not what I expected. It was interesting, and I told him “peculiar” after the show, but I’m afraid it did not get my feet a-tappin’.
  • Frazey Ford Was she drunk? It took forever before the show gelled a little, but it never really moved.
  • Leith Singer-songwriter. Blue eyes that stare right through your soul. I really enjoyed this show, and the openers, Robinson Kirby, were fun as well.
  • DITZ Fucking well tore the house down. Her with the boots has an amazing command of the audience, the pit was wild, the communion weird and disconcerting. KNIVES opened here, but did not get nearly the same response as earlier in the year (in a different venue, must be said).
  • zZz These guys I saw when they – and I – had no grey hairs and I remember them jumping up and down on the organ and it was loud and chaotic. They still are, although with a bad back climbing on stuff is no longer an option.
  • Vals Alarm Punk with too much backing track. Gotta hand it to them, though, with your parents in the audience belting out “I wanna fuck some new boys / I need a new dick / new dick” takes some courage.
  • De Niemanders This is a collective that brings singers from refugee centers in the Netherlands to the stage. With a gospel couple, and a good backing band, we can see what talent we’re squandering. I don’t know the names of the individual performers though. Ahm has amazing sustain. Habibi from Yemen, I think, is such a cute boy with an excellent delivery.
  • Black Bottle Riot Does a end-of-year show every year in Nijmegen. Packed house, almost all fans. Random people come up to talk with you. Sabine from Zeeland, it was good to meet you. This show was almost three hours, and one big party. It’s good to have something to plan again in 360 days or so.

Not in Nijmegen:

  • Black Country New Road In Paradiso, Amsterdam. I’m clearly spoiled by easy-going Nijmegen, because I thought the venue was annoying. And every song was .. not quite it. Nothing landed, and the feels-like-American-film-music makes me unhappy. Where there was a neat idea (five recorders? sure, woodwind quintet) it was executed in a too-limited way. Bit of a disappointment, but the openers, Westside Cowboy, were fun.
  • West Side Story in Rome. Man, the story is paper-thin, even if the singers were excellent. The only fun I had here was realizing that “having problems with the PRs” is not a GitHub thing.
  • Opera school in Arezzo. There’s an opera school, students come from the United States to learn to sing an Italian opera, and execute it in the square. Stories still paper-thin, but such is operetta as an art form. I learned that “learn to sing” means “make the right sounds”, because the students could not actually speak Italian.

Ones I missed (but did have tickets):

  • Spinvis I was doing drywall and at 10pm remembered I had tickets to a one-off special show in Kleve. I had bought them a couple of days previous and hadn’t written it down.
  • Felipe Baldomir Singer-songwriter week, but I was sick.
  • Hackensaw Boys Bluegrass, but I was sick.

That’s 46 concerts this year. I do try to see something every week. In principle I don’t listen to stuff in advance, I just go and find out what it is once the band starts. I have a strong preference for Merleyn, the smallest of the Doornroosje venues, because everything is close-by and personal. The beer is better there, also. Punk has the best odds of making me happy on an evening, but I’m glad I go to random other stuff to broaden my horizons. I have punk, jazz, ska and rap lined up for the next three months, and also Green Milk from the Planet Orange, whatever genre that is.