Day 19: Amsterdam
Nau mai
Yesterday we played the Paradiso Theatre in Amsterdam.
The breakfast buffet at Holiday Inn Express & Suites Monheim am Rhein was in the throes of its rush hour when I arrived yesterday morning and I had to fight off a number of businessmen and children to get up to the counter and serve myself. I snatched the last plate from the hands of the person in front of me and shoved my hands into all the food containers, emerging with a meal of fruit salad, yoghurt, muesli, cucumber, tomato, gouda, an egg, and a buttered bread roll.
Our van departed the hotel with seven souls aboard, all tired, but thankful to be fed and caffeinated. We had an important stop to make before we left Cologne and so twenty minutes later we were pulling into the carpark of a huge square building wearing a glowing read sign that proclaimed MUSIC STORE.
Inside were three floors containing rows and rows of musical instruments, starting with woodwind on the bottom floor, moving up to guitars on the middle floor, and keyboards and electronics at the top. This was a good place for Liz to replace a few essential items from her pedal board and so while she was ordering new power supplies and tuner pedals, I set about trying to find the ugliest bass guitar.
Liz carried her big bag of treats out to the van and we set off again, driving up through the Ruhr and then heading northwest to cross the border into The Netherlands. The canals began to appear, larger canals trafficked by cargo barges and smaller waterways that diverged, criss-crossing the landscape. I was glad to not be the one driving the van into Amsterdam, especially now that we are towing a trailer. You must work around the lumbering trams who dominate the streets with their bulk and often limit your navigation options. Pedestrians fill the footpaths and take your attention as you search for likely crossing points. Cyclists appear from nowhere and are unafraid of cars, claiming their right of way as they should, not requiring the cat-like escape reflexes of an Auckland cyclist.
Teddy did a beautiful job of traversing this obstacle course and soon we were reversing into the parking lot of the Paradiso, on the bank of the Singelgracht Canal. An ornate brick building houses this famous music hall, once home to the theological religious group that called themselves the Vrije Gemeente (Free Congregation). In 2019 we played the Paradiso for the first time, the smaller venue in a side room that houses 250 people. Now we were in the 1500 capacity main room and we were excited to be back.
Loading is something that is taken seriously by the organisers of this establishment and they are determined that the amount of lifting be kept to a minimum. An elevator outside of the building gets all your equipment up and into the loading dock and then once you roll everything inside there is a lift set into the floor that gets you up to the stage. We had an abbreviated schedule (even the Paradiso has a Saturday club night) due to our early show time so we set about our tasks with vigour and had everything set up smartly. The stage was easy to play on and soundcheck would have been breezy had it not been for Liz’s rented guitar, and acoustic guitar both breaking down and her amp making suspicious noises. She borrowed another guitar for the show and we cursed the damned thieves for the inconveniences they have caused us.
After soundcheck I bought a new bass. I had received a tipoff through some online back channels that led me to a nearby music shop called Der Plug. Jon and I walked over there and found a room filled with hundreds of instruments, the walls lined with hangers and the floor a dense cornfield of guitar necks with barely a path to wade through. I saw the headstock and heart-shaped tuners peeking through a gap a found it, a 1981 Ibanez Blazer in black, nearly the exact instrument that I had lost a few days earlier. As I sat down to try it out Pieter the shopkeeper handed us cold cans of beer and left us to it, as slick a sales technique as I have ever witnessed. Fifteen minutes later I walked out with an instrument that felt great in the hand and looked exactly the part.
Jon lights up as he twiddles an old Conn strobe tuner.
The author enjoys the first carry of his new instrument.
A couple of hours later I watched Dateline completely win over this Amsterdam crowd. They rocked hard and were rewarded with loud support from the room which was rapidly filling up. The lighting person also rocked very hard and it looked like a cacophony of firecrackers had just exploded on stage.
This was an audience that knew how to enjoy their Saturday night and we had a lot of fun hanging out with them. Although my bandmates and I failed in the attempts to convince anyone that the blog is real they made up for their pessimism with a warmth and a rowdiness that worked its magic, leaving us thoroughly charmed.
Our lodgings for the night were at The Moxy, an international hotel chain we love to hate on for its design concept, which I would describe as Post Useful. What they lack in basic amenities like a kettle or a desk they make up for by hanging ropes everywhere, and other nonsense that contributes to an aesthetic that is embarrassing to look at. Please bear the load with us and look at some of these photos before you leave.
