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