The Grapefruit Zoo at the Dolhuis!!!

This sunday afternoon finally there´s an opportunity for witnessing the beer drinking freakbeaters the Grapefruit Zoo. The happening is in honour of the new CD of the Heatwave out on Grey Past Records (for details on this great CD see below) with special guest Willem de Ridder, the essential Dee-Jees and our beloved group out of Drenthe. Their sole release is a great 7" with the crude little stomper called "Said before it couldn´t happen to me" which originally of course is from the Heatwave and was on Grey Past as well. It comes in a fantastic sleeve and was one of the finest 45s of last year. No doubt they´ll perform this killer and for this occasion include in their setlist, which by now should be filled with songs of their own, some other fine Heatwave songs. It starts early, at about 4pm, so we´re talking about an all day and allnighter, and surely our boys, Ruubm, Vinner and Peter, are going to prove the saying "Hoe dichter bij Dordt, hoe rotter het wordt" wrong.

Brandnew Grey Past records CD release of unreleased tracks by Dutch 67/ 68 Freakbeat band the Heatwave. 10 Amazing extra tracks and serious enhanced soundquality making this a true document of that period in popmusic everything seemed possible and most of the runners-up never released a piece of vinyl. The Heatwave were outstanding musicians and even better they were adventurous and fantastic songwriters. They just had bad luck. Read the fantastic liners!!! 23 Songs here on this CD and none is bad or even average. Also included their sole unreleased 45 and the instrumental track to the B-side with a long acidguitar solo ending. Bandmembers later joined the Zipps. Only 500 copies were made so act fast. Postage around the world is 3$. For registered postage Europeans must add 5$, overseas 8$. This CD took more than a year to make just to get it as good as possible. The fullcolour booklet contains 36 pages with also as an extra special words by Dutch 60s guru Willem de Ridder!

The Kong-Kings!!!

Some days ago I was invited over by some juveniles to a smoky bar in one of the suburbs of Noordscheschutte. Unfamiliar with their group I was a bit reluctant, but upon entering “De Stee” I see three young guys occupy the stage. This is a good start. Too often we are confronted with old men doing some punk rock just to get past their midlife crisis. The band members are all either nineteen or twenty, perhaps still going to high school. Calling themselves The Kong-Kings, Johnny Kong, Marky Kong and Pete Kong are playing for some friends and the regulars on this Friday night. Too much music is fake, done because it’s cool or because they’re trying to become famous. I could tell instantly that this was the real shit. These boys have no other choice. The only music that they will ever play is bluesy rock´n´roll. It’s in their blood, just as much as drinking a cold beer or watching FC Groningen (probably). Judging is wrong when you think about it, but always judge a man by his shoes. I saw two pairs of converse all stars and one pair of Beatle boots. We can now proceed with the rocking portion of the evening seeing as they have passed the shoe test. Kicking off with their theme tune and then hitting me with a sure athem "I can see it in your eyes". And they know their stuff, covering some Meppel classics; “Love” originally from the Garage Kids, “I want it” from the Josephs & “Psychedelic Blues” from the No-Goods. Recently they also recorded a fine bunch of tunes, easily available through their myspace, www.myspace.com/kongkings. On there the last one is properly titled Psychedelic Blooz, because it swaggers all over the place. Like the boys, changing instruments whenever they feel like it. Johnny fell over the bass drum, Marky was bumming a fag and Pete would riff, solo, wail…whatever. Trying to decide whether a band is fucked on drugs is great. They could be smacked, drunked, coked out of their mind…or they could be so into the music that they are just feeling it, soaking it in, feeling like a sponge. An acquaintance of mine said if they tightened up they’d be great. No, fuck you…they are great, stuff like this is best left sloppy, bowing at the home plate of Chuck Berry, the New York Dolls and the Oblivians. It’s times like this when I’m at my happiest…when I see a band DOING IT RIGHT!!! Like nothing else matters. That god himself has divinely inspired the group in front of me in such ways that perfection isn’t an option, it’s the only choice. The recordings they made are no let down either and captures their spirit on stage perfectly. These Noordscheschutters connected to me. I can smell my own, they pissed in my face, and we were soon apes on the same rock.

The Kong-Kings - I can see it in your eyes

Upcoming concerts

11 april The Grapefruit Zoo/The Heatwave het Dolhuis Dordrecht
22 may The Zodiac Killers/ The Junohoos/ The Vicious Teens Clouso Meppel
11-12 june Go Sinner Go Madrid with De Keefmen!!
13-19 juni De Keefmen Spanish Tour
more info later!

A message from ....

Hey here's Mark the Beatle aka Mark from the No-Goods, reviewing the latest single release of my own band. Well, what can I say? Ok, I'm very happy with this one. In my opinion on this 7" a good sound is captured, it was recorded by EJ Kloosterboer at his farm in Laren, Holland. We had to wait a long time to see a new release by the No-Goods and we were not 100% happy with all the stuff we recorded with EJ, but yeah, this sounds good. My personal fave is the song "Wonder", b-side "Maureen" is a bit boring to me, 'cause I played it too much with no enthousiasm anymore. Some songs you can play forever, some songs you play + - 15 times and then preferably never again. I noticed both good reactions on "Maureen" as very low critics on this song. So, I think I made clear now that I go for side one. "Wonder" I wrote a long time ago and I'm very glad this song was chosen by the guys from Kuriosa to be on the single. By the way, you can hear the song, together with other stuff on our Myspace page www.myspace.com/lekkerebeat. You can also hear some new recordings there, wich will appear on our upcoming first longplayer, on Minstrel Records from Zwolle. But that one will be out somewhere in october this year. Ok, so far for now, greetz from Meppel.

While taking out the trash....

While taking out the trash, a few copies were found of some old CITY TRASH, the magazine for wild & raw rockin´ primitive teens!!
CITY TRASH #4

CITY TRASH #5
w. David Andriese (Perverts) int.
CITY TRASH #10
w. Green Hornet and Kill A Watts int.
CITY TRASH #12
w. No-Goods int.
CITY TRASH #13
w. Robert vd Giesen (Hotpockets) and Low Point Drains
CITY TRASH #16
w. de Straaljagers, the Sealions and Highschool Records
CITY TRASH #19
w. the Hara Kee Rees, the Indikation and the Cool Jerks
CITY TRASH #20
w. the Fumestones, the Real Losers, the Kidnappers

CITY TRASH #25
w. the Magnetix, the Madd and the Hangee V

CITY TRASH #26
w. the Pneumonias, the Quotes, the Micragirls and the Hidden Charms
CITY TRASH #27
w. the Time Flys, Tic Tac Totally and Thomas Function
CITY TRASH #29
w. Shirley Maclaines, Live Fast Die, the Toyotas and Digital Leather
CITY TRASH #30
w. the Intelligence, Sonic Chicken 4, Hex Dispensers and Cococoma

CITY TRASH #33
w. Apache, Fistful Of Records, Frustration and Lili Z.
CITY TRASH #34
w. the Urges, Thee Vicars, the Goodnight Loving and the Untamed Youth
CITY TRASH #35
w. the Chimiks, the Anomalys, Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Digger and the Pussycats and the Cola Freaks

Contact headhoncho at myspace or via citytrash@hotmail.com and demand the copies you´re missing.

Sweet Solo Music

What to do when your drummer has left the country and your bass player is without a job, but has a recording studio and plenty of time, and you have been writing once again a bunch of songs. Well of course you should go and record them, and that´s just what Henri Keefmen did. Using here the less pretentious monnicker of Henri Soulmann. The result is 11 songs, that pretty much show his songwriting skills and the music he likes, like sixties, soul and rock´n´roll.
For those who are familiar with the classic solo recording of Mark ten Hoor "Back to the Wenaker", this is done in similar vein. Peter Cruise (As he now seems to be called) again has out done himself in "orchestrating" the great songs, adding an organ, a bit of fuzz or some basslines. Listen for instance to the fuzz driven "Butterflies", perhaps this is freakbeat??? I have no idea. Or the moody "I truly cry" and "About our love" with a fine organ arrangement and the fanatastic and probably my favorite "Have you seen her".
Fortunately it´s not done all over the top, there are some more acoustic tunes here as well, like the intense "Don´t aks me", the sad "Freezing on a Summerday", the uptempo shouter "All your love", and the catchy "Be that guy", the last two were actually recorded by Henri himself. As expected there´s some place for straight ahead rock´n´roll, and Henri sure loves his Johnny Cash records as is quite evident in the Johnny Cash styled rocker "Doin´ time". And also Hasil Adkins springs to mind hearing "Oeh Ie Ah Oehhh!" Perhaps only not as insane. As a nice surprise he included a version of soul classic "I never loved a woman (the way I loved you) penned by Ronnie Shannon, recorded by many like Jackie Wilson and Aretha Franklin and now Henri Soulmann. His version: it´s crude, raw, wild and great!!!
Be sure to drop by Henri Soulmann´s myspace, and get yourselve a copy. It will be definetely worth the effort.

For your listening pleasure.....

Recently a fine collection of nederbeat could be heard on Radio Extremadura featuring biet classics from De Clungels, Mokum Beat Five and De Clichee Mannetjes (Van Kooten en de Bie). And of course also our local heroes of The No-Goods, The Miracle Men and De Keefmen were played on the great Fonorama radioshow, a show you actually should always check for some great beat, garagepunk, punk, soul and sixties pop, wouldn´t it be great if there was something like this on Dutch Radio!
Radio Fonorama playlist 23 january