When we first moved to Fethiye ten years ago, we started to get to know of different Turkish bands and, as soon as Duman blasted into our ears one night in Deep Blue, we were hooked.
Food, music, sport – a big part of our lives. And, it’s got to be said, very easy to indulge our love for them in Turkey.
So much so that they’re not just our favourite Turkish band, but for me personally,
Duman are easily in my top five bands of all time – I’m not being pinned down to giving them an exact position, however.
Most days, updates about gig dates from the Duman Fan Facebook page show up in my newsfeed – and most days, it’s a sigh of, “They never play anywhere near Fethiye.”
And then recently, there it was: Duman playing at the Jolly Joker in Antalya. Oh, oh, oh, get tickets.
We went online – buy tickets, think later. All of a sudden we’d bought two tickets for Duman…we now needed a bus to get us to there – and a hotel in Antalya for an overnight stay. Hadn’t thought about that bit!
Anyway, it all got (quickly) sorted, and, on Friday 10th January 2014, we found ourselves queuing outside the Jolly Joker in Antalya’s Lara area, waiting to watch Duman.
How exciting! Well, we thought so. We bored everyone silly with the fact we were finally getting to see Duman live.
We still had no actual physical tickets at this point; apparently, they would be waiting for us inside the venue. Hope so!
At around 9pm, the doors opened, we showed our passports to the door guys, headed up the stairs and sure enough, there was the envelope with Barry’s name on it containing our tickets.
Thank you Biletix! That went smoothly.
And what a perfect venue for a gig. Not too big, not too small, but intimate. And a full bar. This was a Duman gig. Singer, Kaan, cut his teeth in the Seattle scene.
Think Pearl Jam, think Nirvana.
We were expecting plastic glasses. But no, they do things differently here. We got two bottles of beer.
Wow! Glass bottles at a gig.
On spotting Düvel, and on spotting it didn’t cost much more than an Efes, Barry ordered one, next round. “Would you like it in a Düvel glass,” asked the barman.
All Barry’s birthdays came at once – we’re at a Duman gig and he’s propping the bar up with a big tulip glass full of Belgian beer in his hand.
And then we started to look around. Hmm, a bit different to the gigs we’ve been used to in the UK in the past. A super glamorous lady in a cigarette kiosk – mini skirt and high heels, stood perfectly still. A long balcony outside for those who were smoking.
High tables with ‘reserved’ labels lined the side walls – some of them had bottles of Jack Daniels on them!
Slowly, the Jolly Joker Concert Hall started to fill up – we had to get there early because we were picking our tickets upon arrival.
There’s no support band; just Duman.
They’re supposed to be on stage at 10 pm but we’ve been told by numerous friends that it’ll be after that – they’ll be late but they’ll play til late.
We didn’t care. This was ten years in the waiting!
And if you don’t know Duman, but are a music fan, get to know them. The playlists above are the only two albums they currently have on Spotify, but, as ‘best ofs’ they are a very good introduction to the band.
If you’ve got a Spotify account, you can play any of the tracks above directly from here.
If you just want to sample rather than trawling through each track then: on Duman 1, we recommend tracks 2 and 3 and 8 as good starters. Over on Duman 2, track 3 is always a crowd pleaser
It was on Friday night, too. Give yourself a blast of track 1, too, and then, so versatile are Duman the lovely Elleri Ellerime is worth 4:17 of anyone’s time.
We’re so biased: listen to them all – and add them all to your playlists. And then go off and buy some other Duman albums (if you can get your hands on them).
So, ten years in the waiting. We’re here loud and proud. Time to check in to tell the social media world we’re here! 94 others have checked in already, too.
But we do keep saying Turkey loves social media – and Turkey definitely loves Foursquare (and why not?). It’s not long before we’re one of hundreds…
At this point, 338 people had checked in on Foursquare and many had sent it to Twitter too.
We’re guessing there were around 1,000 people at the Duman gig on Friday night – and eventually, there were over 500 check-ins on Foursquare. Impressive. And we were all there to watch Duman!
At around 11:15, they appeared on stage. This is a band who are just constantly gigging – and it shows.
They’re just amazing!
The crowd know every single lyric to every single track – we’re happy with the choruses – and Duman play everything we hope they’ll play. And more.
For three hours (with a short break half way through), Duman play through track after track, they talk to the crowd, the bar’s packed, we have a few drinks, bottles, glasses and cans are being passed back and forth…no one throws anything! We look around again.
The Duman band members, Barry and I are quite easily the most underdressed people in the Jolly Joker Antalya on this night.
They do things differently, here! We like it that way. And bar one or two other people, we’re also, along with Duman, possibly the oldest people in the room.
Again, we don’t care – singer Kaan is one year older than we are. Life’s good.
They know their way around a stage! For us, it was more than worth the journey to Antalya and back again.
2014 is the year we both turn 40 years old. Rather than have ‘a 40th’ we’ve decided we’re going to have a year of 40th indulgence.
Going to watch Duman was the first event in our 40th celebrations. Think we could well have peaked early because we’re going to be hard pushed to beat this one!
Anil
Wednesday 15th of January 2014
So happy that you made it to their show and it was a good one (I can't imagine it not being.) I'm amazed at how they can keep touring and the energy.
By the way, did Kaan take a long break in the middle of the set?
Turkey's For Life
Wednesday 15th of January 2014
It took a long time Anıl, but we finally got to see them before they lose the energy or the will to keep gigging. ;) And actually, they all took a break mid set - but only for about 20 minutes... :)
Backto Bodrum
Wednesday 15th of January 2014
I'm so glad the gig lived up to your expectations . After the build up I was worried the show would be an anti-climax.
Turkey's For Life
Wednesday 15th of January 2014
Ha ha, it did cross our mind, too, but we've seen lots of Duman on tv when they're doing live gigs so we had a good idea of what was coming our way.