'Ouwe Gouwe' Festival, April 17th 2010.

’Ouwe Gouwe’ Festival 2-track recorded.
Saturday April 17th 2010, ‘So What’ Gouda.
Note: A new, indoor festival, mixing young new bands with more experienced ones and some briefly reüniting for the occasion. I made kind of experimental live-recordings, using a new mixing desk to make my own mix of the unprocessed 14 lines with sounds from the stageblock and recording it on a Flashrecorder directly. Although not perfect, it gave quite usable results. Despite strange things happening, like two signals coming from 4 different lines. Or not at all!! Which meant ‘Plugging by chance’ with every new set! Challenging and frustrating at the same time.


Slice (Of Merlin) (Gouda/Bodegraven/Rotterdam/Oudewater), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Flying Pig/Beware/Boring Day/Roots Under My Feet/Heart Of Darkness/Extatum (Part)/Soft As Water.
Note: One of the local legends, mixing influences like ‘The Doors’ and old ‘Pink Floyd’ to a melodic, multi-layered and inventive sound. Considered by many as their ‘Comeback’-gig, it turned out to be their one-but-last! To the amazement of many, including myself, they announced their swansong for June 4th during this performance. Which got postponed, as their guitarist broke his wrist three days prior to that. Their final, sold out gig was on Saturday November 6th 2010 in local club ‘De Gonz’. ‘Extatum’ was only partially recorded, as their set lasted longer than the space on my flashcard, used for this gig.

Kelvin (Gouda), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Running Away.
Note: New band from ‘Sportclub De Volharding’ guitarist. Recorded one track only, because I had shortage of memory to get every note by every band. Regrettably.

Quip! (Gouda/Haastrecht/Waddinxveen), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Try My Friends/Too Much Of A Bad Thing/Last Time Bright/Lost In Life.
Note: Shortlived reunion of this Blues-infused slightly psychedelic Rockband, done for the occasion of this festival. Great to see them back on stage for one more time.

Horizon (Gouda/Reeuwijk/Boskoop), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Screaming Out Loud/Can’t You See/Lifestyle.
Note: Information provided to me announced them as a youg coverband, who turned out to play female fronted Rocky pop with some self-penned songs. I captured 2,5 track, after fighting ‘disappeared’ lines, resulting in one of the voices not being fully audible.

Usual Suspects (Gouda), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Return A Favour/You Can’t Hold Me/I Don’t Know/Runaway/Victim.
Note: Young Rocking Punkband, making their first proper stage-performance.

Slang Dang (Gouda/Reeuwijk/Bodegraven), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Alone/Love/Slang Dang Fever/Café/Hell Of A Party.
Note: Another band that reunited for the festival. Mainly rehearsed drinking beer (as rumour goes), the set was somewhat loose, but nevertheless one of the highlights of this day in my opinion. Truly great to see them back playing their Metalized Funky Bluesrock on stage, since they decided to give it another go after this gig.

Summer Breeze Project (Gouda/Rotterdam/Utrecht/Amsterdam), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Power/In The Meantime/Omerta/Goin’ Down/Master & Servant/PTSD.
Note: Ambitious and quite successful Prog-rockband from the area, played a short, but intense and very concentrated set.

Eve Of Dawn (Gouda/Haastrecht), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: /Welfare State/Unapproachable/Frightened.
Note: Another band that reformed for the festival and decided to give it another go. They played some New Wave infused Alternative Rock.After splitting up in 1995, members emerged in bands like ‘Velvet Lane’, ‘Quip!’ and ‘Mother Of Pearl’. Guitarist Wilbert van Straten used to be a classmate in Secondairy School and had to give up guitarplaying early 1997 due to RSI. But this day he was there again!

Flowdown (Gouda/Bodegraven/Rotterdam/Oudewater), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Another Day/Flying.
Note: Nu-Metallish Grungeband that came to the scene in the early 90’s under the name ‘Conquistador!’. Nearly everything changed from line-up to genre, except for the guitarist. I was only able to record the firstst two tracks of their set, as one of the memorycards used to store the recordings, ran out of space. Alas.

Ammocave (Gouda), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Magic Anger Blender/Stronger Stuff/Answers/Face The New Moon.
Note: Sort of ‘Comeback’-gig, after being inactive for quite some time, due to several changes of frontmen in the years past. Slightly loose, though reasonable convincing set by the band of one of the Festivals’ instigators!

Poultry (Bodegraven/Reeuwijk/Gouda), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Hypocrite/My Friends/Speak Up/Responsability/High Standards/College Years/Kiss Of Betrayal..
Note: Steaming hometown gig by this Punkrock outfit, that’s got their EP out in Japan on a local label. Aired few new tracks that night and served as a perfect warmup for headliner ‘Blind Justice’.

Blind Justice (Rotterdam), 2-track recorded.
Tracks: Intro/Stuck In My Mind/Weazel/Brainless/Life Is Bitter/Boulder/Cage Of Fear/Social Failure/Breathe/In Exuilibrium/Are You Different?.
Note: Farewell-gig by this ‘legendary’ Gouda originating Metalband, that started off as a schoolband and made it it to major stages, festivals and TV-shows, both under their own moniker, as in a package with Dutch languaged Hiphop-pioneers ‘Osdorp Posse’. They once appeared on an international Metal-sampler with ‘little known’ bands as ‘Sepultura’! Leaving the ‘bass-in-a-box’ at home, singer/guitarist Attila Szabo switched to bassguitar for the occasion. Playing songs from throughout their career, they said closed the BJ-book, to start writing a new one under the name ‘3AM’ (‘Three Angry Men’). As I ran out of memorycards, the last 40 seconds of ‘Are You Different?’are missing. Alas!

dB Band (UK) 'In Session', Monday February 28th 2011

dB Band (Oxford, UK), 2-Track & 4-Track recorded.
Monday February 28th 2011, ‘Gouwestad Radio Studio 2’ Gouda.
Tracks:
Stranger In The Alps (Tk 1-4)/Dreams (Tk 1-3)/Stranger In The Alps (Tk 5-6)/5 A Day (Tk 1-4)/Stranger In The Alps (Tk 7)/Up In Smoke (Tk 1)/Dreams (Tk 4)/5 A Day (Tk 5-7)/Bus Stop Shuffle (Tk 1-5)/Up In smoke (Tk 2)/Dreams (Overdubs Tk 1-3)/Interview

Note:
‘dB Band’ are Mick Quinn, Paul ‘Fab’ Wilson and Mikey D Smith from Oxford, England. Being very excited to have a former member of longtime favourites ‘Supergrass’ in the studio for a session, I was disappointed in turning sick the night prior to the session, leaving me tired and a bit dreary. Which led to problems with the vocalmix from the start untill about halfway through the session.

Right after an early appearance on Amsterdam based ‘English Breakfast Radio’, the band arrived knackered at the studio by 10:30 AM. Having skipped the night before, after a short, festive night the day before that, energy was scarce and moods swinging. Takes 1 and 3 of ‘Stranger’ were breakdowns, while others suffered from difficulties in soundlevels. Take 7 was deemed best.

Take 1 of ‘Dreams’ was already in progress, when the record-button got pressed. For the other takes recording switched from Marantz P660 Flashrecorder to good ‘ole Tascam 440 Portastudio, cassettebased. Take 2 broke down, Take 3 had the lead vocals drowned in the overall sound, while the backing vocals were too prominent. Take 4 got second vocals on track three, in addition to the basic track taped live onto tracks 1 and 2. Takes 2, 4 and 5 of ‘5 A Day’ broke down, before problems with the livemix were solved by re-levelling the vocals.

After a break and an unrecorded jam with Mick on drums, the session was picked up by ‘Up In Smoke’, whick lacked it’s first two minutes, as the band started to play unannounced during technical maintenance. Take 1 of ‘Bus Stop Shuffle’ broke down, while Take 3 was a loose runthrough, in which the band focussed on some adjustments. The other takes were dissatisfactory to the band, untill Take 6 came out as best one. A 25 minute full band interview concluded this 7 hour session-day. Few hours later, while transferring the session from the recorder to my computer, I mixed ‘Dreams’ at home in a single take.