Har Heijmans from Limburg, the Netherlands.
It has been pretty quiet on this pages lately. I never intended to let this happen, but circumstances forced me to put my search for indie music on a back shelf. Last time I wrote about my pneumonia but my health situation is a lot worse en tjis has nog to do with my lungs. This will not change in the near future and I just can hope that I will be able to introduce you to new and exciting indie bands and musicians. It will stay quiet for a while longer...
There hasn't happened much. I've been home with pneumonia and although I feel a lot better by now, I don't feel like I'm cured yet. I feel cold a lot (even when it's hot outside), I'm a little short of breath and I'm tired fast. I've got no energy and even though I've got plenty of time, I don't feel like working on my indieblog a lot. For the time being I will only write one or two posts a week. Such post should be about a band who makes happy music. A band like Tilly and the Wall from Omaha, Nebraska.
When I was younger I regularly waited anxious to get my hand om an announced album. It usually happened after I read about this forthcoming album in some music magazine and from that moment on I biked to the local record store nearly every day to ask if it came in. This doesn't happen to me anymore. The main reason is that I've become much more patient and I don't have any really favourite bands anymore. But there are still some bands I really like and of course I'm always interested in their new albums. One of those bands is The Lodger.
Lately I've been listening to the radio again (Studio Brussel) and this means I'm know some of the current 'hits'. That's why I was wondering why one song gets a lot of airplay and another song stays completely unknown. Especially when it's a song by a new, young band or musician. What makes one song a hit and another not? Do record companies still use promo men who try to sell the record to radio DJs or does it all depend on the discovery by one DJ? Why can't, for instance, "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" by She & Him become a hit? If The Editors can be successful, then this should also be possible for The Secret Life of Sofia.
I've written about the influences of bands and musicians before. Every musician is influenced by one or more other musicians, conscious of unconscious. For instance by the music you heard at home when you where a kid. Those influences are not always very obvious, a little hidden in the sound and only recognisable by the expert. But sometimes the influences are very clear. This is only a problem when the difference between the original band and their followers is not clear anymore. I don't suppose that this will happen with The Ruling Class, but there will be no listener who won't think of The Stone Roses when hearing this international band from London.
There are plenty of bloggers who write about (indie) music. Music lovers who want to share their newest finds with their readers. Usually they write about small, unknown bands which haven't got much chance of becoming big, famous bands. Their albums, which are released by small and often local labels, will hardy ever become international successes. This doesn't mean that it's impossible. The best example of course is Artic Monkeys, but it also happened with Beirut, Band of Horses, Blonde Redhead and it seems to be happening with Bon Iver. If you look at the number of bloggers who have written mr. Gnome, I won't be surprised if this duo are the next success story.
Before I start writing a post about a band, I try to gather information about them and to hear as much songs as possible. Sometimes this is not a problem at all, because every band has some songs on their MySpace. Sometimes you can even listen to the whole album in streaming. But their are also bands of which the written information and the number of songs you can hear are limited. If I think the band is worth it, I still want to write that post. I just have to hope that those few songs are representative for the rest of the songs and that I give the right information. This means I have to be a little careful about Slow Down Tallahassee. 
I've often written about my preference for duos and trios. Usually I've got the feeling that the music which is made by bands of two or three persons have a more sincere and natural sound. At least the music is often less complicated. This doesn't mean that a larger band isn't able to make beautiful music, but I like my music simple and casual. There are a lot of fine twosomes and threesome in the indie scene like The Like Young (who have stopped making music), Two Gallants, Pants Yell! and Xiu Xiu. And I think that the American duo Mates of State does belong in this list.
'What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over' is an English saying. It means that you can't be sad about something you don't know. Maybe you could explain it also like this: you won't miss a good band if you haven't hear them. Why should I worry about bands and musicians I don't know? Well, I'm always looking for good music and this doesn't have to be from known bands. Rather not. And I want to share to beautiful music I find. I wouldn't have slept one minute less if I never heard the music of Camphor, but I'm very glad I did.
What is a good band name? In the sixties they thought that the best names where regular nouns in plural and preceded by 'the'. Look at The Beatles, The Kinks, The Golden Earrings, The Monkees, The Animals etc. A few years later they often expelled the article and sometimes the name wasn't even a noun. The band names became stranger. Like Ten Years After, Happy Mondays, Squeeze, Blur, Aztec Camera etc. Today it seems like every name is possible. But I think a band name has to have at least one quality: it has to be eye-catching which is hard to forget. And of course a name for a band today has to be able to be googled. The name Sybris is easy to be found on Google, but I don't think its a nice, remarkable name. It looks like the name of a publishing company or a spacecraft. I'm glad that the music is a lot more interesting.© Heet Stof 2008