RNB Fridays Live 2019, Marvel Stadium Melbourne, 9 November 2019

Let this be a lesson to you kids. Do not drink red wine and then let your wife buy concert tickets for the following day. I have previously fallen into this trap when my wife “got me” Madonna tickets.  And this Friday I woke up with a bit have hang over and tickets to RNB Fridays.

Tim Freedman & Alana Wilkinson, The Espy (The Esplanade Hotel), 30 October 2019

A letter to myself on a cassette, ‘cause I don’t blog anymore. 

It‘s been eleven years that I have lived out of Australia, that means eleven years since I have watched Tim perform live…..eleven long years of not hearing his dulcet tones, seeing his mannerisms and witnessing this enigmatic piano player hard at work performing to his audience.

Wolfmother, Melkweg, 24 July 2018

Five takeaways from the show:

1. Amsterdam is still the most livable city for live music I have ever known

It will never get old that you can leave your ‘suburban’ family home at 8.30pm and be standing a couple of meters from the stage, beer in hand, ready to go for the opening song at 9pm. What a city….

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Bitterzoet, 9 March 2018

According to a recent study* conducted by O2 and Goldsmith’s University Associate Lecturer Patrick Fagan, attending a live music gig can help you live longer. Apparently, experiencing a gig for just 20 minutes can result in a 21% increase in feelings of well-being. Further research found a direct link between “high levels of well-being [and] a lifespan increase of nine years”, therefore suggesting that being exposed to live music could help you live longer.

I can’t speak to the science but anyone who was at the Rural Alberta Advantage show in Amsterdam this month will vouch for its findings and an increased feeling of well-being.

Iron and Wine – Paradiso , 27 January 2018

What better way to start the musical year than with Iron and Wine, live on the Paradiso main stage.

The Shins - Paradiso, 30 March 2017

The Shins seems like the poetic place to start writing again on VP Music Blog.

Over a period of about two and a half years we attended exactly 100 live shows and wrote exactly 99 reviews. For all the experiences, opinions, theories, and emotions that we tried to convey from these shows, there was one that left us.... speechless?

Not speechless in the blown away sense, more in the... uninspired sense.

Gary Clark Jr – Paradiso, 27 May 2014

May 27, 2014 was a night to remember. A night that on the surface may have looked like any other night in Amsterdam, but was in fact a unique, one-off, never-to-be-repeated event.

This was the night that I unwittingly found myself in a Louisiana blues bar, seeing the best blues guitarist I have ever seen live.