Time for some new pics

It's way too long since I posted some pice. Besides some snapshots with the compact camera I didn't do much serious photographing since last September.

So for now just three pics I took last year October when I went to a concert of the Welsh and American guitar players Gareth Pearson and Craig D'Andrea. Both are on the CandyRat Records label.

 

(click on pic to enlarge)

For some videos I made from their performance you can check my YouTube Channel. Enjoy the music!

I posted about an earlier performance of Gareth Pearson before on my music weblog. I also did a posting about CandyRat Records. You can check the URL's for the postings. The postings also include some more videos of Gareth and some other recording artists for CandyRat Records.

It's been awhile (Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra)

Dear visitors,

A little bit longer than planned, but I'm back again. Not that I've been away. I didn't left the country. Just took some leave from blogging for an unspecified amount of time. I had enough things/subjects to blog about, it was just a matter of other things on my mind, lack of energy, focus etc...

But little by little I was getting back in the mood again to start blogging. Last weekend my wife N. and I went to two concerts by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (TSPO), last Friday and Korn, last Sunday. At TSPO I made some pictures and shot one video with my newest aquisition, a Panasonic TZ10.

For a more extended report and for the videos I would like to refer to my music weblog BrownNoiseMusic.

The pics from TSPO you can find below. Enjoy!

(click on the pics to enlarge)

Sonisphere 2009, Nijmegen

This time an impression from Sonisphere 2009 which was held last June 20th and where N. and yours truly went to. Way different in terms of atmoshere, music and audience then Pinkpop where we went three weeks earlier before Sonisphere.

Anyway, we had great fun and it was an enjoyable day. When we arrived at the festival the weather didn't look very promising. The sky was grey and while we were waiting to get in some raindrops were falling, but lucky enough it got dry when we entered and the rest of the day it stayed dry and I even got a bit sunburned.

The bands that were performing were: Pendulum, Kamelot, Lamb of God, Down, Korn, Slipknot and headliner Metallica.

The festival had a bit of a false start. One band, The Sword already cancelled one or two weeks before the festival, and after the doors opened short before the festival was supposed to start the organization announced that Mastodon also couldn't make it on time from a show 12 hours earlier in Austria. So that left 7 bands out of the original 9.

So now the festival opened with Pendulum, a band originally from Australia but now relocated in the UK. I didn't know the band and when they start playing it made me wonder what this band had to do on a heavy metal festival. Their music sounded more like a dance act with their Prodigy type of music (they also did a version of Prodigy's Voodoo People see here). So this band seemed a bit weird choice to me in the line-up, but the singer compensated it with lots of enthusiasm and they got parts of the crowd moving and that was not a bad result, because it's always an ungrateful job to open a festival around noon when most people aren't ready yet to party.

The second band was Kamelot, a kind of sympho power metal group. This band had some sound problems which made that the singer sometimes wasn't hearable. Picture 6 and 7 were shot during Kamelot's performance of the song "The haunting" with a guest appearance of Simone Simons of the Dutch symphonic metal band Epica, which can be seen here. The band Epica is named after Kamelot's 2003 album Epica and Simone Simons made some guest appearances on two Kamelot albums.

The third band that entered the stage was Lamb of God, a heavy metal band from the USA formed in 1990. It was obvious that a huge part of the younger crowd came for Lamb of God, judging by the many teenagers wearing Lamb of God t-shirts. They gave a loud, heavy and energetic performance and parts of the crowd got quite exited judging by the several mosh pits. The singer Randy Blythe was shouting/growling at the tops of his lungs proving that it requires training to sing like that. If I would sing like he did, my voice would be deceased within two minutes.

To give you an idea about the mosh pits, I've embedded a video after the pics that I shot of a Mosh Pit during the Lamb of God performance.

After Lamb of God the band Down came on stage. They are also from the USA, from Louisiana to be exact. I didn't know the band but they played a good and heavy set.

The report and pics from Korn, Slipknot and Metalllica I will post in the upcoming second post which I planned to post soon.

For now enjoy the pics and video

(click on the pics to enlarge)

The funny streetband "Blaas of Glory"

For videomaterial from "Blaas of Glory" check here

Wonder from which band the woman in the middle is a huge fan?

The picture above and below to proof that the Kamelot's keyboardplayer didn't used hairspray

Parkpop 2008 (3)

Here are the last selected pics from Parkpop 2008. This time some pics taken during the performances of Kula Shaker and Sheryl Crow. They both played a good set. With the set of Sheryl Crow we couldn't get so close to the stage, so that's why I had to use the maximum zoom on my lens. That also made it hard to get sharp pictures in a constant moving crowd. Anyway here are the last pics from Parkpop 2008. Enjoy it!

Parkpop 2008 The Hague, Netherlands - Intermezzo

It's been a while since my last posting. Time flies when you're having fun!

Although this will disturb the chronology of my postings, this as an intermezzo with a preview from some of the pics I took last weekend during the Parkpopfestival 2008, one of the biggest free popfestivals in Europe which is held every year on the last Sunday of June. I will try to post some more pics during this week, I also shot some videos. If they came out okay and the sound is not too bad I will post them on YouTube and will make a post about it on my musicweblog BrownNoiseMusic.

In this some pics from the Dutch band Moke from Amsterdam. They are a very good live band and played an excellent gig at the festival. The band had their major breakthrough last year and their debutalbum Shoreland is selling pretty well in Holland.

We had a great time at the festival. Other artists/bands that played were Kula Shaker, Sheryl Crow, and Monte Montgomery. This last band was new to me, but I was glad I didn't went to the other stage and gave it a shot. This was with no doubt a new musical discovery for me. It's just acoustic guitar, bass and drums, but what a band. This guy played excellent guitar. It was an electric acoustic guitar, but he did things on it that a lot of electric guitar players don't do on their electric guitars. He played a wonderful instrumental version of Little Wing from Jimi Hendrix. I surely going to check some of their CD's, but for some reason I have the feeling that their best performances will be on a live album and not on their studio albums.

For now enjoy the first pics of Parkpop 2008 from the band Moke. There will be more pictures of the festival and some of the bands that played later.

The Police, Amsterdam Arena 13 Sept. 2007

Just a notification that I just posted some pics and videos on my musicweblog BrownNoiseMusic of the concert of The Police where my wife N. and I went to last Thursdaynight.

For the pics, videos and report you can check here.

Later this week I hope to post more about our trip to Bavaria and some other subjects.

Bavaria (part 2) - This time with some pics (update)

Uploading works again, so I better start posting some pics from our trip to Bavaria. I don't have time right now to provide some backgroundinformation and links to more detailed information about the locations/places, some of the buildings, etc. I'll will try to update this information later this week. I already can tell you that the pictures below were taken at Passau and Burghausen.

More detailed backgroundinformation will follow later. For now please enjoy the pictures.

(Update)
Much later than intended but here is finally some more backgroundinformation about the pics in this post. As I wrote in the introduction of these post the pics were taken at Passau and Burghausen, two medium size cities in East and Southeast Bavaria, Germany. The first three pics were shot from a viewpoint in the hills just outside the old citycentre of Passau. Passau is also known as the City of Three Rivers, because the river Danube (Donau in German) comes together with the river Inn and the river Ilz.

The next 6 ictures were taken at the Stephansdom (St. Stephan's Cathedral) (picture above) at Passau. We went there and listened to a short (half an hour) organ concert which also included the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor from J.S. Bach. The pictures were shot with the Tokina 12-24 F/4 Pro DX, a very nice and good lense and more than half of the price of it's Nikon equivalent. The pictures were shot short before the concert started. The organ you see on the pictures is one of the biggest cathedral organs in the world.

The next 8 pictures were taken at the city of Burghausen were our friend Frank lives. The city is known for it's longest castle of Europe (more than 1000 metres). It can be seen on the first picture. And the city is also known for it's annual International Jazz Festival. Through the years it brought many famous jazzmusicians to Burghausen. In the town they have a "Walk of Fame" with bronze paving stones with the names of the artists that performed at the festival the past 40 years. Names as: Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Michel Petrucciani, Art Blakey, Barney Kessel, Buddy Rich, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Gerry Mulligan, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Stephane Grappelli to name a few. From the artists I enclosed pictures from their "Walk of Fame" I added a link to their Wikipedia information.