The Music In My Head
Paard van Troje, Den Haag, 10 juni 2006

At 4-ish I took the train to Den Haag (The Hague as you know it), I met up with Anneke over there. We decided to get traintickets for the way back first and then find some place to eat. We ended up at Burger King, where we had food (obviously) and Anneke wouldn't stop listening to her iPod, but that wasn't bad, except for the part where she forced me to listen to Bob & Annie :P

After that we had icecream and we headed to the venue. We had to wait for about half an hour before we could get in, but we could sit somewhere in the shadow and it was nice to see all sorts of bandpeople walking by :)

After a while we got in and got our bags and stuff in the (free!) cloakroom and we went to the main hall, where The Noisettes would open the evening. Surrounded by photographers and/or fortysomething John Cale-fans, it was a rather strange experience to stand in the front row :P The Noisettes started and they rocked!



Shingai is a great singer and performer, really energetic, and so is the rest of the band. They were great!













They didn't play for too long, 40 minutes of something. After we tried to get to the other hall where Ed Harcourt was playing, but we couldn't really get in because it was too crowdy. So we went back to the main hall and observed the other visitors for a bit. We stalked stood next to Duncan from Maxïmo Park, who was also standing there. Remember when he broke his arm? He had this huge scar on the back of his upper arm, poor him.

John Cale started 15 minutes late, but we left after one or two songs. Anneke bought a Noisettes tshirt and we chatted with the gitarist for a while and he signed our stickers, he's really nice. Back to the other room, saw the last song of Ed Harcourt and we stayed there to get some good spots for Howling Bells.

Howling Bells were really nice! The lightning and smoke added an extra aspect to their show, but messed up our pictures :P Well here are a couple of 'em:







We left (way too) early to get good spots for Maxïmo Park, but I would love to see them again sometime. I really appreciate them more now than during London Calling.

And then: the grand finale of the evening: Maxiïïïïïïmo Park. I had never seen them before but I've loved them since I first heard of them and I think they're my favourite band. The roadie that was doing the soundcheck looked like my uncle, which was kind of funny.



After waiting for about 15 minutes, the time was ready for them. The band came up and Paul entered with a megaphone, saying something like "We are Maxïmo Park"



After that they started off with Graffiti and it was just amazing! Everybody was singing along and there just was a really good atmosphere hanging around. The band itself seemed in good shape and having a good time and as the show passed, they only got more excited (and so did the crowd)









They played most of the tracks of their album, A19 and a couple of new songs, which were rather good! I made a video of the first one, it's called 'At The Monument' (I think), download it here if you're interested. The other song was about going on a date and had some lyrics like "five times five equals twenty-five", quite funny.




(eh, scary!)









They ended with Apply Some Pressure, but they came back and did two more songs. The crowd was just amazing and everybody was yelling and screaming so loud! I think the band was sort of blown away by that themselves, Paul was all like "Thank you, thank you, dankjuhwelll" and smiling his pretty smile all the time.

Setlist: (I'm not really sure about the order)
Graffiti
Postcard Of A Painting
Limassol
At The Monument
The Coast Is Always Changing ("dit lied gaat over de zee")
A19
Once A Glimpse
-that new song about going on a date-
Now I'm All Over The Shop
Wasteland
Signal And Sign
The Night I Lost My Head
Apply Some Pressure
--------------------
Kiss You Better
Going Missing

Ahh I love them so much! Definately not a disappointment, already the gig ever of the year (or maybe ever?). And I'm seeing them again in less than two weeks!

After the show, we hung around for a bit, I bought the Howling Bells cd and Anneke got a 7", Juanita and the drummer signed them for us. We were hoping that we could meet some of the Maxïmo guys but they were nowhere to be seen, so we left. We did see Dennis from MTV walking by, yes!!

We almost missed our train but fortunately we didn't because we already had our tickets.. the nightbus was already waiting for us and we were very tired when we were back at Anneke's house, so we slept like roses.

Souvernirs:



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