NEWS FROM THE (WATER)FRONT

 If you were a concertgoer in Rotterdam in the early 2000s, chances are you regularly went to Waterfront.

It was a bunker-like venue under the big red bridge, just east of the city centre. Dark and gritty. But if you needed some fresh air, you could simply step outside, and from the quay you’d have one of the best views of Rotterdam by night. We saw so many great concerts there – it was just a really cool place for anyone into so-called alternative music.

But things don’t last forever, not in Rotterdam anyway, and in 2008 Waterfront closed it doors. 

In 2010, another organisation took over, and they really messed things up. They essentially scammed the local government (the owners of the building) and vanished abroad. After that, the concert hall remained empty.

For years, we’ve been trying to get Waterfront back in use – without success. Club Haug – a very cool comedy club – opened next door which sparked some hope, but apparently, there’s a leak in the roof of the actual concert hall that is – for technical reasons we don’t really understand – practically unfixable. Logically, the local government can’t allow new tenants into a leaking building, and so that’s where the story seemed to end.

Or so we thought.

A while ago, we decided to give it another try. We asked if we could use Waterfront only as a temporarily festival venue. There is a shortage of suitable concert halls in Rotterdam, especially during the Left of the Dial weekend and we could really use the extra room. We figured that if we had two weeks to tidy up the place, and brought in a few buckets just in case it rained, we could revive some of Waterfront’s historical glory – even if just for three days.

And much to our surprise our plan got green lighted!

We were over the moon when we got the news – but, as usual, it came with a whole new set of problems. Lots of logistical issues that we won’t bore you with, but our biggest concern was the venue being quite a walk from our other locations.

On the other hand, Waterfront is located at the pickup-point of Bands on a Boat, so our regular ticketholders know where to find it. We reckoned, if we’d add two more venues close by and set up a bus service to the area, it might still work. 

And that’s basically what we’ve been doing the past few weeks; creating a sort of new festival hub to show you more of our beautiful city and to accommodate more bands. 

 It took us long enough, but we found two just as legendary venues in the same area: The Cube (formerly known as Plan C - if you’ve studied in Rotterdam, you’ve gotten drunk there at least once) and the iconic Rotterdam Public Library (where we borrowed hundreds of books over the years). All near the cube houses and the market hall and, more in general, it’s just another amazing part of the city.

To cut a way too long story a little bit shorter: we’re really proud that Waterfront, The Cube/Plan C and Rotterdam Public Library will be part of Left of the Dial 2025, but we also feel it’s only fair to warn you:

The three venues are about a 20-minute walk from the ticket desk, and it’ll take another 25 minutes to get from Waterfront to the Perron/Roodkapje/Salsability/160K area. The bus service will be free for all ticketholders, but given Rotterdam’s traffic, sticking to a fixed schedule will be tricky. If not impossible.

We’ll do our best to make everything run as smooth as possible, but wearing comfortable shoes or bringing your own bike (or getting a rental) is strongly recommended.

Either way, it felt like too cool an opportunity to pass up – and with a bit of love and understanding from your side, we’ll make it work!

Big love,
The temporarily reopeners of Left of the Dial

VENUE UPDATE

The festival is only 132 days away – and more importantly – it’s not like we haven’t organised a festival before, so you’d think we could easily share all the Left of the Dial 2025 venues with you by now.

But we can’t. 

As it stands, there will be a total of 25 stages – that’s three more than last year. We’ve swapped some of the smaller venues for larger capacity rooms, which will hopefully lead to less queueing.

We specifically wanted to find more venues that are more accessible for our friends who use wheelchairs – and it’s quite embarrassing to say, but that turned out to be far more difficult than we initially expected. Apparently, being accessible AND having a licence for live music is a rare combination in Rotterdam.

We’ll update the venue overview on our website as soon as we can, but here are the first changes:

Last year, we used two rooms in TR8, but one of them was way too small. So we’re moving to Theatre Rotterdam, where we’ll be using the small room – though despite the name, it’s considerably larger than TR8. And it’s also fully accessible for wheelchair users.

We won’t be using Sahara (with the extremely steep steps) either. Instead, we’re moving next door to Annabel, where we’ll be using two rooms – though unfortunately only one will be wheelchair accessible.

Finally, we’re still waiting for confirmation on three other brand-new venues, but we don’t want to jinx anything by revealing them prematurely. So more on that later. 

We know some of you are perfectly capable of walking, but simply hate strolling more than ten minutes – and believe us:

If we could find 25 venues on the same street, with great sound, ample space, full accessibility and cheap beer, we absolutely would. But since we don’t live in a perfect world, we’ve got to make do with what we’re given. (And what we’re given is still pretty cool, we think!)

Big love,

The comfy shoes wearers of Left of the Dial

QUADRUPLE GIN AND TONICS

(a cautionary tale for alcohol drinking Brits)

Every year, we’re surprised by the large number of double gin and tonics, or double rum and cokes that are ordered in our backstage bar.

Don’t get us wrong, Left of the Dial artists work hard and they deserve to drink whatever they want, but still… why would you risk alcohol poisoning when you’re playing a festival?

A couple of days ago, we had somewhat of a small epiphany when we suddenly remembered that when you order a mixed drink in England, you’re always asked whether you want ‘a single or a double’.

And that if you order a single, you only get a thimbleful of alcohol, but that a double looks pretty much like the standard Dutch size.

So we finally realised that we've been giving unsuspecting bands quadruple mixed drinks for years, which explains a lot about the state some band members are in when they leave the backstage bar.

What can we say, you live, you learn and this year we’ll instruct our bar staff to always check if someone wants a British, or a Dutch double.

Big love,

The accidental enablers of Left of the Dial

PAY BANDS, NOT BANKERS

(our small resistance to money grabbing institutions) 

Nothing essential for your Left of the Dial experience, but someone pointed out that any form of anarchy, however small, is always worth sharing, so here we go: 

One thing that has always really bothered us is banking fees. If we want to pay an invoice from a foreign country, such as the UK for example, it costs about €20.

We understand that one has to pay for a service, but it’s not as if someone from the bank gets on a boat to London to deliver an envelope with our money. It’s all basically nothing more than communicating computers, so why is there such a ridiculously high fee?

It probably has something to do with the salaries of senior bank managers. They make hundreds of thousands, or even millions, a year.

That’s another thing that bothers us. We firmly believe that the world would be a much better place if money was distributed more evenly.

That’s why we've made it a point to try to spend less on banks.

As a festival and as a venue, we book hundreds of foreign bands every year, and almost all of them need to be paid via bank transfer. The agencies that represent these bands have the habit of splitting the fees into two equal amounts: a few weeks before the show you pay a 'deposit', and immediately after the show you transfer the remaining amount.

With a regular club show, that remaining amount sometimes changes because, for example, more tickets have been sold than initially estimated. But much more often it’s simply a fixed fee and you end up transferring the same amount twice.

Which means you have to pay a transfer fee twice.

We’ve started explaining to artists that they should just send one invoice for the total fee. We’re a trusting bunch, and we’re happy to transfer the full amount as soon as they send the invoice, even if it’s months before the show. And if we book multiple artists through one agency, we’ll try to pay everything in a single transfer.

For a bank employee with a top salary, it’s less than peanuts, but we managed to save about €4,000 in bank costs last year.

And that money was spent entirely on our festival.

We know, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't amount to much — but you have to start somewhere if you want to make the world a better place.

Big love,

The Robin Hoods of Left of the Dial

WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR AGE

The past few days, we’ve sold an astounding number of tickets to people who have never been to Left of the Dial before, which is absolutely heartwarming, and we can’t wait to see you all in October.  

With our family growing, it might also be a good time to explain all newcomers (and remind you) what makes Left of the Dial such a special festival: 

Each and every one present at our festival sticks to a few simple rules.

• If you’re a performing artist, you play your best show(s) ever;
• If you’re a crew member, you do everything in your power to make things run smoothly;
• And if you’re a ticketholder, you’ve got 2 jobs: firstly,  you cheer on artists any possible way you can, and secondly, you are kind to your fellow festivalgoer.

Now, that last thing is really not that special, and we can’t think of any other festival that doesn’t expect their ticketholders to treat each other with nothing but respect. Therefore, it goes without saying that we don’t tolerate any isms. Except for the good ones, such as optimism or investigative journalism, of course. 

Now, that last thing is really not that special, and we can’t think of any other festival that doesn’t expect their ticketholders to treat each other with nothing but respect. Therefore, it goes without saying that we don’t tolerate any isms. (Except for the good ones of course, such as optimism or investigative journalism, for example.) 

Closer to the festival we will remind you that we will immediately kick you out if you demonstrate any form of racism, sexism, homophobia-ism, but for now we’d like to highlight another important no-no: 

Ageism

We're proud to serve a wide range of music lovers from all ages, and it doesn’t matter if your 16 or 75, you should feel welcome at Left of the Dial. That’s why we don’t accept anyone mocking millennials for wearing the wrong jeans or calling Gen Zers cry-babies. And we also expect you to know better than to say something lame like ‘OK Boomer’. 

This whole generations battle thing is just plain stupid and has gone on long enough. Be kind. 

Big love,
The unifiers of Left of the Dial  

PS: We didn’t have an example of a Gen X cliché ready, but clearly you can’t make fun of them either!