Once I get settled into a city, it can be hard to get me to leave it. I attribute it to Torontonian syndrome. This means always paying lip service when friends suggest you visit them in Ottawa or Kitchener, but secretly loathing the idea of taking a Greyhound out there. Those who live downtown are even worse and balk at the idea of getting out to the 905. Somehow this complex has dogged me during my stints living in the Netherlands and Taiwan. But this weekend, for the first time since arriving in France, I traveled outside of the Alsace region. I took two high-speed trains across France all the way to Rennes. Of course it would take a music festival to get me out west. And the Transmusicales Festival, or Les Trans as the French call it, was a good enough reason for me.

When I decided to do this program, I was convinced I was going to go to Nantes for the longest time. I had met a few Nantais during my travels and was charmed by their friendliness and impossibly cute French accents while speaking English. I thought if they spoke like that in English, if I learned French in Nantes, maybe I would sound like them. In the end, I chose to rank the Strasbourg academy as my number one choice, instead of Nantes. Since then there has always been a little pang of longing for what could have been if I had chosen to live in the Brittany region instead of the Alsace. (And yes I know Nantes is no longer a part of Brittany but I’m talking historically/culturally.)

Even though the festival was in Rennes and not Nantes, I figured this was my chance to see Celtic-influenced French culture (as opposed to the brand of German influenced French culture over here.) I never cease to be amused by the pride the French have for their home region (or their disdain for Paris.) In the Alsace, people tell me it’s not French at all and the Bretons were only too eager to tell me the same thing. One of my students told me how in “Little Brittany,” the Bretons eat crepes and wash it down with cider. Oh cider, I thought, how very English. Here, you will never hear the words choucroute or brezel without the words “regional specialty” following them. I know these things as saukerkraut and pretzel (or at least bretzen, since I learned the German word first.) I love how these regional specialties are just things that, for me, come from other countries.

I was surprised to see quite a few half-timbered style houses in Rennes since I thought they were characteristically Alsatian. However the ones in Rennes looked more rickety and purposely historic while Alsace ones are painted pleasant pastel colours and look like they come out of  fairy-tales. While I thought living in one of these houses in 2009 is quaint (Sélestat has its share), it’s nothing compared to the typical Breton digs. With the celtic culture, comes stone houses and medieval villages that people continue to live in.I took a little excursion to Dinan on my last day in Brittany and it blew my mind that medieval castle is only minutes away from the downtown. I know it’s all perfectly normal to the French but the North American suburbanite in me is still amazed at the idea of growing up with among this kind of scenery.

The vibe from Rennes itself was the opposite of old age. I knew it had a reputation as a student city but was surprised by the extent of it. I had inklings that Strasbourg felt a bit like an old person’s city but going to Rennes confirmed it. Rennes is an anomaly (like the university towns Kingston or London in Ontario) in France because of the disporportionate number of students it has compared to residents. It immediately felt much younger to me as soon as I looked around. There were university students everywhere and the clothing stores were noticeably more interesting to me than the ones in Strasboug. Another thing Rennes has a surplus of is police presence. Around downtown, especially at night, I saw on average seven carloads of police wearing special protective gear while patrolling. I was told this is normal in Rennes in order to control drunken students when they spill out onto the street after last call. Since it was Trans (which brings in its share of drunken tourists) it was only natural that they beef up the force.

The festival itself was a fantastic atmosphere. It was held at Parc Expo, a collection of airport hangars just outside the city. Each hangar had its own line-up and one hangar was a dedciated bar, lounge and water bar. There was a consistent crowd of people who spilled on the tarmac to get fresh air after dancing or to smoke (but those might be the same thing for the French.) The reason that I came to Trans was to see Fever Ray. This tour was the first and only tour for the group and Rennes was the second-to-last show. While I’ve never seen The Knife (and probably never will since they refuse to tour again) seeing Fever Ray was the next best thing. I was so close to the stage I could smell the incense, but not close enough to get a good look at Karin Dreijer, the singer of both bands. The Knife are famous for their stage fright and standoffish ways and seeing Fever Ray confirmed this. Dreijer was positioned half way back on the stage, clad in full on black-and-white face makeup and a witch-like robe. The antique lamps surrounding her and her equally spookily-dressed bandmates flashed while smoke swirled around stage. It was dark, slightly unnerving and great.

I only planned on going to the festival for one day but I unexpectedly came into a ticket the night after, the techno night. Commanding most, if not all the of the hype, was Mr Oizo–best known in North American as that fuzzy yellow bear puppet, a.k.a Flat Eric. I was most excited to see the French reception for their homeboy. By the end, my companion and I had come to the same conclusion. The first half-hour was great but it really petered out by the end. Significant numbers of the crowd were leaving and those who stayed was just because it was, well, Oizo. I was pleased that he played “Blood on our Hands” by Death From Above 1979. (It was the Justice remix, for the record. It’s a fine remix but is it mandatory that everything is Frenched up?) At times it felt like he was falling back on the popularity of other bands to keep the crowd interested. How else do you explain playing two Daft Punk songs in one set? The highlight of the set, hands down,  was the sample he made with a robot voice. It gleefully (as much as a robot can be) declared to the crowd that: “Nous avons le grippe A” (We have the H1N1 flu) and “Nous allons tous mourir à Rennes” (We are all going to die in Rennes.) A cheap trick for sure, but it worked. But hey, to paraphrase Morrisey, if ten-tonne truck crashes into us, to die in Rennes, well..it might be a better way to go than in Strasbourg.

posted by vicky at 11:08 pm under Europe, France, Music
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I’m standing in a retirement home somewhere in northern, rural Taiwan next to a Taiwanese grandma. I met her while hitchhiking at a cemetery and now she’s showing me her family members, clad in full-dynasty wear, in a 150-year-old photograph. A lot of the time here in Taiwan, I wonder if my day can get any stranger or more random. And the answer is always: yes it can. There is actually a very logical explanation for all of this.

It all started two months ago during my trip to Green Island. While my friends and I were at the hot spring, a group of old women were singing a song in Mandarin. I instantly recognized it but knew neither the song or artist. Too shy and my Mandarin too shameful at the time to ask them what they were singing, I wrote it off as a pleasant memory and mystery. Fast-forward to last month when I went to karaoke (or KTV as it’s called here) with my friend Channing, her classmates and a few locals. After a few “gang bei”s, a request/challenge/demand to finish the contents of your cup frequently issued by the Taiwanese, I finally mustered enough courage to hum the tune to a local to find out the name of the song and add it to the playlist.

The song was “The Moon represents my heart” (月亮代表我的心) by Teresa Teng (鄧麗君.) Teng is a legendary Taiwanese pop star and who was popular even in non-Chinese speaking Asia. When she died at 42 from an asthma attack that shocked not only Taiwan but the continent. This song is the kind of song I felt like I have always known and could sing along to despite the fact I couldn’t speak Mandarin until recently. Once I could put a name to the music, the Wikipedia search that followed revealed that her grave was in Chi Pao San, a mountain cemetery, in Jin Shan, a town in Taipei county.  The article said her grave had a large in-ground keyboard that fans could play by stepping on the keys and I decided I had to go.

So Channing and I set out one hot Taiwanese Saturday afternoon to find Teng’s grave. We took the MRT to Danshui, the final stop on the subway’s red line and boarded a bus for Jin Shan. It took us two-and-a-half hours in total to get to Jin Shan, about an hour longer than I was expecting. When we started asking around for directions to Chi Pao San, we were met with of shock and horror. “It’s too far away to walk,” said the woman whose restaurant we ate at. “No buses go up there. You should take a taxi.” Still she pointed us in the direction. We felt anxious and took a stroll through Jin Shan’s night market before deciding what to do. For no good reason I was compelled to buy a bag of lobster chips.

After walking to the edge of the town, we checked with a security guard who reacted the same way and told us it would take another 40 minutes. Despite the discouragement, we pressed onward through the Taiwanese countryside with the sun blaring down at us. The next woman we met told us it would take an hour and a half. The convenience store owner, who sold us a bottle of water further down the road, told us if we would get heat stroke from going. After starting up the mountain we met a man who told us we were on the right track, but it was going to be another hour and a half.

Two hours after leaving the restaurant, we made it to Chi Pao San. Teng’s grave is at the front of the massive mountainside cemetery. As we approached her grave we could hear her music playing. Appropriately enough, the first song we heard was her rendition of “I’m gonna live forever” from Fame.  We were steps away from Teng’s grave a security guard rode up on a scooter and asked if we had walked all the way up. When we confirmed we had walked from Jin Shan, he responded with “pei fu, pei fu” (佩服)–an expression of respect and admiration. We asked if he had any good suggestions on how to get down the mountain that didn’t involve walking. He told us there was an hourly shuttle bus but only for locals. But, he said, if you ask them maybe they’ll let you on.

And so there it was. The in-floor keyboard, a golden statue of Teng, her grave and a small collection of flowers. We had hiked two hours and had reached the promised land. While my mother’s attempt to instill Chinese attitudes and traditions on me has been less than successful, here is the proof it wasn’t completely wasted. You can’t show up to someone’s grave empty handed. You have to bring an offering, usually food. So it only felt right to leave her my lobster chips.

Channing and I were tired from the hike and sat down to wait for the 5 p.m. shuttle down to Jin Shan. Half an hour passed by and there was no sign of it. Darkness was approaching and Jin Shan was still two-and-a-half hours away from Taipei. We made the collective decision to solicit fellow visitors for rides down the mountain. Our first attempt was shot down. We tried to explain our situation to a man who was cleaning off his car while his wife sat inside. He said something in Japanese, which I think amounted to “I don’t speak Mandarin.” On our second try we hit gold. We met Lois, a 30-year-old piano and violin teacher, and her grandma, who only spoke Taiwanese. Lois offered to take us down the hill to Jin Shan but, if we wanted, she was going to go to Taipei after dinner and we were free to join her for the meal and the ride back home. We looked at each other, shrugged and were only too happy to accept.

The ride down the mountain took only about 10 minutes and in another 20 we arrived at Bai Sha Wan, a popular beach nearby. We all sat down for dinner at a restaurant that directly overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Grandma was pretty agitated during the meal because, she said, it was getting dark and she was worried about Lois driving back to Taipei. Channing and I tried to pay for dinner knowing the usual Asian money-shoving match would ensue. We lost and ended up going Dutch. After dinner we drove Grandma back to her retirement home that is run by a convent. Six years ago she decided to move because she was tired of cooking and cleaning and here she could go to church every day. She showed us her five copies of the Bible, each in different languages, that she was learning to read. Grandma hated being in pictures and protested each time Lois suggested it. Still, she always obliged and sometimes even pulled out the peace sign. Lois drove us all the way back to the Shida neighbourhood despite that she lives in Xiandian, on the outskirts of Taipei city.

It’s a little sad when the kindness of strangers is so foreign that it’s actually funny. These encounters always become epic-traveling stories that bring out disbelief in other people. In a way I’ve come to expect this kind of random generosity in Taiwan but I always still feel grateful. Maybe this is just how things work in the friendliest country I have ever been to and this is just another day in the life of a Taiwanese. Or maybe Channing and I are a hilarious story for Grandma to tell to her friends at the home. (It was ridiculous watching Lois introduce us to her friend and at the home. while we stood there like the vagabonds we were.) One thing is for sure, I should just ask more often.

posted by vicky at 6:12 pm under Asia, Music, Taiwan
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Last night I witnessed a comedy, like in three-acts Shakespearean sense. Since I got here there have been posters and pamphlets all over Taipei promoting Canada D’eh. The literature explained it as a celebration of Canadian confederation held on a beach in Danshui on June 27 featuring a performance by Grammy-nominated artist Colby O’Donis. There are so many questionable things in that last sentence alone I don’t know where to begin.

The fact that the party was on June 27 and not July 1 was understandable. While Canada Day falls on a Wednesday, a big party night in Taipei, you need a weekend to get people out to a beach party. So my mostly Canadian friends and I piled onto the MRT and took the 40-minute ride to Danshui, the final stop on the red line. From the subway station there were free shuttle buses transporting party-goers to beach. As we walked in, the scene and the extent of ridiculousness began to dawn on me. There was a canopy containing the bar, food vendors, a booth featuring live instruction on how perform CPR and a display of prize-winning agriculture including a very large, very malformed pumpkin. On the beach organizers erected a stage with lit-up maple leaf, around which a procession of fake mounties on real horses trotted around.

Stranger still, most people were walking around in Canadiana wear. Taiwanese, Americans, other random westerners were only too eager to slap maple leaf stickers onto one cheek and wear a McCain temporary tattoo on the other. (Yes the Canadian-processed-food brand McCain, which brought us such delights as Deep’n Delicious cake and Smiles, was a sponsor.)

We arrived around 7 p.m., about mid-way through the 12-hour-long beach party. By that time the tide had gone out and it was too dark to go swimming.  According to signs on the beach, swimming in the dark is a prohibited activity. Still the emcees were made to humourously threaten and plea for anyone in the water to get out. Making sure to repeat this between each performance, the final broadcast informed us that Taipei police would find us and fine us. They weren’t kidding. Authorities had range rovers set up at the edge of the water and were blasting spot lights into the Pacific Ocean.

The performers were a mixed and strange bag. Skareoke delivered what their name promised: wordless ska. Their take on the genre is the elevator muzak of ska with the occasional Kenny G flourish. The second headliner was an excellent local band called Won-Fu (旺福). Xiao Min, male vocalist and lead guitarist, kept saying the most adorable things like “I wrote this song about the famous, my favourite…Jimi Hendrix! This song is called ‘My Name is Jimi Hendrix.’” Their messy/rocky/go-go-60s-girl pop had the entire crowd waving their arms and clapping along with the earnest, unabashed excitement usually reserved for teenage girls and the local Taiwanese.

And then there was Colby O’Donis. My friends and I had no idea so we did some pre-concert research. We were able to piece together that he was the formerly anonymous male who sang the brief solo in Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and also, apparently, has a solo career. He reminded the audience of this claim to fame by singing tiny bits of the song and then abruptly stopping then bait-and-switching into his own material. After the Gaga reference, the song that got the biggest response was the dance routine he and his overdressed back-up dancers did to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow.” It’s a wonder no one passed out from dancing in their velour sweatsuits in the Taipei heat. After Colby’s departure, a DJ set up and fueled short-lived, albeit, decent beach dance party.

Canada D’eh’s WTF-factor was through the roof. Maybe it’s my Torontonian arrogance but probably the least Canadian thing you can do is celebrate Canada Day. At most you have an impromptu night of drinking with friends because it’s a statutory holiday or go to a free concert if the band is worth seeing. Seeing real Canadians declare their pride was equally funny and weird. But then to see other people pretend to be Canadian even more so. (Since when was Canada cool?) I enjoy and expect these kind of flagrant and gaudy displays of nationalism from other countries but to be the one being celebrated was more confusing than flattering. Three years ago I spent Canada Day in Ottawa, an actual all-out raucous party. People were drinking on public transit (very wild behaviour by Canadian standards), jumping into fountains and puking everywhere. I never thought I’d find a wilder Canada party but here it was, washed up on the beaches of Taiwan.

posted by vicky at 6:45 pm under Asia, Music, Taiwan
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If I had one pound for every time I saw a skinny-jeans-clad boy in London wearing a Crystal Castles t-shirt, I’d have, well, three pounds. Or six dollars, when you convert it back to the good old Canadian dollar. Six dollars, however, is more than I had to pay to see Crystal Castles last night at Vice’s Festival Ball, a free open-bar fête held in honour of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Doors opened at 8 p.m. at U of T’s Hart House and the band hit the stage around 12 a.m. By the time they came on, the crowd was wasted and sloppy. Same goes for the band but I guess that’s their style. Intermittently in the crowd, the who’s who of Canadian music popped up including Jesse Keeler formerly of DFA1979, now of MSTRKRFT and the boys of Team Canada. The room was only about half-full probably because the other half was outside soaking up the last of the fancy hors d’oeuvres, alcohol and summer weather.

Before I left for the Netherlands, I interviewed Crystal Castles for the magazine I was interning for at the time. Said magazine changed mastheads and my article never got to see the light of day. Perhaps it was for the better because after having written it Exclaim magazine revealed band member Ethan Kath was actually Claudio Palmieri. When I met him I called him Claudio, the name his publicist used to refer to him in email. He corrected me telling me Claudio was a nickname his parents gave him in honour of their favourite Italian opera singer. He told me to refer to him as Ethan Kath, a name he wrote down for me, and put an end to this whole Claudio confusion.

So in tribute to mine and Crystal Castles’ homecoming, I am posting my interview. How much of it is truth and how much is digital false fact? Only Claudio knows. Oh and sources tell me that Alice Glass is actually Maggie Osbourne from North Toronto Collegiate Institute.

Crystal Castles plays Circa on October 24 or see them in Utrecht, my former Dutch home, at Tivoli de Helling on September 20.

photo credit: crystal castles

She-Ra calls the Crystal Castle her home but Crystal Castles, the band, are glad to finally be without one.“It was always a bitch coming up with money to pay rent,” says Ethan Kath, one-half of the Toronto-based electro-dance duo. “I was always a few dollars short. I would always have to figure out some scheme to make money to pay rent which is what led to me meeting Alice.”

Kath was caught stealing and sentenced to community service where he met Alice Glass, his future bandmate. Glass had been living in an abandoned house with her friends until the police found out.

“They had all escaped but this one girl had gone back to get her shit, which was really stupid because the cops were there,” says Kath. “Because the one girl had gone back, they all got caught because of her.”

While Kath and Glass paid their debt to society, they bonded by talking about music. After hearing Kath’s songs for the first time, Glass left her band, Fetus Fatales, to join him. Together they’ve made some of the most glitched-out music this side of the Atlantic.

Since then two N-words that have been used heavily in conjunction with the band: Nu-rave and Nintendo.

The first is a label Kath vehemently denies.

“There are no elements of rave in our music or the way we look even. I would never wear fluorescent,” says Kath, who is wearing a burgundy sweatshirt with yellow leaves printed on it.

The only reason he thinks his friends the Klaxons got hit with the nu-rave label is because fans bring glowsticks to their shows. Furthermore, he’s not sure why both bands are lumped together musically.

“They were basically a guitar indie band and we’re an experimental dance band. I don’t think there’s any band that sounds like Klaxons or any band that sounds like us. We don’t even sound like each other, but we both have that creativity.”

The second N is a misconception. For the record, Kath hates video games and says he has only sampled sounds from Atari, never Nintendo. But sampling vintage video games, he says, shouldn’t be mistaken as a tribute to the past.

“That’s not retro and sentimental. That’s taking old, dead machines and trying to bring them back to life, even for a few minutes,” says Kath.

“I don’t want to have any sounds that you can buy in a store, so I specifically look for old equipment. Because when you start fucking with broken instruments they start making sounds that they’re not supposed to make.”

Nostalgia is a surprisingly sore subject for a band named after an 80s cartoon and whose merch features a silkscreen of Madonna, albeit sporting a black eye.

“It’s like a giant fuck-you to the past. We hate retro bands. We wish that all bands could be innovative and move forward. So the shirt is just a symbol for that.”

posted by vicky at 9:55 pm under Music
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The reason I went to Norway last week was to write a feature about the Norwegian Opera House. This fjord-inspired building has attracted much fanfare for its remarkable architecture that allows visitors to walk up and all over the roof of white Italian marble. I received a press ticket to see the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world’s best orchestras–or so the Internet told me. With a day’s notice to the performance, the first and only thought that raced through my mind was worry about being out of the place at such a high-brow event. All I could do was fuss about cobbling together an outfit out of my backpack of travel wears.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see that the crowd was nowhere as blue-blooded as I anticipated. Yes, the median age jumped by several decades (having worked at a record store I expected this) but it was more like seeing your friend’s Grandma dressed in her sunday best, not feeling inadequate next to Emily Gilmore. There were a remarkable number of people in jeans and sneakers, who didn’t look awkward and weren’t subject to any dirty looks at all. White was the overwhelmingly the wine of choice (to match the building maybe?) and red was all but the pariah’s choice. The theatre critic sitting next to me told me it was an opera thing and that at theatre, red is preferred. My Norwegian friend said it was because of the summery weather and winter saw more consumption of red wine.

As soon as the show started, I became transfixed by the violins. To see all the bows rise and fall in unison and create such a loud, powerful sound without microphones or a sound system was awe-inspiring. Sir Simon Rattle, A-list in the classical celebrity world, conducting with his Einstein-like mane reminded me of that episode of Looney Tunes where Bugs Bunny leads an orchestra through an epic by furiously thrusting his ears. But whatever he did worked. The musicians brought sheet music to life and classical music wasn’t just something I had to spend half an hour a day doing anymore.

If there’s one thing I didn’t learn in the 10 years of piano lessons was how to appreciate classical music. When I started playing at six, I was a few years away from falling headfirst into the world of Hanson and Spice Girls. When I called it quits at 15, it was because I was preoccupied with being “indie” in a town where “indie” means Indian. Classical music was what came out of my Dad’s dusty pile of CDs, a collection that was smaller than my own by the time I was 15. It was the music that my cousins from Vancouver played in competitions that brought them around the world. The first and only time I met them, I was seven and they were staying at our house during a competition. The eldest cousin, who now plays in piano trio in New York City, would practice for hours on the piano my mother saved up to buy me, while I pranced around the living room with a glitter baton in my hand. Playing piano for me was always a perfunctory exercise. It took all the energy I had, or was willing to invest, just to hold down my whole notes and remember to hit the accidentals.

For the first time, I feel like I’m ready to give classical music a chance, as a listener.

posted by vicky at 8:46 pm under Europe, Music, Norway
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I’d always known it but being here has confirmed it: Europeans LOVE bad dance music. I heard Robbie Williams’ “Angels” for the second time recently. This time I was prepared enough to sing along and record it. But after a month of dancing to repetitious beats with vocoders singing over them, I’m supremely thankful for every 50 Cent song that gets played. But I have an entirely different kind of thanks for my friends for getting me out to shows. Last week, Lorenzo got me out to the Clash of the Titans semi-finals (a battle of the bands) and last night Cody convinced me to see The King Khan & BBQ Show.

Clash of the Titans

We were mistaken about the starting time and consequently missed Natureboy, a jazz-hip-hop act. We did, however, arrive just in time to see Leslie Grows, an Interpol-esque act with Franz Ferdinand angular-guitar riff tendencies. Too bad I didn’t discover them when I was 17. I would have been all over this shit. But based on music alone, they were my favourite band of the night. They did lack all sort of stage presence but they’re cute, so you know.

It’s silly to assume that the only rap music is only made in English but it just never occurred to me that there was Dutch hip-hop. But that changed after I saw Reflexy. They were the clear crowd favourite and the room emptied out after they did their set. This made it confusing when they didn’t end up winning top honours at the end of the night (though they will advance to the finals.) I didn’t understand a word but was entertained because of showmanship, partly because of sheer amazement. The Youtube video is giving my layout grief, so click here to see it.

Top honours went to Alura, a metal band fronted by a fey-punk girl. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy them as much as I did but, well, I did. For lack of a better comparison, they were like Evanescence except metal rather than nu-rock. And the co-ordinated guitar riffs weren’t cheesy at all. Apart from Reflexy’s popularity with the crowd, I can’t say I’m surprised that they won.

And then came I Wish I Knew. So the singer walked on stage and I felt my heart go a-flutter. “We’re in for a twee-old time,” I thought gleefully. Sadly, it was not to be. Their music was weird blend of shoegaze, post-rock and, dare I say it, screamo? The unfortunate part is I am a fan of shoegaze but this was just boring and not in the realm of ethereal. The lead singer’s outfit was widely talked about but ultimately misleading.

Now we come to King Khan & The BBQ Show. I had been forewarned, nay promised, that these guys would put on a weird but good show and they delivered. Granted it was mainly their attire that was weird, otherwise it was good old-fashioned rock show. King Khan came out decked in a Nazi helmet and vest, only to change into a sparkly gold cocktail dress mid-way through the set. BBQ rocked a Chinese silk shirt and a turban that covered his eyes and unravelled on his face as he played his mini-guitar and baby drum set. His socks were neatly tucked into his sneakers a few feet away from his drum set, as he prefers to drum barefoot.

This duo from Montreal play no nonsense garage rock with healthy amount of surf rock influence thrown in. As Canadians (and the sole people dancing) we got a few shout-outs from the band. If you thought Toronto was bad with people standing still with their arms crossed, well you ain’t seen nothing yet. Everyone there probably had more to drink than I did but they were all incredibly reserved. It was the same thing during the Clash of the Titans (with the exception of Reflexy.) Applause here is also slightly delayed after the end of the song, consistently producing moments of awkward silence. If a brown man dancing around with his man-boobs hanging out of his Value Village dress can’t make you loosen up, what can?

DB Studio, the venue where both of these shows took place, is super close to my house and, to borrow the words of Lorenzo, “located in a postindustrial middle of nowhere.” It reminds me of Lee’s back home and for two nights I was hundreds of kilometers closer to home than I had been since I arrived. I found myself actually feeling physically relieved after going to Clash of the Titans. It had been so long since I had heard live music (both in Utrecht and in Toronto) and it reminded of how much I missed it.

posted by vicky at 4:01 pm under Europe, Music, Netherlands
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