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Enjoyed Brett Anderson’s show at the Tivoli (De Helling) in Utrecht. Of the good: He’s not as aloof as he was in the past. Voice as strong as ever. Has stopped twirling his microphone. Of the bad: He’s been writing the same songs for the past 20 years. He needs to eat a few hamburgers.

Rabbi Soetendorp speaking at TEDx Amsterdam

My photos from TEDx Amsterdam 2009. I’m reasonably happy, but I obviously have a lot to learn re: workflow and keeping the colours consistent. There was one other photographer who was using flash. An ordinary one and a ring flash. Now that I see some of her stuff I am more inclined to learn how to use flash (this one’s good.)

First of two times I saw the Sugarcubes that year. Björk didn’t do much for me (though I appreciated the vocals), but I loved Einar’s in your face, contrary, grating performance. Everybody else hated him. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Sugarcubes were Virgin Prunes fans, which is why they had two lead vocalists.

Scanning old pictures, came across this set of Nick Cave playing in Coesfeld, Germany on May 13, 1990. I think it was the first time I saw him play live.

Bat for Lashes, originally uploaded by Caroline.

Natasha Khan’s tom-boyish, goofy performance was alright and the music was solid and I loved the way she dressed her stage… but I wasn’t feeling it. I hear so many other artists in her music and voice, and I’m not sure what makes Khan’s music hers. I kept thinking ‘Sounds like Tori Amos sounding like Kate Bush, not as distinctive’, ‘Sounds like Sinead… not as other wordly’, ‘Gosh, this is very Olwen Fouere’, (Who?), ‘Bit of Bjork, not as barking…’ I left before the end of the show. Ben Christophers played keyboards in the band. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

Classic compact 35’s, originally uploaded by Caroline.

This is my small collection of 70s compact 35mm rangefinders.

They can be yours for very little. I bought most of them off eBay for prices between 50 and 100 dollars. I’d like to keep one (not sure which one yet, but probably one of the Yashica’s). Make an offer.

Some of them work, some of them don’t. Some of them have sticky shutter problems (the Canons) and need servicing.

Find out more about these camera’s here:
www.cameraquest.com/com35s.htm

If anyone knows a place in The Netherlands where I can get the Canon sticky shutters fixed, please drop a line.

Grace bares her teeth, originally uploaded by Caroline.

My first concert of the year was a bloody great one.

She’s 60 years old and her body puts the rest of us to shame. Fashionably late, fabulously wearing a different Philip Treacy hat for every song and – mostly miniscule – threads over her fishnet panty hose. In between songs she’d disappear to the side of the stage, all the while making lewd comments to entertain us: ‘Give me something to suck…’

Ms Jones played a lot of songs from her surprisingly good new album ‘Hurricane’, but she didn’t forget her greatest hits: ‘La Vie en Rose’, ‘Pull up to the bumper’ (with on stage audience participation), ‘Nightclubbing’ and of course, ‘Slave to the Rhythm’, which she performed while gyrating a hula hoop.

It was the newer, more personal songs that touched me. The autobiographical ‘Williams Blood’ in particular, in which she channelled her mother talking to her daughter disapprovingly: “Why don’t you be a Jones like your Sister and your brother Noel?” But amazing Grace is blessed with the blood of her musician granddad Williams. She’s “wicked”, she says: “You can’t save a wretch like me…”

She closed the set with ‘Hurricane’ dressed in a flowing black robe, while a wind machine of giant proportions blew us and herself away.

View my Grace Jones photos on Flickr

Richard Harwood, Finghin Collins, Elizabeth Cooney, Carol McGonnell, Ian Wilson and Gavin Friday during rehearsals.

One more time before the new year I followed the music abroad, bringing me to a bitter cold Paris for a third time this year.

Though I found the second part of the concert, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, a little hard going, I did enjoy Gavin Friday’s narration of Marquez’s ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ as set to music by composer Ian Wilson better than I did the first time I saw it, in Brighton. It was the venue’s ‘recital’ setting, placing the musicians amidst the audience, that much improved the sound and intimacy. Gavin, hindered by the low lights and the yellow marker ‘popping’ on his print out, fluffed up a few times, but he also hit some sweet marks. Particularly the part of the text that goes ‘and the hidden strength of his heart popped the buttons on his shirt’.

Afterwards musicians, crew, friends – among which the lovely Fiachna O Braonain – and yours truly retired to a restaurant cellar where rustic food, sangria, wine, calvados and hearty laughter kept us warm, happy, handsome and quite, quite drowned.

Surrounded by Irishmen and women, I sometimes got a little lost – this Dutch fallen Prod doesn’t really ‘get’ the holy Host or Mise Éire, but it’s endlessly fascinating nonetheless and somehow I always feel more at home than I do amongst my own.

“While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez – The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, set to music by composer Ian Wilson. Performed at the at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris on October 9, 2008.

More pictures of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World