Author Archives: Jan Van Haver

Song of the day: Bent Van Looy – Flowers and Balloons

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Bent Van Looy is the frontman of the Belgian band Das Pop. For personal reasons, I will always have an emotional connection with the band as they were the opening act of the 2001 edition of Rock Werchter, my favourite summer festival, on the day my ex-wife was moving out of the house. I decided to go to the festival that day, and was only truely hit by the realization of what was going on at the very moment that the band started playing one of their hits at the time: The Love Program (included as a bonus track below).

Van Looy released a solo album (Round The Bend) a couple of years ago and the opening song, Flowers ans Balloons, still finds exteme ways to touch me every time I hear it. No guitars, no drums, no horns – just a guy singing his song and playing his piano. Simple and honest, but above all magically wonderful.

Would you like to receive 300 EUR?

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Picture from Images Money's photostream on Flickr

Picture from Images Money’s photostream on Flickr

Have you ever heard of helicopter money? The term comes from an image the economist* Milton Friedman used to in a theoretical discussion of what would happen if you simply inject extra money into an economic system (whereby you would throw it out into the streets from a helicopter). There are several ways you could increase the amount of money, and one of them you will probably already have heard of,  Continue reading →

Song of the day: The BPA featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal – Toe Jam

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Earlier today, I happened to be alone in the house. As it often does, this mere fact caused the sound volume of the stereo to go up considerably – especially when the iTunes shuffle function decides to deliver a nice song I had kinda forgotten about.

In the evening, I then decided to promote that particular tune to Song of the day which brought a second dose of enjoyment, as I was not aware of the clip accompanying the song. I am well aware of it now, as I have had to watch several versions of it (quality assurance on this blog is extremely harsh when it comes to finding a good video).

Don’t call us, we won’t either

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Picture by Karlis Kadegis

Picture by Karlis Kadegis

“Hello Mr. Van Haver, how are you today?”. As the opening line of a telephone call from a bloke I’ve never been in touch with before. Am I really the only one to spot from a zillion miles away that the sole intention of such call is to sell me something? Why on earth should that line be the opening line of every single one of those calls? As far as I recall, I did not include on my LinkedIn profile “stupid enough to make any amount of smalltalk cause increased inclination to buy anything”. Not alone are those callers interfering with whatever I was considering a proper use of my time, but they are clearly stupid enough to believe that politely (the use of the word polite obviously referring to the faked intent of the sender of the message, not to the actual effect caused in the recipient) checking how I am doing today – and thereby taking up even more of the time I was not willing to give them – is going to help them reach their goal in even the slightest way.

Aaahhhh. How I enjoy a good rant every now and then.

Song of the day: Art of Noise – Paranoimia (feat. Max Headroom)

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Do you also have those fits of nostalgia where all you want to do for the next few minutes is freak out on a song from time of your musical awakening? In my case that happens to be the 80s – and as you will notice by clicking the Play button in the clip below, I just had one of those fits.