SOMETIMES WE MESS THINGS UP

(and then we try to make them right)

Overall, things went pretty smoothly last year. Except for one thing. We had to cancel the second show of a band through absolutely no fault of their own, but in retrospect,  we feel we didn’t make that quite clear.

During the second show’s soundcheck, we got a noise complaint from a neighbouring office. The office was supposed to be empty, but apparently someone was working late, who got absolutely livid and threatened to call the police if we made any sound before 18.00h.

Now, we’re not afraid of the police, and we only use that specific stage for one weekend, but the venue is there all year round. We didn’t want to jeopardize their much-needed good relationship with their neighbours. So, we had no other choice than to skip the first two bands.

For one band, we could easily find another slot, but the other had to leave straight after their scheduled show due to other obligations which made it impossible to move them to another slot.

Of course, it’s a festival and these things happen, but we could have communicated it waaaayyyyy better.

In the heat of the moment, with hundreds of other things going on, we gave you some vague ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ reason which maybe made it sound like the band had some part in the cancelation while they absolutely didn’t.

They really wanted to play their second show and judging from the queue at their first show and all your disappointed reactions you would have REALLY loved to see them again.

So, we did the only logical thing – we invited them back for Left of the Dial 2025. And they accepted!

They will be part of the Feb 40 which we’ll proudly announce tomorrow.

Big love,

The stage divers of Left of the Dial

PS: Most of you will know exactly which band we’re talking about, but we promised to keep it a secret until the first official lineup announcement, so if all you smartasses can restrain yourself from posting their name in the comments for about 24 hours, that would be greatly appreciated. Tomorrow it’ll be official and we can all publicly celebrate their return!

UPS AND DOWNS

 So far, it has been a week with some ups and downs. 

By chance, we discovered that our ticket shop hadn’t been working properly for days. Most of you already got your tickets, so you rightfully couldn't care less, but we felt pretty lousy about disappointing the people who finally decided to join us this year.

And if we may say so ourselves, you really don’t want to miss out on Left of the Dial this year. Of course we’ll have the immense popular good old Band on a Boat, but our love of alliteration also made us want to do something else. 

And today we got one step closer to Bands on a Bus.

We spent weeks trying to find a bus company willing to drive around the city with a band playing on board. Today, we finally struck gold. Somewhere in the south, we found a parking lot filled with party busses and their owner loved the idea of Bands on a Bus. 

We still have to figure out some technical stuff, find a band who doesn’t get car sick and somehow make sure everyone will be safe while cruising the city, so we’re not there yet, but things are looking great. We might even say it has been the highlight of the week and we can only hope Bands on a Bus will also be one of the highlights of the festival. 

To let you in on our excitement, we made some phone videos which we'll post later on. A bit crappy, but hopefully you’ll get the general idea…

Big love,

The moody bus drivers of Left of the Dial

(Oh, and about the ticket shop: it’s more or less fixed, so ticketless people can queue up again. It’s mostly a pretty up week after all!)

SOMEHOW THINGS ARE ALWAYS EASIER IN OUR MINDS

We wanted to do things a bit differently this year, so we figured, let’s kick off our lineup announcements with the extra stuff you can do during Left of the Dial; The Extra Extras.

Of course, our musical lineup will always be the most important thing in the world, but a lot of people put a lot of effort into coming up with ways to entertain you on those scarce moments you’re not at a concert, and their efforts deserve some special attention too.

Always optimistic, we told everyone that the Extra Extras announcement would be on January 20th, so there would be no turning back. Okay, the festival was still months away so it might not be the most urgent issue for most, but we thought how hard can it be to gather a bunch of cool activities and put them on a website?

As it turns out, not as easy as we thought.

We wanted to do film screenings again (and we will!), but it’s way too early to select the perfect documentaries yet. Our former intern definitely wants to put together another art exhibition, but they informed us that ‘the creativity wasn’t currently flowing like it should’. And apparently it’s really hard to convince venues with wooden floors to host a roller disco.

Another thing we wanted to announce was The Closing Ceremony. We always have a Grand Opening, and we thought it would be cool to also end the festival with an official ritual. So far we’ve learned that we can’t burn stuff next to the Buttplug Gnome and a lightshow of 2,000 drones is ridiculously expensive, but we’re still working on some other options.

To cut a long story short: we said we were going to announce the Extra Extras on Monday and we still will, but probably only half of them. More will follow later.

We hope you still give just as much love to these Extra Extras as you give to our regular announcements, because however incomplete, we still tried our hardest. And even though they might not seem like much now, they will make Left of the Dial more fun, we promise!

Extra love,

The ever attempting Left of the Dial crew

VERA GRONINGEN

 It will be quite a few days before we’ve got news to share about Left of the Dial 2025, so we figured why not take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about one of our favourite Dutch venues: Vera Groningen.

It’s in Groningen, which is an almost 3-hour drive from Rotterdam, so we don’t go there nearly as often as we’d like to, but trust us, if you’re in a band, Vera should be on top of your want-to-play-list.

Vera is run by the friendliest people ever who all genuinely care about artists, which is reason enough to fall in love with the venue, but there’s one more thing that always makes us a tiny bit jealous when we spend an evening at Vera: their wall of fame.

They have this annual poll amongst their ticketholders to determine the best show of the year. Since 1981, every poll-winning band gets their name painted on the wall of fame and we can only say that it’s a VERY impressive list. Their ticketholders have an amazing taste in music, because so many incredible bands are on it, it’s really mind-blowing.

The most mind-blowing part is that last year, our dear friends Tramhaus were added to the wall of fame.

You can sell a million records, or play a hundred sold-out arena shows, to us the biggest achievement will always be getting your name of the wall of Vera.

If you’re ever in Groningen, go to Vera. They continuously put on the best bands, and they serve cold beer for a reasonable price. It’s nearly impossible to NOT have a great night in Vera.

Especially next Wednesday…

Vera kindly invited the Left of the Dial DJ team (that’s us) to spin some of our favourite records, alongside our aforementioned buddies of Tramhaus, the dazzling Vera Siemons, and the DJs of the coolest outdoor festival ever: Misty Fields. Pretty cool, right?

Hope to see you on Wednesday!

Big love to you and to Vera,

The parttime DJs of Left of the Dial

PS: If you hate dancing, just wait for us downstairs in the basement bar. We’ll come hang out with you after as soon as we’ve put on our last record!

SLIGHTLY CONTEMPLATIVE END OF YEAR POST

We came across this ad for SXSW in some 1989 Texan newspaper. The Austin based showcase festival started in 1987, so this would have been its third edition and it was already bigger than Left of the Dial. Which feels slightly discouraging, but then again, everything is always bigger in Texas.

We’ve attended SXSW many times, and in lots of ways it has been an undeniable inspiration for our festival. It was always so wonderful to walk the streets of a city that was buzzing with music loving people everywhere and we wanted nothing more than bring that vibe to Rotterdam. But the last few years we started to feel less and less at home there. Everything seemed about big brands promoting their stuff, about corporate meetups and making business deals. It simply didn’t feel like it was about the music anymore.

In a way, that was somewhat of an inspiration too. It made us decide that at Left of the Dial music always should come first. Sure, we need to sell tickets or find other funds to organise the festival and to pay the bands, but we promised ourselves that we’re never going to get involved with demanding sponsors and that we would always take care of our artists the best way we can.

It’s still our dream to turn Left of the Dial into the biggest showcase festival ever, for the simple reason that it would mean giving more bands a platform to promote their music. However, we don’t want to grow at any cost. Whether you buy a ticket, or if you’re on stage, Left of the Dial should always be about having the best time ever. And the same goes for us: the only reason we spend every waking hour on organising the festival, is because we have so much fun doing it. Putting fun first will probably never lead us to being the biggest showcase festival ever, but who cares? To quote one of our other favourite songs:

Never for money, always for love.

Stay safe and we wish you the best possible new year!

Lots of oliebollen-love from Left of the Dial 

PS 1: To all the bands that have been confirmed to play SXSW in 2025, don’t worry… you’re going to have a great time in Austin. The weather is usually lovely, the breakfast tacos are insanely delicious and you will meet lots of Americans who all tell you your music is amaaaaaaaazing. Just go, have fun and make us proud!

PS 2: As you may have noticed, Alex Chilton was on the SXSW lineup in 1989. Coincidentally, he did background vocals on Left of the Dial, the Replacements song we named our festival after. Of course, that doesn’t really mean anything, but when we saw this ad, we took it as a sign that Left of the Dial is on its way to greatness. But then again, we take everything as a positive sign…