Next week, thursday the 28th, I’ll be speaking my mind in a so called ‘key note’ at the Rotterdam based Image Festival. I was asked to speak about flyers and their relation to music, or the music scene. Apparently I have once said (some 10 to 15 years ago or so) ‘the flyer is dead’. Now Johan Weggis, one of the organisers (if not ‘THE’ organiser) of the festival has remembered this and made it the title of my keynote. Of course I wouldn’t make such bold statements anymore nowadays (since I’m much older and wiser now), but there might still be some truth to it. Or maybe even more so now. I’m diving into that later this week. Anyway, I’m anxious to find out what I have to say about it and I hope you are too! Come and look me up, it takes place at the Cinerama Film Theatre at —be sure about this— thursday the 28th. If you’re not convinced about that date because of the typo on their site, here’s a schedule/time table.

Speaking of music and influences, have you seen Marcel Alexander Wiebenga’s blog on ‘music and what it does for/to the world’ yet? It’s called 010110 (named after the day it started), but hey, what’s in a name? It covers awesome disasters in musical history, different ways of music meeting advertising, music videos that didn’t make MTV broadcasting on (punkrock) fridays, downloadable ‘perfect’ compilations, conspiracies of all sorts, ace youtube linkage, devos and divas, freaks and legends and well… just plain good stuff. Plus, of course, the funny writings of one bad ass drummer / music lover / sales tycoon and —most of all— connaisseur of the postmodern musical canon.

If you just tuned in be sure to discover at least two older posts on, first, a dutch guy that can hear which brand and model bass guitar is used as Mark King (of Level 42) slaps and plucks some of his trademark riffs on the spot on a couple of different bass guitars and, second, Marcel’s two-parted study on how rap ’n rock crossover experiments in the past have ‘helped spawn a horrible genre’. It’s, as we say in dutch, ‘to laugh your cock out of your pants over.’

The New Earth Group did it again! Coming 20th of February, they’ll be releasing their (often feared) second album called ‘Eurafricarabia’ (thru Excelsior Recordings instead of Willy Anderson this time) in Rotown Rotterdam. A second release party is to be at the Paradiso Upstairs, march 13. As is custom with T.N.E.G. ‘Eurafricarabia’ will be available on both CD and (double) vinyl!

Suus and me have taken care of the cover design(s) again (we also ‘did’ their before mentioned debut album) and I guess especially for those of you living in The Netherlands the design —based very much upon the title— kind of speaks for itself. See if you can spot our self colored Cleisthenes(!) and find out all about that Voyager Golden Record (somewhere in the Zeeland / Noord Brabant area) on wikipedia, it’s ace!. Nice extra is that the boys at Excelsior have some Terry Gilliam-esque animations made from our cut-outs. Those can be seen right here.