Expedition music exploration

The marvellous, elevated spot in the Internaat gives members of the BorrelCie the privilege of serving beers to the intermaatjes and creating the best drinking atmosphere possible by selecting the music that is being played during the drinks. In a previous Intermania article, named ‘How to harmonize each beer-drinking experience’, Esther revealed the unconscious effects of music on our drinking experience and emphasizes the importance of music selection for an unforgettable drink on Thursday evenings. As a BorrelCie member, I enjoy being behind the bar, but I sometimes suffer from lack of inspiration for the perfect fitting songs. What is the best way to broaden your music horizon and discover new and old pearls in a world of auditive pleasure? Martijn Willemsen can proclaim impressive scientific methods and Spotify features, but I would like to approach this question from a more pragmatic angle. 

One obvious method to get exposed to others’ guilty pleasures and music tastes are the ‘afterpoets music quizzes’! These quizzes are the perfect moment to get inspired or to get frustrated around Christmas time. But if you want to be sure to remember some of the newly obtained songs, it is recommended not to follow the music quiz rules of Protagoras. 

Luckily, 2023 has arrived and the Christmas trees are thrown through the shredder (oh wait, we are all sustainability geeks, probably we replant them), the days are getting longer and before we know it, spring knocks on the door! If you ask me, the best method to explore new music artists and genres is by visiting more concerts and festivals! Intermate members are not hesitant to join me in this theory, and I wonder when the Lowlands hype will start again. However, one big pain in the ass are the increasing prices for festival tickets and beers, so here are some tips to survive a festival without eating ‘pasta red’ for the rest of the month:

• Bring tons of food yourself! Especially knakworstjes are perfect for any moment of the day, even cold! 
• Hide a bottle of your favourite booze in your sleeping bag, security will not find it when entering the camping! 
• Bring your own beers from the camping, often festivals allow you to bring open cans to the festival terrain! 
• Work as a volunteer! This is how I visited three weekend festivals last year, you only need to scream at visitors to put their tents closer to each other for one day and the other days you can visit the festival yourself for free! (If you tell visitors to let the tents hug each other people are actually getting less annoyed, and it is kind of fun to be volunteer). Festivals start looking for volunteers around this time of the year, so be quick if you would like to do something like that! 
• Check if friends of yours are working behind the bar somewhere at the festival, cheating with coins will have a higher success rate! 

Where festivals take a lot of time and are relatively expensive, the Effenaar is not! The pop stage hosts a wide variety of acts all year round and is the perfect place to explore new music! It would be a lot of fun to go there more often with a delegation of intermate members since I really enjoyed going to Goldband and Abba Gold (even though it was the Christmas special) with such a big group of people. It might be a nice new habit as a follow-up on the drinks at intermate and before losing your head at the KIX after spinning the wheel ‘only once’. Who joins me in having an Effenaar club card and increase serendipity to broaden your music horizon?