The Dorktones

Saturday, 4 December 2010

Last night The Dorktones played at Maloe Melo, in Amsterdam that is. It was on a Beat Party, a popular series of parties organised by Ir. van der Meulen. Mister van der Meulen turned out to be ill, but that didn’t spoil the party.
I only know the Dorktones from their cd’s, T-shirts and two or three gigs. Somehow Maloe Melo was a good place for the band to play. I could write a book about Maloe Melo; i hadn’t been there in a long time, but for a long time i was there at least once a week. It felt as if nothing had changed in the the fifteen (??) years that i hadn’t been there. Not even the regular crowd. Actually this was one of the reasons why i stopped going there 15 years ago, but it didn’t bother me much last night. I went with Arjen and he also seemed to enjoy this outer space mission.
The Dorktones are good and strange. The best thought i had about the band is that they play all their favourite songs, which are almost all uptempo adrenaline-motivated sixties garagepowerpopbeat songs in which ALL ingredients for a hit are crammed into two and a half minute. It is the kind of songs that most bands use for an encore. But The Dorktones play twentyfive of them, without a break! It is like a rollercoaster ride that only goes downhill. No need to say that i loved the show!
One song stuck out for me: a beautiful rendition of a dutch hit by Astrid Nijgh, “Ik doe wat ik doe”. Not only because it is a Dutch song that is rarely covered by a garagepowerpopbeat band, but also because The Dorktones managed to turn the ballad into an uptempo garagepowerpopbeat monster. I would not mind if they made a whole cd in Dutch with covers like these.

I talked to quite a few nice people last night and heard some cool stories, that i unfortunately cannot all share with you. But i have taken notes and you will hear some of it in the next episodes of this blog. Several people were taking photographs and i asked if i could post them on this blog. I have not seen any photo in the mail yet, but that gives me the opportunity to start doing something that i wanted for a long time: i want to update old posts. From now on old posts will be updated whenever i find new information. The reason i didn’t do this earlier is that i considered it not done: i write on the spur of the moment and that is part of the fun of this blog. But in some stories i have made so many mistakes or i have missed so much good information or my opinion about that subject has changed so much over the years, that i don’t like the idea that whenever peple happen to stumble upon it, they think that this is it. So, i will add photo’s and other info to this and other posts later. That will make it a bit harder for the regular readers to follow this blog, but hey, Life sucks sometimes.
Like it sucked last night, when i tried to unlock my bike after the concert. It was freezing cold and snowing, and at the first turn of the key it broke off in the lock. Luckily Arjen was with me and i could ride home in (!) his bike. But now i have to figure out a way to get my bike back. Any suggestions anyone?

Here are two photo’s that *Marly * made of the show:

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