This Thursday DAGORA (with Ti Femme as musical guest) and LEKKERNIJEN (a new trio from the folks who brought you City Hands and Every Bolt Rumbling, uit Den Haag) will leave for a short 7 day tour through France...and Maastricht. Here's to hoping it will be something like the last tour, minus the "Incident" with the van. Stephen is bringing his juicer, Ti Femme is bringing the llama pinata, everyone else is bringing the attitude and the mental space ship.
Please come out and see us if you've got the chance, or tell all your friends in Paris, Caens, Nancy, Rennes, Strasbourg, or Maastricht. Also feel free to pack yourself and your friends and your dogs in a van and follow us like the Dead.
(The dates and location for the tour are under the "SHOWS" section of this here blog)
Just checked the SoundCloud page for Ti Femme/Unfinished Business, and it looks like France is already prepared for our arrival.
Not to get lost in the shuffle of all the tour preparations, just wanted to mention the last SEEIN' RED SHOW which took place at the Occii this past Saturday night...
I remember being a 17 year old punk in back in North Carolina and discovering an album of theirs at Manifest Records in Charlotte. It was an exciting moment. What was in the water over there? Seein Red, the Ex, De Kift, Dog Faced Hermans...so many angular jangly guitar sounds and right-on politics...
Since then, through strange and unpredictable ways, there has been a fateful connection between the anarchist and punk citizens of North Carolina and this country below sea level. A tall Dutch farmer became North Carolina legend when, back in 2000 or so, he wrote a letter to the Greensboro, NC band Zegota asking to be their new bass player, despite never having played bass or been in a band in his life. Zegota accepted, and this mysterious Dutchman got on a plane, showed up on their doorstep, and didn't leave again until after a couple albums and a few tours. I got my first look at him at a Greensboro Food Not Bombs, sticking out like a Redwood in prairie, all tall and Dutch and wearing a Seein' Red shirt. For those of you who live in Amsterdam, you can see Ard any Friday you like, cooking at MKZ, an unsuspecting punk legend in goat-wool socks.
At one point, a mix tape fell into my hands with Betercore, Shikari, and Cathode tracks on it, and a guy named Vincent from a band called Driven ended up in Greensboro for a bit too. Sometime later in 2003 at a co-op house in Carrboro, more Dutchies showed up with their Propagandhi-style pop-punk band, adventures were had, and plans were made to meet again. Later that summer, I went to the Netherlands and traveled around and saw my first show at the OCCII, and had my mind blown by the organization and determination of the activists and squatters all around the country.
Again in 2005 I found myself, age 21, watching my Dutch friends Antillectual open for my first Seein' Red show somewhere in Arnhem. It was an epic night, with confetti and balloons and lots of pogo'ing.
And through twists and turns and chances too many and too complicated to explain here, I ended up living in Amsterdam. I see these people everyday who I listened to and who inspired me as a young'un, and they're still working hard, still active, still so influential in small ways and big ones.
...So it's a little surreal and wonderful to find myself working in a studio behind the OCCII, with a stack of Zegota records in the corner that I'm watching for Ard, and bar tending at the final Seein' Red show to a sold out room of sweaty excited people from all over the world.
