Chapter Three - Intermezzo

This is a post I wrote a while back, somewhere else. This was one of the main things that triggered me to start this blog a few days later, I believe. I just wrote this to kill some time and at the same time clear my head a little, really. The time of this publication is set at 16 December '09 and at the time the show with The Carrier (Usa) and Dead Swans (Uk) had not taken place yet.I would like to state beforehand that this doesn't necessarily state the opinions of everyone I'm involved with. It is more of an assumption I have of the opinions, based on conversations throughout time we have had with each other.If you have heard other things from other people, feel free to believe what you will; these are however my beliefs. Enjoy the read or don't or plain skip it, it's all the same to me.
You'll have your filler, sir.


In my "spare time" I set up shows and this for a numerous amount of reasons.

1) First and foremost reason; where I live people don't have Hardcore shows to go to and that's a crying shame. In a city inhabited largely by students (about 50K +-) you have an insane amount of disco's and dance bars and that sort of crap I wouldn't ever dream of going to, but oddly enough you only have 1 (decent) venue to set up shows and the shows set up there are usually god awful. I won't go into details, as bashing people trying to set up a show isn't needed nor polite. Therefor me and a few friends wanted to start bringing bands we like to our town and set up shows, hereby associating our town's name with hardcore music. As it should be! (at the moment, we're establishing that name, so hurray!)

2) Hardcore shows are the bomb. Nothing like a good sing along and if on top of that there's some dancing and pile ups, we're golden. The vibe is usually effin' great during shows. Drink, don't drink; dance, don't dance; act a fool, stay cool, it doesn't matter, everyone essentially gets along and enjoys themselves. We make that happen and that makes me feel good, even if we put in way too much time,money, work and effort in it and run ourselves ragged. Queer as it sounds, when people at our shows have smiles on their faces, we've done an awesome job!

3) Too much people in this country setting up shows to make a profit. Though I understand you like money, hard currency is the furthest thing from our minds. In fact, we've always ended up paying a small amount and when we made some profit, we gave it away to the bands. Why? Well, for one, they just need the money. Secondly, we just wanted to do the show for them and for us; they've earned that money, they have the right to keep it. Promoters here are too hell bent on trying to fill their coffers, I think. Setting up mediocre shows at questionable prices or big shows at stupendous prices. You have however the rare occasion where an entrance fee is more than justified, until you see the amount of sponsoring comes back to them, ultimately still raising the bar of the profits.
Is it wrong? No, not really, I understand money is the biggest motivation for most people on this planet! It's just not how we roll and I'm content with that.

4) We're all musicians and we like the idea of doing shows, so we try and help as many musicians ourselves to do what they love doing: Playing shows.

For those reasons and more, I spend most of my day, every day on Myspace and such prospecting, checking things out, reading numerous amounts of things, contacting people, checking even more things, checking mails, answering mails, etc. I get no payment in any way for it, I actually get chewed out for not putting those hours into payed labor.
I must be out of my mind.
Good day.



Apparently when you type in "Hardcore Leuven", one of the only vids you'll find, is me singing poorly together with my friends, Second Base.
That's one of the only footage there is, together with a set from my heroes CJTC, but they've asked me not to refer to them, so I won't (fully..).
I'm drunk while singing, it was a show together with Belgian Asociality, so it's justified, damn it!