HOW 1 GRAND OPENING TURNED INTO 3 MINI OPENINGS

(but still pretty grand) 

Just like last year, we want to have a Grand Opening. Nothing too fancy, just something fun to officially kick off the festival in Left of the Dial style. In fact, we even announced it on the Extra Extras page of our website months ago.

But once we’d finished putting together the timetable, we realised the festival would actually be starting with three different bands in three different venues. For various logistical reasons we won’t bore you with, there was simply no way around it.

And as all three bands are equally amazing, it didn’t feel fair to pick just one for the Grand Opening.

What to do?

As always, the solution was quite simple: A Triple Grand Opening! (but a bit smaller)

We’ll share the exact details later, but the idea is to host three Mini Openings while trying to cater to two different types of ticketholder.

TYPE 1
If you’re the kind of person who mainly wants the reward of being the very first through the door, pick up your wristband early and head to either Waterfront, Annabel, or Arminius well before opening time. The first people in line at each of those venues will receive a small token of our appreciation.

TYPE 2
For those of you who are more about the whole communal feeling of opening the festival together, we’ll hold a short gathering somewhere near the ticket desk. After a brief opening ceremony (blink and you’ll miss it!), we’ll set off in a festive walk in three groups towards either Arminius, Annabel, or Waterfront. 

Sounds pretty lame? Yes, indeed!

But we’re going to make it fun somehow. And we’re also going to explain it a lot clearer in a next post closer to the festival, but we felt it was best to already give you a heads-up.

Big love,
The Pied Pipers of Left of the Dial

WE HATE PEOPLE

 (Some, not you of course)

We’re really proud that Left of the Dial growing a bit every year. But apparently, getting better-known also means attracting more assholes.

As you may know, we had a waiting list for the remaining tickets that our artists wouldn’t use after all. Lots of people signed up.

When the tickets went on sale, we saw some people purchasing tickets and immediately put them on Ticketswap to sell them for a profit.

Now, there’s nothing illegal about reselling your tickets on Ticketswap. We even recommend it if you suddenly can’t make it to an event. But to us you’re a special kind of asshole if you clearly have no intentions of going to Left of the Dial and all you’re trying to do is make money at the expense of music lovers who are willing to pay €25 more than the regular ticket price.   

And we realise that the people who coughed up €105 (!) for a ticket on Ticketswap could easily have checked our website first and they just should have paid more attention, but it still feels as if someone is taking advantage of our loving community. We hate that.

We know there are some steps we can take to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. And we will. We just never thought it would be necessary.

Anyway, those evil resellers have put all their tickets up for sale, so luckily they won’t be at Left of the Dial and that means we’ll still be surrounded by good people only! 

Big love,
The naïve Left of the Dial team  

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DOING THE RIGHT THING

 In previous posts, we explained our struggles with the modern world. Like how we try to avoid enriching bankers, or our decision not to spend any money on Meta ads. 

And we really do try to stay away from questionable multi-nationals, but it’s just damn near impossible. Just when we started to attract more people to Bandcamp for example, the platform is sold to a company that’s not free from controversy, to put it mildly.

Now, every time we post about these struggles, people suggest dozens of other platforms to us. Mastodon, Bluesky, Diaspora, Reddit, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora, Qobuz, Freakscene and many more. 

We said it before, Left of the Dial is organised by a very small team and in all honesty, we really don’t know where to find the time to explore all these platforms. At the end of the day, the most important thing for us is to reach as many people as possible to share as much new music as possible. But since everyone seems to have split up across different platforms, we really don’t know what to do anymore. 

So we kind of gave up and we went back to Spotify and Bandcamp to create new playlists for you. 

It’s really hard to divide the Left of the Dial lineup into neat little categories. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward, but more often it’s kind of in the ear of the beholder. What one person considers really loud, is another person’s song to relax. And most artists simply deserve a category of their own. 

But we know we make the huge number of artists on the lineup a lot easier to digest if we split them into different playlists, so we gave it our best shot. We made 5 playlists each named after a song title: 

It’s Oh So Quiet
It’s not completely quiet of course, but this playlist contains the songs that won’t make your ears bleed. It ranges from soothing sunny tunes to introspective ballads and everything in between. 

Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
Lyrically this Nirvana song doesn’t fit this playlist at all, but these songs could all be added to any radio station catering to a broad music loving audience. (And they should!) 

I Am a Rock
A playlist that covers a wide spectrum of rock, but staying clear of the heaviest of the heaviest genre. (And we know that it’s always a thin line, but in this case it’s drawn at some tuneful punk rock.)

Firestarter
A bit (or a lot) heavier, but in most cases very danceable. Pulsing drumbeats take you on a trip through a world of industrial, darkwave, goth pop, klezmer and more. 

I’m Not Like Everybody Else
If you don’t feel at home in a world where everything is cut up into bite-size chunks, this is your playlist. All great songs, but each one just a bit edgier than most cookie-cutter folks could probably handle.    

On our website, you can find a page dedicated to these different playlists. When you scroll down that page you might notice that we also have room for YOUR Left of the Dial playlist. Or link to any other social media platform you might be using.

Feel free to email us a link to any Left of the Dial related playlist, or thread, or whatever and we’ll be happy to put it up there. Hopefully, it helps us decide which platform to focus on in the future, because we’re feeling a tad lost as you might have noticed. 

Big love,
The wandering souls of Left of the Dial 

OUR SUMMER BLUNTLY OVERSIMPLIFIED

 We’ve been awfully quiet the last few weeks, haven’t we? You probably assumed we were enjoying the summer, relaxing, and celebrating the festival selling out.

And for a good five minutes, we were. But things never go as planned, and we’d barely finished our celebratory cocktails when we received an urgent message to come to Waterfront.

Officially, we won’t get the key to Waterfront until the beginning of October. However, over the past few weeks we’ve been there on various occasions for production stuff, and every time the venue was more or less in the same state: dirty, dark, but full of potential.

Until last week. 

We were summoned to the venue and, when we walked in, the place was filled with 4 centimetres of the worst-smelling water. Much to our surprise, because the weather hadn’t been that bad. Yes, it had rained, but it’s not as if it had been pouring constantly, so where on earth had the water come from?

Nobody knew. 

We suggested that maybe it wasn’t the rain causing problems. By no means are we experts on the subject, but we’ve lived below sea level our whole lives, and we know that water sometimes has a tendency to find its way up when somewhere a drainage system isn’t working properly.

Shoulders were shrugged, heads were shaken, and for a few days it was unsure if we could use Waterfront in October. We were slightly panicking and mentally preparing for the embarrassing moment when we’d have to let you know that, despite our best intentions, Waterfront was not going to be part of Left of the Dial.

But then, completely by chance, we ran into someone who had actually worked at Waterfront years ago. They told us this had always been a recurring problem and that, in fact, it had something to do with the drainage system. In oversimplified words: it’s fixable!

We’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say we’re back on track, we’ll get everything cleaned, and you won’t be needing your wellies. If nothing else goes wrong, that is. The venue gods have played tricks on us before, so we’ve learned not to guarantee anything, but we’re now much more confident again we’ll be welcoming you to Waterfront in October.

In the meantime, we’ve been busy completing the lineup. Next Friday, 22 August, we’ll be adding a lot of new artists to the festival. Like, really a lot. And we’re already trying to fit them all into an overwhelmingly huge timetable, which we’ll hopefully be able to release a few days after the lineup announcement.

We’ve also just tested a Wheelchair Pub Crawl, we’re working on the boat and bus shows, and we’re trying to keep track of all the souvenirs we’ve ordered. With another thousand things going on, it’s fair to say our summer break will probably start sometime in November. But who cares? We’re loving every minute of it.

OK, except maybe not the minute we were ankle-deep in smelly water, but other than that it’s been nothing but a great pleasure organising this festival for you all.

Big love,
The sewer rats of Left of the Dial

WE ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE THINGS COMPLICATED (THE OFFICIAL UNOFFICIAL)

Monday, we’re going to slowly start up the promotion for the free daytime shows during Left of the Dial. 

And sure, it would have been so much easier to call it just that: ‘Left of the Dial free daytime shows’ and we’re really not trying to complicate things for the fun of it, but it just wouldn’t be a correct description. 

The Official Unofficial is. 

When we started Left of the Dial, it was just 2 nights, mainly for people in Rotterdam. But it all grew a bit faster than we expected and soon it turned into a 3 day festival with lots of people coming in from abroad. 

We felt we should find a way to entertain those people during the day, but we simply didn’t have the time nor the staff capacity to set up loads of daytime events. So, we asked friends if they wanted to help us out. We didn’t want to limit them in any way, so we decided to call their events The Official Unofficial:

Officially, they’re not part of Left of the Dial and we don’t have any say in the curation. Hosts can book whatever artist they want, it’s their event, not ours. 

Unofficially, we fully support those events though and we do whatever we can to get everybody to the free shows. Even people without a Left of the Dial ticket, we don’t care, if you love music, you should go to The Official Unofficial. 

Now, it can be a bit puzzling. Some artists who play at The Official Unofficial, also play official Left of the Dial shows. And we also have some official Left of the Dial daytime events for which you do need a ticket, like Bands on a Boat. 

We know, we could have made it all a lot less complicated. Just give us a couple of years more of explaining and we’re sure everyone will get it. 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, soon you’ll be reading about a daytime festival with over 50 free shows that happens to take place in exactly the same weekend as Left of the Dial. 

And it really is as simple as that. The Official Unofficial is a really cool festival in Rotterdam on October 24 & 25. Hosted by some really cool people (not us) with a lot of really cool artists. No wristband needed, so please drop by. 

Big love, 

The complicators of Left of the Dial

Oh, and on a side note… we know it’s probably not really smart to promote other free shows when we still have our own tickets to sell, but that’s the kind of confidence level we’re at today. (Might be different tomorrow of course…)