Lannie.net

I looooove checking out bands that I don’t know yet and that are playing at the festival I’m going to. (Graspop in this case, by the way) Because while doing so, you might very well stumble over unexpected gems.

So far I love their sound; they sound rather similar to Still Remains at times – one of those bands whose disbanding I’ll mourn forever.  Yes, it’s a style that might be done to death by now. Yes, it might be nothing new. But it’s still a lot of fun! They’ve been touring with Trivium, which is something I definitely understand, and they say they’re inspired by bands like Unearth and Killswitch Engage (who will ALSO play at Graspop). Sounds good eh! (Well, maybe only if you’re a Lannie and totally into metalcore…)

Anyway!

Rise To Remain – Graspop – I’ll be there!

Yesterday Lie and I went to check out what used to be Sauna Bijland in Scheveningen, after I had battered my fingertips to bits in an excellent bass guitar lesson (which turned out to be more of a jam with two of the teachers around the Drumschool. The sauna got an overhaul and is now called Tour of Wellness. The website was speaking of massages and face treatments as well, so we signed up for that as well. I got loads of tips about the skin on my face (which is apparently very good, but sadly lacking in any sort of regular treatment – it has patches of dryness and needs cream to moisturise, apparently) as well as a facial (and ooooh let’s see the sexy google search hits go through the roof now), and Lie treated herself on a hot stone massage which was apparently rather heavenly.
The sauna looked good, although during the overhaul they ran into some troubles with moisture behind the walls so the jacuzzi was out of commission Still, we had a good time in the sauna and afterwards we went for a great dinner at Von in the Hague.

And tonight I’m off for an Enter Shikari concert (I’m going to be entertained by nutters again, hooray!) and drinks in town.
I’m officially declaring this weekend to be awesome

I had a quiet day today. My boss brought me home yesterday and told me to work from home today, because of the royal disaster that is our national railways at the moment. I have to laugh at when I hear Prorail bitch to the government that they should have been given more money to maintain their rails for situations like this, so they could have prepared. I’m sorry, Prorail? This is hardly the first time in history that it’s been freezing in the Netherlands! Never mind snow. Stupid people.

Anyway, it has hardly been bothering me. Tangy has winter tyres and is sitting on the road like it’s nobody’s business, and the snow’s been thawing today. I was a bit concerned with the amounts of snow that were falling off the roof (I was afraid that they’d hit Tangy, but they all just missed it, hooray!), but that was about it. I just sat on the couch with my work laptop Tosh (who has developed the infuriating habit of turning itself off in the middle of my work – did it like five times today :S) and did some research about e-learning tools for the new Portal and presentations we’re going to create.

And then in the evening Ol and I went shopping for our Christmas dinner. We totally played the consumer tonight; holy fuck, that was quite the bill we got for just food. Well, there’s booze too, and that of course doesn’t make things much cheaper. I’m sooo convinced that we’re going to be stuck with all this food at the end of the buffet, but that’s just the sacrifice we’ll have to make. We should invest in doggy bags for the guests, haha Anyway, for anyone who’s going to visit us on 26 December and eating with us; we opted out of taking care of dessert, so there’s no dessert yet. But do coordinate with one another what you’re going to make, ok?

And then there’s the matter of my End of Year song. I blithely mentioned “Omen” from the Prodigy a while ago as my End of Year song… but damn… Biffy Clyro’s “Bubbles” is just so awesome. It’s the riff, to begin with. It’s the memory of the concert. But it’s also the lyrics.

Well how’s your view of things today?
Got up young to fade away
The sinners sin but aren’t aware
Our fables take us everywhere
I can’t keep up with you
I can’t keep up

It’s about not being perfect, about being human. (Well, if you read the rest of the song, not from just this fragment, duh!) And I so fucking love this song. I just shouldn’t shout out songs too early… at least not until the last week of December. I’ve been going flat on my face more than a couple of timesnow. So we’ll give it a few more days to ponder on this Issue, and then I’ll let you know.

I can’t wait. I’m so looking forward to the holidays!

Well, what can I say about Biffy Clyro? Despite snow and faulty NS working against us, we all made it to the concert. And I’m glad we did! It was brilliant.

Damn, I’m so much in awe of these guys. They played so awesomely; pulling off all the intensely complicated music while still singing (all three of them) and sounding like a five-man-band with just the three of them… it was SO good. There was hardly any interaction and no, they didn’t play flawless, but the music was very intense, the crowd was sympathetic and they played everything I wanted to hear. Wondering how they played “Living is a problem” without the violins? With the electric guitar. It sounded perfect, just a bit rawer than on the album but that kind of fit. The singalong at “9/15th” was also pretty awesome. We were the choir.

Last night also heralded a surprise meeting: turned out that the wedding party of Johanna’s sister was also attending the concert! Of all the people to run into on a concert from an unknown rock band: Johanna! Reports on the wedding of Elina say that it was an awesome day, and everyone was cheerfully drunk, hahaha
Talk about a frigging small world.

And lastly, I think that “Bubbles” might have a shot on becoming my End Of Year song after all. Just because it’s SO BLOODY AWESOME. I want to have that riff’s babies. *nods*

You are creating all the bubbles at night
I’m chasing round trying to pop them all the time
We don’t need to trust a single word they say
You are creating all the bubbles at play

It snowed last night. It’s only an inch, and it made the world pure and white and pretty. However, it also majorly fucked up our national railway system, which led to me freezing my ass off at the station for 45 minutes to have an 8 minute trainride. Needless to say I was nearly an hour late for work. And here I was proud of biking through the snow and making it in time to the station! Oh, irony :’)

Tonight is the Biffy Clyro concert. With all the time I had this morning listening to the new album ‘Only Revolutions’ I’m only falling more in love with them. While ‘Puzzle’ was brilliant, this album also definitely has its moments. Highlighs of the album are the lyrics above, “Bubbles” (on which Josh from QUOTSA is apparently playing the guitar with the Biffy boys), “That Golden Rule” and “God & Satan”. But there are no songs I really dislike.
I’m terribly looking forward to the gig tonight, although with the current weather conditions crippling all transport in the Netherlands, I do hope we’ll be able to make it in the Melkweg somewhere on time.

Here’s to keeping my fingers crossed!!