I recently took a trip across Europe, spending the majority of my time in the Amsterdam area of The Netherlands, with smaller stops in Brussels, Paris, and Keflavik, Iceland (to see the volcano!). It was a meetup with some old and new friends to see a musical group we all deeply appreciated, Nits.

If you’ve never heard of them, fret not. They are best known in their native Holland, but tour the rest of Europe regularly to great acclaim, and release albums pretty steadily, also to great acclaim. After 50 years as a band (!), their creative well hasn’t run dry.

As for the music, “smartly-written pop with a poetic edge” might cover it, and of course being pretty old now, the tempo has gradually slowed over the decades, though I’m not sure they were ever in danger of being called a “rock-n-roll band.”

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Anyway, that’s the background behind the trip, though far from the only thing we did. The purpose of this post is to serve as a mental bookmark for me, since I want to file the CDs and DVD I bought while I was there, but I want to remember which discs I bought while I was on that specific trip. I’m vain enough to think that someone out there would be interested in knowing also, maybe, so here it is.

Top of the list, of course, is the Nits’ latest release, Tree House Fire. At only six songs, it could be called an EP or a mini-album, but what’s important about it (besides being bought from the band directly, in Amsterdam), is that it is the group’s artistic response to a tragedy — the band’s Werf Studio, also effectively their storage locker, archive, and clubhouse — burned to the ground.

Many bands would have struggled to overcome the loss, but this group knows one main way to express how they feel, and that is through song. Not every song on it has a direct connection to that event (I think), though most of them do. I was very happy to finally be able to support the band directly, to share in their sorrow and strength to carry on, and to finally see a band I’ve been collecting since 1981 or so (!) in person, performing live on stage to an appreciative hometown audience.

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Okay, that’s the context, here’s the list with no more commentary, not ranked in any particular order (prices included when known):

— Nits, Tree House Fire (EP), €10
— Cinerama, Quick Before it Melts (CD-single), €1
— Brian Eno, Brian Eno’s Original Score for the Documentary Film about Dieter Rams (Album), €5
— The Monochrome Set, Access All Areas CD+DVD concert, €5
— Nits, Wool, (Album), €5
— David Bowie, A Reality Tour (DVD), €12