Last night (may the 22th) the place to be for music-loving Holland was the
prestigious Escape-theatre in Amsterdam. For months we had been looking out
for this event, which promised such delights as live performances by
'Duke', 'Victoria Wilson James' (?), 'Sounds of Blackness' and the Dance
Music Awards, which would be presented by and given to the top Dutch dance
producers. In short: this night promised to make up for the long drive from
Eindhoven (were we stayed at a friend).
How wrong we were.
After being frisked by the customary 'gorilla in tux', the numerous
computer-assisted employees who took care of the guest list made it
perfectly clear that you had to be a complete git if you had to pay your
ticket. Everybody (including us) seemed to be on the guest list.
Inside, the place was packed. On stage a couple of dancers and a rapper
were moving to one of the most uninspiring and mass-produced sounds we'd
heard in quite some time. I guess other people would dare to call it 'pop
music' or even 'house'. By then, the first awards had been presented and
our first beers ordered.
We had decided we would try very hard to not get spotted by people we knew.
After that came the realization that they would very probably also keep
their mouths shut about being there.
Several beers (& awards) later our attention drifted back to the stage
again. While the DAT to which he was rapping was rapidly becoming a garble
of distortion and drop-outs, the guy on stage tried very hard to finish his
track. Which he did not succeed in. The presenter of the night removed him
from the stage with a friendly, but firm hand. What a shame, a career had
been within reach....
Still laughing, we went to the cafe next door which had been connected with
the 'Escape' for this night. There, cultural & intellectual wanna-bees ('I
actually am a visual artist, this work in the supermarket is just
temporary') were lounging to the sounds of the 'Heineken cross-over award'.
The beer was cheaper though.
Back in the 'Escape' we accidently bumped into a certain plugger from PIAS.
We were trapped, all hope was lost. Luckily for us, after telling us some
fairy tales his attention drifted to a person who he thought was more
interesting (a certain girl singer who he 'promised to call back'). We made
our escape to the centre hall.
After another round of beers (I think Atlantic ocean won one of the
prestigious awards) we spotted someone we knew from Eindhoven (he even
lived in Valkenswaard, home of twentyfour seven and max 404). The person in
question (let's call him X) was most famous for peeing in front of Willem
II in 's Hertogenbosch. We decided to check whether it was actually X.
Correct. He had moved up in the grand design and was now another plugger
(or something). But he bored us stiff with stories that didn't make sense
at all (about sales, money, producers we'd never heard of but who
apparantly won one of the awards). While he was ordering beer we
contemplated getting the hell out (normally a tough decision when beer is
involved). Just as we'd decided it was time to move some beers were
thrusted into our hands.
SHOCK
The spokesman announced that Frankie Knuckles was getting on stage to
present one of the prestigious awards. What had he ever done to deserve
this (probably signing a record deal which forced him to do this kind of
promotional thing). The crowd applauded like they all knew Frankie
personally. This was too much.
We ran for the exit, where we stopped only briefly to thank the editor of
'Update' and pick up a free copy of the latest issue.
On the way back to the gloomy city of Eindhoven we pondered over the
connection between this night and 'Update' magazine. It seems that the
articles in the magazine are usually not about the kind of brainless,
pop-formula music that had been pushed in our face all night. We concluded
that it's a sad thing when a magazine like 'Update' lets itself being used
by the big-bucks music industry who want to try to sell their latest
uninspiring, surrogate pop/house clones as the next big thing. We hope this
is just an incident and they've drawn this conclusion for themselves as
well. Otherwise, we've lost another magazine to the industry.
The faceless techno bastards (taking a break from their world tour)
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* / | EEVO LUTE MUZIQUE EEVO LUTE MUZIQUE *
* / | Stefan Robbers P.O. BOX 2169 *
* --- | eevo@iaehv.nl 5600 CD Eindhoven *
* \ | / freedom of information The Netherlands *
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