More picture here...

This afternoon, Black Francis (better known as Pixies leadsinger Frank Black) gave a 'precore' performance at the Zorgvlied graveyard in Amsterdam, a couple of hours before his show in Melkweg. At the tomb of Herman Brood, he played four songs, some of them from his new album "Bluefinger", that is a hommage to Brood. He also played the Pixies classic "Where Is My Mind". I heard about the performance an hour in advance via Twitter and rushed to Zorgvlied with Kari-Anne. I shot some pictures and filmed two songs. One of them is on YouTube now. On the picture below, you see Black and his friends looking for Herman's grave. They were late for their own show.

This Monday, Dutch comic artist Hanco Kolk assisted Spinvis at his Christmas Eve concert in Paradiso.
Kolk, who once designed my avatar, did some live drawing on stage during the song 'Flamingo'.
I attended the show and took some pictures...

( Hanco Kolk in action... )

"If I only ever make one movie, Control would have to be it", Anton Corbijn said earlier this year. Today I could see for myself what he meant, and I'm convinced: Control is a real Corbijnesque movie, completely in line with his photo shoots and music videos for bands like U2, Nirvana and Depeche Mode. I really got depressed by just looking at Sam Riley playing the tormented lead singer Ian Curtis.

The black and white scenes of the poor British city Macclesfield are very impressive, just like the isolated shots of Curtis walking along in his long coat. You cannot feel no pity for Curtis, who is obviously struggling with his life. He committed suicide at the age of 23, being a father and a husband. This movie is not a pleaser, just like Joy Division's music itself. Great music, great movie.

One year ago, the Wilhelminaplein (my office view) looked like above...
... but they  started building an apartment building that will block my view.

I'm sort of frenetically urging towards the end of the book I bought in Utah this holiday: Bob Woodward's Wired, about the dramatic career of John Belushi. The explosive actor (famous for being one of the Blues Brothers) was found dead of a drug overdose March 5, 1982, in a bungalow off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I'm at February 26, page 387, having one more hundred pages to go. It is a fascinating book, making you feel sorry for his hysterical way of living - but most of all for his wife Judy who can't get him off drugs. This book must be scarily familiar for anyone who ever lived with a drug addict.

After sleeping off my jetlag, I finally succeeded in selecting some of my 965 pictures, uploading them to Flickr and compose this illustrated report. Let one thing be clear: glorycookie and I had a great holiday. Driving through the southwest of the USA is fascinating and thrilling. We experienced California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and the cities of San Francisco, Las Vegas and Berkeley. Our main goal were the beautiful National Parks in the southwest, but the roads towards it and the towns where we spend the night were just as great. The holiday was a true adventure.



San Francisco was a very cosy megatown. We liked the changing heights.



Our road trip brought us to many national parks, like The Grand Canyon:

Holiday time is over. glorycookie and I arrived at Schiphol this morning.
Deadly tired due to the jetlag, so here's just a short photo blog. More soon!



Beware of the excessive food dishes! Above you see my thursday's dinner...



Update: Kari-Anne also published some nice pictures.

Lowlands was geweldig. We hebben ons niet puur laten leiden door het overvolle programma. Het jammere is dat je dan hoogtepunten mist (Editors op vrijdag!), maar soms stuit je ook op kleine diamantjes. Zo lieten we zondag Nine Inch Nails deels schieten om naar een koptelefoonconcert van de Nederlandse band Alamo Race Track te kunnen gaan (foto onder). Dat bleek een goede keuze, want de set van NIN was zo hard dat er weinig te genieten was. Al zullen de ware metalfans daar vast anders over denken. 

TOPPERS: Damien Rice op vrijdag (rockte veel meer dan ik vooral verwachtte), Chris Cornell en Kaiser Chiefs op zaterdag (KC was het meest dynamisch, Cornell imponeerde met zijn fantastische stem), Alamo Race Track en The Arcade Fire op zondag. Helaas moesten we Tool laten schieten om nog tijdig in Amsterdam te kunnen arriveren. Ik was precies om middernacht thuis.

NADEEL: waarom programmeerde de organisatie de meeste topacts op zondag? Concurrent Pinkpop is inderdaad een festival met traditiegetrouw een 'hoofddag', maar Lowlands is altijd een meerdaags festival geweest. De organisatie zou er goed aan doen de toppers voortaan beter te spreiden.

Okay, I'm new here. Wanted to react on someone's blog, but it was 'registered only'. Who am I? Jeroen Mirck, journalist, living in Amsterdam. I write a lot, especially online. At the same time, my major job is writing for a weekly magazine about marketing, advertising, and media. My major blogs are Adfoblog and Comicbase.

But there's more: Web-log, MySpace, Hyves, Blogger and Volkskrantblog.

From now on, this list includes a Live Journal. Although I like blogging, I'm not sure how much I'll write here. For now, I just don't promise frequent publishing yet. Maybe, I'll change my mind. Just come back and see.