Last Weekend - a Music Club Adventure kinda Blog

Intro: Creative Process involving Stupidity

Slowly, very slowly, I try and up my 'game' in video production. Not that I can be called a professional, not even an amateur, but more like a baby trying to learn whilst not knowing what I'm doing. After creating two videos with my iMovie app (free to download when owning a MacBook), I needed a fade-in and -out for the audio part for my next video, the one I'm sharing here. As a 'normal' guy, I tried everything, but couldn't find such a feature. Subsequently, as most men do, I tried another program I downloaded before, named 'DaVinci Resolve'. Much more complex software to handle. Much less straightforward than iMovie. After, again, an hour plus trying, I decided I was still too much a baby to master DaVinci. Back to iMovie again. But, this time the proper way: Google search for the solution {note to self: install PreSearch}. BAM! The answer was provided to me with the first search result, a question/answer in the Apple forum brought to me at first search attempt {at least I can define useful search strings}. I felt like an idiot! Hours were wasted because of my male dominant brains. In that process, at some point, I wanted to ditch this 'project' and was thinking: "Video production is not for me at all; I can't even handle a relatively simple video editing program! And then all the creativity that is required to get a decent video done that is interesting enough for others to watch." Anyways... Solution found and the project continued. I can't say if the result is decent enough, I leave that to you to decide.

Do I have brains? Wouldn't a properly working brain not decide to search for the answer first before spending hours and hours trying?

Club Events

The last time I was in a club was more than two years ago, a small location called 'the Garage' somewhere in the north of my tine home city 'Amsterdam'. At least it felt like the last time, but to be honest, I'm forgetting the three afternoons/evenings in a row I spend in three different clubs during the last Amsterdam Dance Event held in October 2021. Back then we had this window of like 4 to 6 weeks in which club events were allowed. Before that and afterwards total lockdown on the club front. Now we are opening up completely. Two weekends ago, several clubs opened out of protest (which wasn't allowed still). Last weekend, clubs were allowed to open up to 1 AM. This weekend, back in full swing like the good old pre-Covid days. Opening hours as per license which for some clubs is just till 4 AM, others have licenses till 6 AM and some have 24hrs licenses varying from 1 day till a complete weekend. Such a shame that one of the two 24hrs weekend clubs in my home town, is not anymore! It closed its doors about two years ago. By far, my favourite club around is gone! When thinking of it, it's difficult not to start crying like a baby.

You see? Baby again! 😂

My BAS/S Club Evening

When arriving at the venue, we had a great laugh before we even entered the place. It started with my decision about what stairs to take. At first, we wanted to take the comfortable one, the not so steep one, but I said to my companion: "You see the number of peeps that we need to pass before we get to our entrance? Let's take those stairs back there!" So we did. Halfway I heard behind me with a somewhat giggling voice: "You made an excellent choice for us to end up in the water." Since I didn't made any pictures, I share one from the Internet below originally published in the online newspaper 'Volkskrant'. In our case, all the peeps were not at the top of the stairs but at the bottom to the right of the club entrance. The stairs are the ones we took. Fortunately, we didn't fall down. Even if we would've, we might've still ended up with dry feet with this little not too strong fence at the bottom.

For some reason the bouncers wanted us to wait for the stage manager to come and fetch us, so we waited outside. So funny seeing so many peeps coming out of the club whilst the clock was showing us a time around 9:30 PM. Are they already leaving? Must be. Then we saw many peeps in short-sleeved clothes standing in line, all smoking. Apparently, the inside smoking rooms are not allowed anymore. A new law was passed recently. Not that it is already summer, or even spring. Just too funny, none of them seemed to feel the cold! At some stage, I think I detected one individual that was not comfortable with the temperature. Just one, from at least 30 or 40 peeps out there nicotine-ing up their bodies. Officially only the legal drugs allowed (alcohol, and plenty of it), we all know all these peeps took something else otherwise they wouldn't be able to withstand the close to zero Celcius temperatures. It felt like being back in business! Clubbing full swing with everything God (and law) forbids. I have never been to this club, but all this waiting and watching the peeps in front of the club gave me the feeling: This might be a decent one. Peeps seem to be the nighttime ravers kind, no smuck, no brands, no 'air', no high (and even mid) heels. And the atmosphere was darn positive, even in the cold, laughter everywhere.

Deniro playing when we finally entered the club. Peeps enthusiastic. Regardless of their state of being, they let us through when noticing we wanted to pass. Sometimes with a little delay, hence the 'road' to the stage felt very very long. Not a 'bad' long, but still long 🙃 In reality the depth of the room itself is not big at all. Check the video and you can see for yourselves. The room is shown somewhere in the middle of the video and another time more towards the end of it.

At first, my idea for this evening was to enjoy the music to the fullest. Get my ass over on the dance floor and dance the hell out of everything. Turned out most of the evening I was having conversations. Nooooo, this time not with myself, but with others 😂 This evening turned out to be similar to the so many club evenings/nights I experienced for years and years. Mostly reconnecting with peeps I know from the scene, and while reconnecting also meeting new peeps. Conversations go from serious to the absolute opposite, and back again.

When the lights went on marking the end of the night, it felt like the four something hours went like a split second! And it felt like: "Why? Why is it over yet?" I talked the night away. "I needed the music on big speakers so badly!" But so far it served more as background music. Not entirely true, but still. I think I spend just 15 minutes or so truly enjoying some of the music and making attempts to dance, which is more like wobbling in my case. The offer to move along to someone's home to continue the party, I kindly refused. "Why the hell did I do that?" I suppose because I try and be responsible like a grownup should be. The night is for sleeping, not for partying, right? Ah well, more of these nights will come my way. Sooner than later, I'm pretty sure of that. Enough time and occasions I can (and I will) act super irresponsible.

On our way home, we ended up talking about audio NFTs and Metaverses. A project is coming my way, I feel: Sharing my knowledge and possibly also my ideas and opinions with artists. Though I feel a noob in these areas, I also realise many artists have no clue at all about these topics. Can I help them? How should I help them? Just provide my knowledge? Shall I try and start some projects with artists I know? It's again one of those crazy ideas I have regularly. Usually, I shelf them immediately after I get them. The shelf is overloaded, I must admit. Every so often, I have to add new shelves. Let's see. Somehow it feels good to start new adventures with friends and acquaintances. "Baby steps edje! Take baby steps" {there is 'baby' again 🙃}

Party Reports

Back in the days, like 20/25 years ago, I was in the 'business' of creating party reports. Published and all. Very much amateurism status, but still. I liked it a lot. I was making photographs anyways and adding some text to it wasn't that difficult. After the 10th or so request by someone owning a super cool party website, I said yes instead of the usual no. For a few years, I was making my contributions to the scene, the music fans. The side effect was: I was able to get into any place, small, large, cheap, expensive, totally for free. Back then, hardly anybody was making photographs with decent cameras in the electronic dance side of the music business. Therefore they let me in for free, to get a little bit of marketing going for them.

Since the beginning of our blockchain, I had the idea of reviving my reporting activities in this respect. Though I tried a few times, it never evolved. While creating the video and writing this blog, again I feel positive about picking up this party report thingy again. Can't tell you if I will, since I usually end up enjoying a party rather than writing about them.

Are You in?

What about you? Will you bring us your parties? I can promise you, I'll read them for sure. Love to! You may consider this tiny writing corner Q-Inspired; Be adventurous and click the image below. A perfect corner for such blogs, don't you think?