Bic Runga - my review!

As announced in the last issue of Klauw (number 11), we went to the concert of Bic Runga in De Melkweg in Amsterdam. We're talking about last week, the 23rd of September by the way. It was such an awesome singer-songwriter performance that I thought it would be wirth writing a special review about this, besides the regular reviews I normally write about the nights in Savanna we organise ourselves.

It was quite close to the fact that we had something to do with the organisation of this event, because when we heard about the gig she was doing in De Melkweg, we tried to book Kat for a support act. This wasn't really going the way it should normally do. First we tried to contact De Melkweg, because that is the place where it normally gets organised from... (dûh) When I called, nobody could tell me who I needed to contact, so they told me to call again the day after. When I called again, they refused to put me through to the programmer, which came as a total surprise to me, because I had contact with them in the past this way without any problems at all. Probably a new person at the reception there. So I wrote a mail. Within a few hours I got a reply from the programmer, and he told me to contact another person (oh no! not again!), named Andy Sceats. Andy is a Kiwi, and he was organising this event, like he does more often with New Zealand related related events. When I asked him to book Kat as a support act for Bic, he was really enthousiastic in the first place. Though, he had promised the spot for another Kiwi already. He promised me to stay in touch, and he would try to make it all possible. Until about a week before the concert was on, I managed to get in touch with him again, without any luck. The spot was taken, but we (Kat and I) decided to go there anyway. In the past months / years, I started liking songwritermusic more and more. I have no f**king idea why, but this teknoboy is turning into somebody who likes this kind of music. You would expect that Kat dragged me over the line, but it's more the other way around with this gig. I really wanted to go, and i had quite a high expectation of the night as well. After everything i heard and read about Bic Runga, it had to be something special.


When we finally went on the train to Amsterdam on saturday, we were having some fun with the photocamera. I was a bit scared that we weren't allowed to bring the camera inside, but that didn't seem to be a problem at all.

The supportact was provided by some other New Zealand guy, but i forgot his name totally. He was quite good in my opinion, but the sound quality was a bit disappointing. This was mainly because this guy totally forgot to use a feedbackbuster in his acoustic guitar, right in the middle of a dunno-how-many-kilowatts-pa-system. Besides that, as soon as Bic hit the stage, i totally forgot about him, and i haven't been thinking about him either during Bic's performance.

A Really small lady came on stage, with a beautiful voice, even though she was having a major cold. As a solo artist for most of the gig, apart from one song, where somebody was guiding her on the piano, she played like there were four guitarplayers on stage. She was so quick with her fingers that you didn't have time to guess the chords she was playing. I was expecting some backing band, from what i read on the net, and in several reviews of other gigs she did this summer in Europe. Nevertheless, it was still advanced enough to miss some parts of her songs. I had the impression that I was being sucked up in her playing. I almost forgot to take some pictures.

Funny thing is, that Kat was also really enthousiastic about it, but a lot less than i was. I totally understand, because i know that this isn't her favourite kind of music, and taken in consideration that it is sung in her native language, makes it another bit less interesting.

When the gig was over, it was kind of short, at its maximum an hour but probably less, we drunk another beer before we left. Back in the tram we were evaluating the night and came to the conclusion that it would have been a lot cooler with the "promised backing band" (that guy from Dimmer for example, and some other expensive famous artists from New Zealand).

Back at central station we decided that we deserved a reward for our hard working (everything for the press off course ;-)), so we ordered some junkfood and another beer for on our way back to The Hague.

See you next time,

Jaap ( & Kat )