The Next Big Thing

Caught the tail-end of the Rotterdam Rumble fest last night. Alice 'n me entered the Waterfront rather late as a quick meal in a nearby restaurant turned out to be a coupious four course dinner with appropriate wine samples.

Anyways, we were just in time for Radio Birdman. After seeing them in London a couple o' years back, there was no real need to re-acquaint ourselves, but what heck, this is Radio Birdman!

Suffering from a rather weak mix (Dennis Tek's guitar being notably absent most of the time) and a handful of new songs (I understand the necessity for the band to keep things interesting, but from my p.o.v. coming up with something as great as 'D.F.F.D.' is a on/off that hardly anybody can pull off. 'Zeno Beach' is OK-ish at best) That aside, there's really no way knocking a band that has a back-catalogue like these guys. 'Murder City Nights', 'Do The Pop', 'Burn My Eye', 'Dark Surprise', you name it. Topping it off w/ a grand finale of 'You're Gonna Miss Me' and 'New Race' even I couldn't resist punshin' the air and shoutin' "Yeah Hup"!

Closing the Rumble were the Rip-Offs who's sole LP I completely wore out at the time, but who failed to impress last night. In-audioble vocals by the drummer and a barage of "fuck you's" and "you're all gay" references took the wind outta their sails from the git go. Juvenile behaviour is cool as long as it's by actual teenagers. Thirty somethings tryin' to do likewise only end up lookin' stupid, just like the people they're supposedly rebelling against...

Like the more garagey Primitive fests these Rumbles are turnin' out to be a cool tradition and the Waterfront is turnin' out to be my favorite venue in Holland right now (the view outside over the river Maas is amazin'!) Roll on the next edition!

(youtube link 1, 2)

We finished our stay in Rotterdam with a visit to the VIP's gallery that's currently hosting a cool exibith of pictures by Bob Gruen (w/ lotsa cool pics of the Dolls, Ramones, and the pre-Blondie Stilettos) that's well worth checkin' out if you're in the neighborhood.