WE LOVE GREAT IDEAS

(and we would steal them if it only made sense)

Last weekend, thousands of people participated in the Rotterdam Marathon. It basically takes over the entire city centre and the spectators are partying like they’re celebrating King’s Day.

The one thing we love most about the event is that all the runners receive a race number to pin on their shirt that also includes their first name. Maybe this is common practice for marathons all over the world (we don’t really know much about sporting events) but whoever came up with the idea is a genius.

For over six hours, the people of Rotterdam are cheering on random runners, shouting out their first names:

‘Only two more kilometres, Margaret!’
‘You’ve got this, Bob!’

It really is the sweetest, most heart-warming thing ever.

We also hear from friends who are amateur athletes that this kind of encouragement makes all the difference when you’re on the verge of exhaustion.

And of course that got us thinking…

The Left of the Dial family is a supportive bunch and our festival is kind of like a marathon.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we gave everybody the option to order their personalised race number?

For a minute or two, we thought that this was the best idea ever. How could this not strengthen the bonds of our already tight-knit community? We had visions of ticket holders rooting for fellow revellers who they’ve never met before:

‘Only two more bands, Margaret!’
‘Let me hold your glasses while you mosh, Bob!’

Then we weren’t so sure anymore. 

Was there ever a time that we actually enjoyed people randomly yelling out our names? We rarely need encouragement to go see the next band, and anonymously blending into the crowd is one of our favourite things about festivals. If that’s how we feel, it’s likely that other people also prefer a certain level of incognito-ness.

So, for now we’re going to put this idea on the back burner. Next week, we’re adding at least another 30 new artists to the Left of the Dial lineup, so we’ve got our hands full anyway. But in the unlikely event that we change our minds and suddenly offer Left of the Dial race numbers with your own name on them, you now know where the idea came from.

Big love,
The Concept Stealers of Left of the Dial   

HAVE WE TOLD YOU LATELY THAT WE LOVE YOU?

(sometimes all it takes is some stickers and a subreddit) 

This was supposed to be a post about how we’re going to start a Left of the Dial subreddit, but somehow it turned into a story about how much we love and appreciate you. That’s the way things go sometimes. Still, a small warning: if you’re not into that kind of mushy stuff, better stop reading now.

We’d like to tell ourselves that we’re tough and seasoned festival organisers who can handle just about anything. But sometimes the world just gets us down. Like last week. Nothing extremely bad happened, but lots of people were being unfriendly and it was just one mishap after another. It drove us into this tiny existential crisis. All we could do was sit around contemplating why on earth we were organising a festival and more importantly, for whom. Slightly pathetic, we know, but hey, we’re only human.

Then two things happened more or less simultaneously.

The printer mistakenly delivered our order of stickers twice. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask if anyone wanted some, but being in a dismal state of mind, we didn’t really expect any replies.

Boy, were we wrong.

Within minutes the messages came flooding in. Not only did dozens of you love the idea of receiving stickers, you asked for them in the most respectful and enthusiastic way. Trust us, that level of excitement combined with kind politeness is like a natural antidepressant.

One non-Dutch person even included a picture of their living room with a framed Left of the Dial poster on the wall. They admitted they stole the poster from one of our venues and took it all the way home to get it framed. That’s a lot of effort for a simple festival poster, which made it even better.

Around the same time, we were thinking about opening a Reddit account, or maybe a Left of the Dial subreddit, we weren’t sure. None of us are experienced Reddit users, so we had no idea, but we know that a lot of musicians use the platform, so we felt it was something we should learn more about.

In all honesty, we were mostly reluctant, because Reddit users can be quite harsh to newcomers and given our frail mental state we were absolutely not ready to be made fun of.

Trying to decipher the unspoken rules of Reddit, we scrolled through endless posts about music and festivals. Much to our surprise, someone posted an article about Left of the Dial months ago and 6 people responded in the sweetest, most appreciative, well-written and clever way possible. We had no idea who these people were, but they seemed to really understand the festival on a deeper level.

And that definitely answered the question why and for whom we’re organising Left of the Dial.

For you.

It would probably make more sense to tell this on the Sunday morning after Left of the Dial. But usually, that’s the moment we’re beyond tired and we can only think of some cliché like “thanks people, this was one for the books!”

So let us take a moment right now to tell you how much we appreciate your contribution to Left of the Dial, whatever it is. Whether you’re an early ticket buyer, a volunteer, a performing artist, an attentive listener, a late night dancer, a very vocal cheerleader, a quiet supporter, or one of our allies in any other way, we love you and you are the reason Left of the Dial is such an amazing festival.

You’re also the reason we feel confident enough to give Reddit a try now. If it turns out to be a depressing experience, we now know exactly what to do to lift our spirits. We’ll just order more stickers. Apparently, good things come from ordering stickers. 

Big love,
The psychoanalysts of Left of the Dial

WE’RE A ROTTERDAM-BASED FESTIVAL AND WE’RE GONNA SHOW IT

Just when we were about to announce that we’re adding an extra day to Left of the Dial, specifically for Rotterdam artists, Iggy Pop mentioned his love for our city in his BBC6 radio show. Sometimes things come together in an unexpected way.

The extra festival day is on Wednesday 21 October. Only Rotown and Bar3 will be open and the lineup will consist entirely of Rotterdam-based bands. The evening is free for everyone who already has a Left of the Dial ticket. (However, because capacity is limited, you’ll still need to reserve an additional ticket, free of charge)

The main reason we’re adding an extra night is that we felt bad about a decision we made a long time ago. Although, it made sense at the time.

At Left of the Dial, we try to introduce audiences to artists they might not normally get the chance to see live. At first, most of our ticketholders came from Rotterdam and the surrounding area, so we tried to give them loads of foreign bands to get to know. After all, they could catch most local bands in venues nearby throughout the year. So, it seemed like a perfectly good reason to keep those local artists to a minimum. 

Nowadays, more and more ticketholders come from abroad, including a wide variety of music professionals who can open doors to more shows, record deals, and all the other things that help build a career in music. All those people rarely get the chance to see Rotterdam artists, so to put it a bit dramatic: we’re basically denying our own local community the chances we offer bands from further away. We may not be too fond of chauvinism, but this is kind of the other end of the spectrum.

Now, we could simply have started putting more Rotterdam artists on the lineup, but we felt that, to make up for lost time, we should give our local stars some extra spotlight this year. But that’s not the only reason we decided to add the Wednesday specifically.

Like we said, the festival attracts quite a few music professionals, and many of them prefer to check out bands on a Wednesday rather than on a Saturday. Simply because their jobs already have them travelling and attending shows constantly, and every now and then it’s nice to spend a weekend at home. So that’s another good motivation to start a day earlier.

But all said and done, it’s an experiment. We have no idea yet whether adding a local focused Wednesday is something you’ll be excited about. Maybe Rotown will be at capacity in no time, or maybe the only people there will be the Left of the Dial team. Both are very possible. But there’s only one way to find out, so we figured we’re just going to give it a try this year.

(If you already have your Left of the Dial 2026 ticket, you’ll receive instructions on how to claim your free additional ticket soon.)

Big love,
The local supporters of Left of the Dial

THE REASON BEHIND OUR ANNOYING OMNI-PRESENCE

Or: "look at us being international trendsetters in good music"

People often ask us why we announce the first wave of artists eight months prior to the festival. Most of you are really excited to hear new music, but in all honesty, some people tell us they get somewhat irritated by the relentless stream of lineup announcements, starting relatively shortly after the previous edition of Left of the Dial.

We get it. There are more festivals in the world and other bands you’re interested in. Besides, you’ve got a whole life to live that has nothing to do with Left of the Dial. Why would you care about the festival until, at most, a few weeks before it starts?

But however annoying it may be, there are two reasons for our persistent omni-presence in your inbox or on your social media.

The first reason is simple: in October you’ll have roughly 150 bands to choose from, and we want to give you the opportunity to listen to each and every artist before planning your festival schedule. You don’t have to listen to all of them, of course, but in case you want to, we’ll try to make the enormous amount of music easier to digest.

The second reason is that it helps bands. Obviously, you following them and checking out their music is great, but apparently being on the Left of the Dial lineup also makes it easier for them to book more shows.

Much to our surprise, we keep hearing this from all kinds of artists, and it makes us kind of proud that other venues and festivals apparently see the Left of the Dial lineup as a stamp of approval. Or at least, that’s how we like to see it.

At the same time, we’re fully aware that this won’t happen for every band. So if you’re on the Left of the Dial lineup and it’s not life-changing at all, we do apologise. We don’t rule the world (yet). But don’t worry, you really don’t need our help. Sometimes it just takes a bit longer for people to realise how wonderful you actually are, and your time will surely come.

Big love,
The leading lights of Left of the Dial

IT’S IN THE EAR OF THE BEHOLDER

(setting ourselves up for endless discussions)

Friday, we’ll announce the first 40-ish artists of the Left of the Dial 2026 lineup. Things usually don’t go as planned, so maybe it’ll be one artist more or one less, but either way, it’s going to be a lot of new music to digest.

We know most of you have absolutely no problem doing so, but for the less trained music fan, we wanted to make the process of familiarising yourself with the lineup a bit easier. It isn’t exactly earth-shattering, and it’s not like it’s never been done before, but we decided to add a ‘For Fans Of’ section to each artist page.

You know: if it’s a straightforward punk rock band, we’ll add ‘For Fans Of The Ramones’, and you immediately know whether or not to put them on your must-see list. In theory, when it comes to ‘For Fans Of’, you’d only use well-known artists, so the majority of people will get the reference.

That didn’t seem too hard, but it has already caused such fierce debates at the Left of the Dial office that we can safely say it’s a lot more complicated than we initially thought. It all depends on your frame of reference, really, because apparently one person’s Nirvana is another person’s Paramore.

Still, we gave it our best shot in the hopes of making the lineup easier to navigate, especially for the less devoted festivalgoer with limited musical knowledge.

So probably not you.

But thanks for reading anyway. You’re our favourite person in the world, because you always pay attention to what we say and you make us feel like we’re not wasting our time writing these posts.

Big love,
The music-classifiers of Left of the Dial