Back To School

Enschede. A small(ish) city in The Netherlands where I spent two years of my life: making movies and music at AKI, the local art school. Time and time we get invited back, and this time we returned to play at the Graduation Ceremonies.

We went to Amsterdam for a few days to busk. The first day was stellar. We made 57 euros in selling CDs and playing for 30/40 minutes. We did two more sessions that day which were not as good, but enjoyable. One of our seshes (short for "session" as in "busking session") ended with a screaming match with a racist dutchman, and having to ditch an insane Norwegian. Amazing how busking can easily lead to meeting some of the weirdest people in existence.

Our last sesh ended with the cops showing up, three songs into our "set" and shutting us down. So we had to close up shop. They were quite serious too, and a bit intimidating. Speaking English without betraying my knowledge of Dutch I was able to come across as ignorant of the rules, which are basically that one cannot play music in the street (ANYWHERE) in Amsterdam except in the park (more on that later)

The next day we played and it was just... weird. We started off at our usual place: near the red door of the church at the Nieuw Markt. Halfway into the first song we spotted a slew of cops walking past. Xania recognized the cop from the day before. "Shit... shut down again" I said as we packed up and left to find another place to play. It was already quite late when we started because we were busy making CDs all morning (the bane of not having CDs pre-made is that we have to constantly make CDs ourselves... but that's not a bad thing, because we always end up making unique cases {truth is, Xania makes them} ... right now we have PUPPET CD cases. They sell the best, I think.

So we were told that the park is the only place where buskers are permitted to play without a permit. So, we went there. The problem with the park is that NOBODY HAS MONEY... therefore nobody gives. We met two sisters who looked like the Ashley twins and sang songs with an acoustic guitar and harmonies.

Anyway, in that day (busking in Amsterdam day #2) I think we made all-in-all maybe 30 or 40 euros. Not terrible, but considering the amount of time we spent either busking or getting to busking spots, it was a bit of a disappointment. We sold one CD, however, which is always nice.

The NEXT DAY we headed to Enschede. We had two friends in tow: Biagi from Denmark and Emily from Montreal (previously from Vancouver, which is where she saw us play many times. Now she's seen us in Vancouver, Montreal, Amsterdam and Enschede... beat that, muthafucka!)

We played at AKI, my old school. We arrived at 4, had a few mini-beers (dutch-style) and played. The audience was sprinkled all over the place and people weren't concentrated in front of us. I think we played well, but the acoustics were bad (it's the space) and the beats from my new keyboard (for some reason) sounded SOOO much better that when we played the last tune; Zombie Tragedy, finally people were dancing. I love the old keyboard, but let's face it, the new keyboard's beats are sexy and dancy as hell.

We were supposed to play that night, but they informed us that we were to play at four am. That was too too late, and we were already well on the way to intoxication. I was disappointed that they didn't arrange for us to play earlier, and there were people there who were hoping to see us, but so it goes, I guess. I think/ hope the response would be more lively than it was at the school.

We're both getting a little tired of touring. Playing is fun, but we need to seriously focus on recording new material with a crisper, more listenable sound and working on the stage show; revamping it. Going around and playing shows the way we do it is great, but the fact is, we want the show to have more theatrics, more concepts, more sketches, more animation... we've been doing the same thing for two years and although musically I feel like we're aeons better, we have many more ideas and songs to really help the show/presentation grow. We need time OFF of the road to work on it.

Ah, the joys and tribulations of being D.I.Y...

Love
Stephen