Neil McKenzie - Solo - Cafe Del Mondo, 26.02.2011

Last night was a special occasion. It was my first ever solo gig. I've had lots of opportunities to prove to myself that I can do it, but this was the first time that it was only my name on the bill and I had no one to hide behind.

I swithered as to whether to take the gig or not, but I knew I had enough material, so I went for it in an attempt to take new steps and grow a little.

Cafe Del Mondo is a great little bar on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam which itself is full of terraced bars. By day these are full of coffee-ing tourists having a well earned rest on one of the most picturesque squares in Amsterdam. By night the place opens up to a nightlife that is a little more respectable or older than that on Leidseplein or Rembrandtplein. The Proximity to the red light district means there is also a steady traffic of tourists wandering around.

I'd been in the bar before for coffee on a saturday to recharge the batteries during a morning market session, but I'd never been in at night. The bar is quite small as a music venue, but let's call it "intimate". This is good news - I'm not expecting a big crowd.

Karolina and I introduce ourselves to the owner and set up a makeshift stage on the mezzanine level at the back. It creates a lovely homely atmosphere:

I play my first set(see below). The audience are unresponsive but seem pretty happy, The odd person sings along and people slowly trickle in which at least tells me that I'm not scaring punters off. A few times, big groups of English tourists in track suits pass the door and I pray that they don't come in. Luckily they don't.

Before I know it the first set is over, which lets me know that everythings gone fine, the owner is happy and all the equipment works. I am able to relax over a beer and talk to karolina about how it went. By now it's about 10:30 and the night is in full swing for most people. Everyone has had a few more drinks. The rain has started which means we're unlikly to get many new audience members but it also makes the ones we do have less likely to leave.

I kick off the second set, and the crowd are clearly far more responsive. The singing is geting louder and I think they are enjoying the laid back but well known songs that I'm playing. Before I know it the set is over and it's time to go home... All in all - another mountain climbed!!

Here's what I played:

Open Mike @ Mollys - February 2011

With the hectic uncertainty of the Jam Sessions, it's nice to come home to Mollys and know what's happening. It also feel like ages since I played with Fraser, cos there's been so much musical stuff in the past month.

Fraser's knackered cos he's working 2 jobs this week. I'm not much better due to the stress of work. We start with a pint of guinness and a fish and chips and that puts us right.

Having prepped a few tracks on Sunday - we wanted to knock them out early, but the voices also need to warm up first, so we did Ziggy Stardust and Dancing in the moonlight to break our voices and then did our two prepared numbers:





I think they went down pretty well. 'In the air tonight' is possibly a little dour. There was no danger of that tonight. An inebriated vision-in-red decided to join in for our last choruses providing some comic relief to the emotional climax to the song.

After this Tamira and Lisa came up and we did No woman no cry, I alone, You can leave your hat on and stuck in the middle with you. I hate no woman no cry - it's one of those songs that is so overplayed that I have never learned it - so any time anyone suggests it we end up staggering through it unconvincingly. Hopefully no one noticed.

After all the regulars, Ali who is a regular at our Thursday Tunes Jam plays some alternative tuning wonders for us. Included in the 4 songs were Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits and So Lonely by The Police. He was excellent - especially The Police cover which people really liked.(Translation - If Neil can sing this one he's going to steal it)

After this Fraser and I returned to the stage to do Boys are back in Town, Fat Bottomed Girls and Man in the Mirror. Fraser gave in to his tiredness and headed home leaving me to hold fort. He was swiftly followed by Tamira(not like that) who headed over to The waterhole

This left me on my todd - so to speak. A Mystere helped me out by performing three of his own songs(Need, Free and Fog). They were wonderful as always. At the open mike when people do their own songs, there's always a difficulty in keeping the audience attentive, but they seemed to enjoy them.

After that we had a Mollys Debut from german guy who sang songs in a German Dialect(Platt??) which is similar to Dutch. He was very good - very entertaining. Unfortunately other than his name(Stefan) I don't have any other details.

As our second Debut of the night, Francisco came next. We had spoken online. Unfortunately there were some language barriers in the way and at first I thought he was a guitarist. Once I'd worked out he was a Bass player, we did a few songs to end and then called it a night.

Gig this Saturday - Café Del Mondo, Amsterdam - Neil solo

Last minute booking for this Saturday in Café Del Mondo

It's a bar round the corner from my house, so I was keen to take the gig and add another local to my portfolio(can drinking establishments be collected in a portfolio???). Sandra is still in Sweden, Tamira is off seeing Zack Wylde, Fraser is working, so I have no one to hide behind. I'm going to knock out 2 sets of covers that I've been singing every week at the Jam Sessions.

Poster as always by Kenneth Clarke.

Sunday night practice

Yesterday a very tired Fraser came round early and we ran through a few songs for the open mike before he had a kip on the couch. We are toying with Movin on up by primal scream, which Eoghan had shown me could work well last Thursday. We also mined Phil Collins catalogue for the first time. This has resulted in us trying to work out if 'in the air tonight' is too dour for the open mike.

In the evening, once Fraser had sobered woken up, Tamira came round and we ran through a few more ideas. We tried an acoustic version of 'you can leave your hat on', but we're not sure if the bass and minimal guitar fills the spaces in the verses well enough. I continued to try to get everyone to enjoy Sympathy for the Devil and we we also worked on 'I alone' by Anouk/Live.

Last month was very good, so hopefully we can keep up the standard.

A percussivley policed jam

We had a few firsts at our jam session this week. We had our first Didgeridoo and the police came for a a listen. Not Sting and Stewart Copeland (although if you're listening boys, you're welcome to pop in), but the boys in blue, the fuzz or the Rozzers.

Other than the police following up a noise complaint, it was a damn good night. we had a lot of new faces. Multi-instrumentalists Nate and Francisco were there from the onset and we had some cool chilled out jams with the Didgeridoo and some percussion.

Once a few more people had arrived, despite having had a dodgy throat all week, I kicked the singing off with a few of our standards:

Luckily Eoghan arrived again to taise the bar and teach a few new songs. we did a pretty good jam on 'Movin' on up' by Primal Scream:



Now that I know it, I think I'm going to steal Eoghan's idea and Fraser and I will try it at the next open mike.

Ali also showed up around this point. He's a wonderful lead guitarist, but what I didn;t know is that he prefers acoustic. Ali and Eoghan then did a version of romeo and Juliet with David:

Ali then did some great folk in DADGAD tuning:

Christoph the drummer also made his first appearace at this Jam session. We had many a good Jam at the Mine with Christoph and it was great to see him again. He was there with another new face; Pascal. Sensing some serious talent I paired them with Lorenzo and Robert and we heard some of the best music that the Jam has produced so far; assisted throughout by Nate and Francisco on percussion . Well done boys!

A usual, the CC Muziek Café lounge was pretty full too:

After this the police arrived, so Tamira's set was particularly quiet. The regulars then kept the Jam going until I unplugged things at 1:30am so that I could go home to bed before work.

Article published on spotify

I had an article published on Technorati. It's a short piece about the returns from spotify for amatuer musicians when using CDbaby. The title should read "Spotify for the amatuer musician" but somewhere along the way an "is" got added. So it looks positive in nature, whereas I intended it to be unbiased. Please comment, share and retweet and let me know what you think. If I get some response, I'll do this kind of thing more often.

http://technorati.com/entertainment/music/article/spotify-is-for-the-amatuer-musician/

Review of the CC Muziek Café Jam Sessions in the Amsterdam Stun

Andy at the Amsterdam Stun has given us a great write up and photos in this month's edition. It's available here.

Tamira and Co - 12.02.2011 - Sink or swim, Westpoort

Tamira and her band had a gig to prepare for, but at the last minute they were guitar-less, so I foolishly agreed to learn their songs on top of my already stressful workload.

The gig was at Sink or Swim which is a studio rented by one of Lorenzo's mates. It's out past Sloterdijk Station, so it was quite an adventure to get there. Lorenzo, Deen, Tamira and I cycled out there in about 20 minutes...

When we got there it was all very "anti-kraak". We went through a garage door and left our bikes in a warehouse and then climbed through a little door to get to ante-room off a small stage. When you play in the same venue weekly, it's great to have the feeling of working out how you are going to sound in a new venue. The opening band were already soundchecking, so we weaved through them to get to a kind of lounge area.

The gig was a cross between a show and a hosue party. Very loungey and relaxed. There was a small bar selling cheap beer and we all kind of mingled and prepared for our gig until it was time for us to go on.

I don't know much about the first band. Good effort - great drummer and bassist supported by two girls singing and one girl on keyboard. I missed the guitar, but it also meant that I felt quite good about not being outclassed and the little audience that was collecting would be chuffed to here some Kerchunk-a-wang...

We went on and played through our set. Amazingly it went by without any noticeable hitch, which for me was surprising considering I had never played all the songs in one go correctly before.

We came off stage just about 10 minutes before the last tram left, so I didn't get to ride the post-gig euphoria very much. I don't have any photos, but Lisa's friend Sebastian took some, so hopefully I'll get a hold of them later.

Friday afternoon practice in Melody line.

Tamira's band is without a guitarist and they have a gig on Saturday, so against my better judgement I agreed to learn a setlist of 13 songs in a matter of days. Today was our first/last proper practice before the gig. The set was as follows:

You can leave your hat on (Joe Cocker et. al.)
Somebody to love(Jefferson Airplane)
Don't speak(No Doubt)
Celebrity Skin(Hole)
Zombie(The Cranberries)
Sex on Fire(Kings of leon)
I alone(Live)
Breed(Nirvana)
Stuck in the Middle with you(Stealer's Wheel)
the Dark(Anouk)
Pretty Fly for a white Guy(The Offspring)
Tubthumping(Chumbawumba)
Song 2(Blur)
Radar Love(Golden earing)

Not a bad set. I'm still struggling with a few of them - but Lorenzo is a very good supporitng Bass Player and he's doing a great job of filling in the blanks.

Led Zep and press interviews....

We had another great night last night. The previous week had given me a little confidence in the fact that I could sit back and enjoy the night a little. When I arrived, Robert and Fergus were already playing away. I quickly got everything set up and joined in. We now have a big enough group of musicians that there are several regular faces who are showing up – Bram, Ali, Wally, Roberto etc.

It was a very “Jammy” night, I don’t think I sang until about 23:00 and I was even playing the drums for quite a while.

After last Friday’s couch Jam – and a few new friends came along. Thanks to David and Elisa.

The band I'm playing in all came along(sans Tamira) and we ran through a few of the songs that I still need to work on before Saturday:

Lisa looks particularly annoyed, but no one is really sure why.

We also had a returning drummer in the form of Wally, who kicked off a medley of Led Zeppelin songs:

We managed to make it all the way through Stairway to heaven with nearly the right words. Whole Lotta Love with no words, and Thank You with a lyric sheet. It was great fun too loud, and very entertaining.

While all this was going on, Matthew was interviewing various Jam Session hosts and regulars for a promo video for the bar. Watch this space - embarassing-interview-youtube-moment on the horizon.

As with last week the night closed magnificently with a Set by Giovanni and James which featured lots of guest stars:

Roll on next weekkkkkkkkkkk.............

youtube infamy awaits.

I was clearing out some hard drives at work when I found these:





I'm not a big youtuber, but I thought I'd stick them up. They are far from perfect, but I wouldn;t have any up at the moment if I waited for perfect. If anyone really enjoys them I can do more video and see if I can get the output fomr the desk into the camera for super good(then compressed) sound.

new band

Practicing with Tamira´s band for a gig on Saturday. Lots of songs to learn...

Talia Couch Jam

Last night I dropped in a new event in Amsterdam. The CouchJam at Talia. Talia is a great little Deli, come catering business, come living room, come small venue. I heard about it through Bernie who played in the mine a few times and was a regular at the Jam Sessions. The plan was to have a chilled unamplified Jam Session on couches - sounds like a good way to start the weekend.

I walked in a little apprehensivly, unsure if I was the only outsider attending. It was chilled right enough. Bernie was sitting on one couch and there was a guitarist(Tim) on the other sitting beside a guy(Mauricio) playing a snare and a set of hi-hats.

I wouldn't often just sit down and join in - but for some reason it felt right. There were various people mingling, eating great food and joining in with some random shakers and tambourines:

The evening passed in a blur. I had brought my Open Mike song book and some people sang a few songs from there. This worked pretty well. I also tried in vain to keep up with some Gypsey Jazz Jam's, but eventually I had to just tap out the rhythm on my guitar. Before I knew it - a few hours had passed and it was time to stop.

After everyone had been out the front of the place a for a photo - Nicola(One of Talia's owners) called us through to the back room and fed all the musicians a Tiramisu:

Perfect end to a perfect night.

Sandra's album finally on Spotify

Several monthas after Tamira's album appeared - Sandra's is now up there.

http://open.spotify.com/album/437CaUfrAzZSHx4jiN8YtD

Branching out.....

I wrote a small piece about the Amsterdam music scene in the winter for an Amsterdam Travel blog.