Music editor Jacob Haagsma sometimes experiences something in pop and wider surroundings. What had made him upset again?
And, Jacob, have any world-famous bands been on a drummer hunt in Friesland?
Well, most bands are provided I believe. You are of course referring to U2, Irish stormtroopers who were looking for a substitute drummer. Their own drummer and buddy Larry McMullen has been out of action for a while due to a major operation on his back, I believe. But yes, U2 are going to do a series of concerts in Las Vegas this fall, and you don’t want to know how much money that will make.
Yes it is. We’d love to know.
Well, we don’t know. Anyway, the guys from U2 didn’t want to pass up that extremely lucrative, because we know that, opportunity and in their search for a replacement ended up with Krezip drummer Bram van den Berg. Who therefore grew up in Gytsjerk, Yes. But the Big Question of Life was all along: How did they even get to him? Bram himself kept himself inaccessible and JanPeter Hoekstra, from Ureterp and guitarist with Krezip, thought that in due course we should read Bram’s memoirs instead of him telling it. But now we know!
How then how?
Via Martin Garrix, Dutch top DJ who is also famous all over the world. Yes, how does he, built in 1996, know the men of U2, active from the late seventies, or, I hear you ask? I don’t know that either, but Garrix made the official European Championship football song in 2020 We Are The People , along with U2 singer Bono and guitarist The Edge. And it collapsed out of the school, collapsed Rollingstone , an American magazine. Well, we will of course be happy to rehabilitate that. Because Bram is one of us, because of his childhood in Gytsjerk – which was not mentioned in the Rolling Stone, by the way.
They don’t feel that way either regional journalism .
Just sayin. The Edge, or Dave Evans in his passport (in which he is permanently in the picture without his eternal hat) did say nice words about values such as friendship and connection, which U2 is built on after all, and also had the necessary compliments for Bram .
Very nice. Anything else?
Well, people always die, also in music, but they don’t always make the papers. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter does, but then again not our website. Wayne Shorter was a big one, you know, in jazz. First with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, then in the famous Second Grand Quintet of trumpeter Miles Davis and then alongside keyboardist Joe Zawinul in fusion group Weather Report. And all that time he made beautiful records under his own name, in the sixties and seventies mainly on the legendary jazz label Blue Note. Wayne Shorter was a thinker, a mystic who explored higher realms by saxophone (tenor and soprano).
Tineke Postma, actually from Heerenveen and an internationally successful saxophonist herself , knew Shorter well and even visited his house on occasion. She put it this way: ,,Wayne works very much with the imagination. All the music he makes is an image. When I was at his house and played with him, he talked about that too. Telling a story in music, going on an adventure, looking for risks, not on autopilot. We can all learn something from that.”
How beautiful. Is jazz after all the most beautiful music imaginable?
I will neither confirm nor deny that. And furthermore, David Lindley left us, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist who we mainly know from his work with others. Ry Cooder, Curtis Mayfield, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, those people. He had a particular preference for the cheaper instruments. I once saw him in the small front room of Zalen Schaaf, here in Leeuwarden, and spoke to him on the phone just before. Somehow that can’t be found in our archives anymore, but I remember that he was very angry about the rise of SUVs, you know, those way too big and way too much gas guzzling cars. Colorful type, also for his choice of clothing: noisy polyester blouses especially .
That seems like a nice clothing trend for the upcoming festival season. Speaking of which….
Yes, it may snow and hail and freeze, but nevertheless the festival season will open this weekend with Grasnapolsky in Scheemda. Well under a roof, fortunately, in that beautiful old strawboard factory De Toekomst. I talked about it for a while Thomas Azier, pop star who is active all over the world and now lives in Paris, but comes from Nijeberkoop. He does have something with his Northern roots, one of the reasons that he is taking on a special project with the North Pole Orchestra of Groningen Reinout Douma . So on Grasnapolsky.