Going dutch ;)
 

Good Evening!

My name is Stijn and I'm a 26 year old long-haired beardy guy from the Netherlands.
Altough my parents never really were that much into music, I've been interested in collecting music since I was only a couple of years old.
My musical taste is very diverse. I like everything that doesn't do 'boom-boom' all the time.
I like Jazz, Ska, Punk, Reggae, Metal, Indie, Funk, Blues, Sixties Psychedelica, Classical music, folk, Klezmer, world music, stoner rock, singer/songwriter, dub, bluegrass, hardrock...
I don't really like R&B, Hiphop, and dance music, altough I must say that some of my albums (e.g. Babylon Circus, Sublime) Have hip-hop influences.
Then there's another weird thing, I don't like female voices in music. I have some old no doubt albums and a Janis Joplin album and that's mainly it.
It's hard to give you an idea of all the music I listen to, that's why I put a link to my record collection in my signature.

My other interests are Audio (I'm a bit of an audiophile) Photography and oldtimer cars.

My main hobby is collecting tape decks (reel to reel recorders) of all sorts.
I have machines that sound utterly brilliant (better than any CD player, if you ask me :crazy:), but I also collect old portable tube machines that are more interesting because of the way they look and work, than because of the way they sound.
Together with a friend I run my own open-reel-forum analogaudio.nl.
Turns out we're not the only ones collecting these machines since the forum is incredibly busy. We have roadtrips, meetings, excursions. Loads of fun.

I decided to join this forum since there's no good Music forum in the Netherlands. We have some forums for musicians and some forums about one musical genre, but none of them is serious in any way.
I was thinking about setting up a dutch music forum myself. This may happen at some point in time, not sure yet.

It's almost 3am here so I'll soon be calling it a day.
But not before I show you my face.
Viewer discretion advised... three, two one...

Ah, well... In that case I'll just add it as an attachment.

Good night Folks!

Welcome aboard s_k! You sound like a very interesting guy! I'm looking forward to reading your posts. :)

Thanks Janszoon, very kind of you.
I'm sure I'll be having a good time here.
I hope I won't cause too many controversy with my 'analog' lifestyle.
I'm not trying to start analog/digital discussions since I know how that goes.
The anser is always simple: My ears made me do it (and i've been told they are pretty good ;)).

How did you choose your name? Is it a nickname or is it yours?
Sounds really dutch to me.

I don't hope anyone minds me using my own introduction music to ask this question but....
I noticed there is a music recording section. And I've been using the search function, but so far there's not much about music reproduction. Am I missing out or something or might it be a good idea to make a little section about that? It's pretty hard to enjoy music without audio equipment, so that might be pretty important, I guess.
Just a thought. Not willing to cause any trouble :)

Yes, there is. It's called Stereo and Production Equipment.

Welcome to the forums.

Heh. I had a sneaking suspicion you might ask me that. :) It's the name of one of my music projects, named after the Dutch cartographer Willem Janszoon Blaeu.

Generally threads on those topics would be in "Stereo & Production Equipment", which serves as kind of a dual-purpose forum. :)

Ah, well... I should've looked a bit further indeed.
I thought that was more about music production. Turns out there's a space for audiolovers after all, there's just not too much interest. That's okay, at least I know where to create my topics about audio if I should ever feel the need to.

A music project named after a Dutch cartographer... Who would expect that :).
I should tell you I didn't have a clue who the guy was, had to look it up. I'm not all that interested in Dutch history I guess. But Janszoon is typical for something that has to do with aviation.
Why did you choose this name and please feel free to tell me more about your project (samples are always welcome ;)).

Thanks Thomas. I totally overlooked the 'stereo' part there ;)

There's not all that much to the choice of name honestly. Basically, at the time when I was looking for a name for my little one-man band I happened to read this really interesting non-fiction book about the history of cartography called The Island of Lost Maps. Willem Janszoon Blaeu was one of the mapmakers they talked about and, well, I just really liked the name. The band is a mostly electronic, somewhat poppy kind of thing. Unfortunately I can't think of anywhere I currently have any worthwhile samples posted.

I'll be keeping track ;).
Thanks for your kind comments so far. I'm going to finish my (Dutch) beer and then I'll be off to bed as it's almost 5 o'clock. Which is insane. I'll see you (and all the other memebers) in the morning!

Welcome! You do sound very interesting and you type just like I do sometimes! I like to start my sentences on new lines once in a while. [=
What are some bands you like?

Haha, I promised to go to bed.
Well allright, a quicky.
Hitting the enter key now and then makes it all a bit more readable if you ask me.
Please keep doing so :)

Bands I like, and I'm sure I'll be missing out on quite a lot of them:
Calexico, The Slackers, Bob Dylan, Jethro Tull, Neil Young, Nick Drake, FLogging Molly, Bad Religion, Tom Waits, The Bees, Babylon Circus, The Last Shadow Puppets, Raconteurs, The Good, the Bad and the Queen, The Scientist, Belle & Sebastian, Dream Theater, Tool, Al Stewart, Chatham County Line, The Beatles, CSNY, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Mountain, NoFX, Jimi Hendrix, Wolfmother, Wolf People, Iron Maiden, Brainbox, Noir Désir, Sam Roberts, Friends of Dean Martinez, Aggrolites, Mark Foggo, Skatalites, Morphine, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Love, Sublime, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Muse, Volbeat, Ten Years After, Fleetwood Mac (without the girls), Jamiroquai, Giant Sand, Curtis Eller, Lee Perry, Beirut, Vic Ruggiero, Dave Hillyard, Madness, Rodriguez, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Kenny Dorham, Dave Brubeck, Focus, Crystal Antlers, Balthazar, Sleepy Sun, Tame Impala, Rancid, Blues Magoos, Incredible String Band, Velvet Underground, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Disrupt, Dub Trio, Franz Ferdinand, The National, Django Reinhardt, Mulatu astatke...

As I said, there's a link in my signature for more information on that one :)

Wow. That's one nice list ya got there. Yes...I do believe you'll fit in nicely here. :D

I especially liked "Fleetwood Mac (without the girls)". lol. Made me chuckle, though I can't say I entirely disagree with you.

Good to have you on board Stijn!

Oh, and that's a great picture too. Love the beard.

thanks! In my search for a music forum I mainly landed here because of the bands you were talking about.
So I'm glad I made the right choice there!

the beard is there to hide the double chin ;D
and audiophiles, photographers and owners of old french cars usually go together with beards.

I'm sorry for the lack of capitals in this posting. Using my telephone to post this.
Good morning, by the way!

Im glad you collect tape decks. Those poor bastards need someone to still want them! To bad all my are mix tapes :(

There's a lot of people still wanting them, don't worry :).

I get the feeling you missed out on some words on your last sentence. What did you mean to say?

Well, day two on this forum. So far so good :).
It's been nice, I'm off to bed. Almost 4 'o clock.
I'll be seeing you all tomorrow.

Hope my English doesn't cause any problems. It's not perfect and I can imagine it might cause some misunderstandings sometimes. Just in case: I mean no harm, please ask first if you think I do ;D.

Welcome to the forums, s_k. You seem a decent guy and I think Musicbanter needs more europeans in their late 20s!

Hope you stick around and if you're looking for album suggestions and the like, don't forget to check out review threads. :)

Still discovering new and interesting threads everyday.
I actually have a list of threads I'd like to see here.
I haven't started them yet because I'm not sure if i just overlooked them so far.
Let's see... What have I got...

Yeah, maybe a thread with concert pictures, a thread about festivals in every genre section, maybe a thread about internetradio and there's some very nice quotes from forum members coming by now and then. It might be worth while to gather them in one topic.
I haven't yet tried the search function on the ideas mentioned above.

I also would like to start a thread on dutch bands sometime soon.
There's a couple of them that are worth the listen and that aren't big enough to be known outside the Netherlands. I have tried the search function on that and it seems like you guys are missing out on some brilliant music :)

P.s.: I noticed this is mij 111th posting :D.
I'm thinking about starting a Journal...

The only dutch band I listen to with any regularity are Focus .. But they are pretty awesome! I also see they are in your list. :D

Focus is, indeed, very good.
I must say I prefer Brainbox to Focus. They have the same guitar player (Jan Akkerman).
Focus has brilliant ideas, but their brilliance is limited to a couple of tracks, whereas Brainbox has got a very, very brilliant album with "To you".

The most famous Rock band in The Netherlands itself must be The Golden Earring(s).
They were called the Golden Earring in their first period, the S was added later.
I don't think much of them. They have some pretty good songs though, like "Another 45 miles to go" and "All Day Watcher".

Then we have a blues band called Cuby and the Blizzards. Which is somewhere between Fleetwood Mac (without the girls) and the first two Ten Years After albums.
Lately a hardrock/funkrock band stood up by the name of DeWolff. It consists of some youngsters who turned out to be really, really good.
Another dutch band that may be interesting to you is "The Nits".
Some good songs by that band are "In the Dutch Mountains", "Nescio" and "J.O.S. Days".
Then there's a band called "Earth & Fire", of which I can only recommend their first album which has no name, but is often referred to as 'Matchbox'. Especially the song "Seasons" is quite nice. The lyrics are bull****, just a line of english words meaning nothing. But the music is good.
Last but not least, we have a pretty good (fun)punk band called "De Heideroosjes".

Eitherway, there's enough to fill a thread :)

I must say Belgium has better bands than we do. They have Balthazar (which is incredible), Novastar, dEUS, Admiral Freebee, Absynthe Minded, Ozark Henry...
The grass is always greener on the other side ;).

This sounds very interesting. Something I'd like to check out. Do they have many albums out? Any suggestions where to start?

Also, it sounds like starting a thread and/or journal on Dutch music would be a fantastic idea based on what you've posted so far.

i'm not very much into cuby. they never seem to hit the right spot.
But I cannot deny that it's quality music.
A friend of mine is a big fan, I'll ask him what to choose :)

You seem like a great poster already, here's my welcome! :)

Thanks Vanilla :).
You know, this kind of makes sense. Why welcome someone you don't know yet?
I'm glad you still think I'm welcome after I've been around for a while :).

Well we welcome people we don't know to let them know they ARE welcome to post and be a good part of the community.

Yeah. That makes sense :).

Still, bear with me;
There's a sign on the side of the highway when you enter the Province of Limburg, where I live.
It says "De limburgers heten u welkom", which means "The limburgians welcome you" .
And everytime I see it I think: "I'm sure I don't really want everyone who passes this sign to be in Limburg..." .
Altough I do know I'm taking this to literally and I do think we should continue welcoming everyone who's new here (I do that too), it is indeed a bit strange to tell someone you might hate eventually that her or she is welcome.
Strange thing, that.
I'm thinking to much... I know.

Woah! I can't believe my topic already dropped to page four.

Anyway, quite some people wondered how my name is pronounced. I made a little recording for them in which you can also hear how beautiful my pronounciation of the English language is (it sucks big time ;)).

click here to listen

So there you go :)

"I also respond to Troll"



I knew it

I explained that one before ;).
http://www.musicbanter.com/lounge/41...tml#post976267
There you go ;).

Ah, I see. You have a great radio announcer type of voice incidentally!

Haha, that's mainly because I have a wind muff on my microphone and was talking into it from a tiiiiny distance. :D.

Dayum....I love your voice. I could listen to it for hours I think. You should totally record an audio book. It doesn't matter whose book it is.

That's sweet, thanks :).
I'll record a topic of this forum for you some time :D.

I must say that I've heard that before. I have quite some (female...) friends who live far away who tell me I have a nice voice on the telephone. I once posted here that I actually talk some of them to sleep when they can't sleep. But then I should add that a couple of them have said that my voice sounds better on the phone than in real life. Sucks :(.

I smell a "Post your own voice" thread.

Around here, "Dutch" refers to people like this:

http://www.pavacationrental.com/phot...ania-Dutch.jpg

What, mormons?

Nah, these dudes.

http://bunkerville.files.wordpress.c...2p_hmedium.jpg

The Amish. Or Pennsylvania Dutch.

Oh, yeah. That's what I meant.
I haven't got a clue why you would call them dutch.
I don't believe we have many amish here. Never seen one so far :)

Agreed. Totally jealous, and a little turned on...O.O

Haha, feel free to listen to it as often as you like :D

And I was worried my English sounded bad...
It wouldn't have mattered had I talked Russian or French.
That even might be a good idea :D.



(no I can't, sorry)

They're called "Dutch" because of the similarity to "Deutsch", which is what they really are, German-descended people.