BYE BYE!

THIS IS MY LAST POST ON THIS WONDERFUL WORLD SITE - A NEW SITE HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTED THAT HAS THE NEWS BLOGS COMBINED WITH ALL INFO ON THE OLD SITE FREEK KINKELAAR.NL.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ME - PROVIDING YOU WOULD WANT THAT, CAN BE FOUND ON THE NEW WONDERFUL WORLD OF FREEK KINKELAAR SITE.

THIS SITE IS LOCATED AT http://www.freekkinkelaar.nl/

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THANKS FOR YOUR VISITS - HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE RIDE. BYE BYE!

Verne Langdon (1941 - 2011)

Last night I received the horrible news that Verne Langdon had died. Verne (born 15 September 1941, Oakland California) was not only a very well known cult monster mask maker, he was also the creator of the legendary LP "An Evening With Boris Karloff" and produced over 30 albums (including his own) in his long career. But, most of all, Verne was my friend. Even though we never met in person, we exchanged long letters and e-mails very frequently. I met Verne via the website he built in honor of his close friend Korla Pandit, the turbanned organist. Verne had taken organ courses with Korla and the two struck up a life-long friendship. Since I was most interested in Korla Pandit both as a person and as a musician, I contacted Verne. We became close cross-Atlantic friends. Quite a few years ago, Verne handed over the Korla website to me, which touched me deeply as I knew well how much he cared for the site he had built in honor of his friend. Verne also sent me Korla-related documents and recordings over the years. We last corresponded two weeks ago and when I mailed him last week, he took longer than usual to reply. Yesterday I received the news he had passed away "in his sleep, with a smile on his face". Verne died, a mere 69 years old, on 1 January 2011. Sleep well Verne...

The picture of Korla and Verne was taken in 1968 and is one of Verne's favorites.

In his own words, written down when his friend Korla died:

"You and the night are gone, but the melody lingers on"

A hard days night

It wasn't really.... Last Sunday we spent some time in Erik and Petra's sound studio to work on the new Beequeen album Port Out Starboard Home. As there was a lot of earth hum on my guitar in Giant's Hill, we re-recorded that one. We also re-did the vocals on Patience and the vocal middle bit of Giant's Hill. And, since we were on a roll, we re-recorded the vocals to Port Out Starboard Home as well for good measure. Even though the physical temperature was challenging, the mental temperature was warm and cosey. Three nice shots from that afternoon; I like the one where Erik holds the Ancient Light of Magic in his hands. That helped a lot. We worked well and hard, leaving enough time to look at Erik's collection of guitars. Enviously. Obviously.

Dar who?

In the mid-80's I was an ambitious angry young artist, studying the arts and all geared up to save the world with my conceptual art - whether the world was ready for it or not. Ah, I remember it well... With my compadre in art, Rob Woesthoff, we formed a new art-group called Nivo Stilo and spent hours/days discussing art and producing the Nivo Stilo art magazine, which we filled with poems and articles and manifestos and drawings and and and (all under different names of course - to give the impression we were a real Movement). Rob was R. Incultejardin and I was Flynn Besoin (Flynn from Errol Flynn and Besoin was, very dada, randomly selected from a dictionary). Rob and I were very enthusiastic about this project. In fact so much, that we even decided to form a band. The band name was Dar Pomorza (Polish for "gift of Pomorza", the name of a boat, Pomorza being a Polish town) and we played guitars (badly), synthesizer (borrowed from the art academy) and sang out of tune. We even produced a tape, a C60 TDK tape called The Dar Pomorza on TDK. One side featured spoken word, the other side featured a couple of our songs, recorded in our rehearsal room in Arnhem. When you are a band, you need to perform to spread the message to the People. Oddly enough, we were asked to play live in Willemeen in Arnhem, when someone from Willemeen heard us rehearse. We were programmed for 28 January 1987 with two local speed metal bands. It was truly a frightening night; our paltry equipment (one guitar, said synthesizer and a rhythm box) was nothing compared to the shiny drumkit, Fender guitars and huge Marshall amps of the speed metal bands. The show itself was something I will never forget; we nearly got killed by the audience, who didn't dig our loverly tunes at all. That's me in the background, playing Rob's guitar and looking desperate. Rob is steady as ever, playing the synthesizer with one finger. Flash forward to 2010. Having lost contact with Rob and haven't spoken to him in over 20 years, he recently sent me an e-mail out of the blue! We met up in a local restaurant and had a truly great evening discussing Dar Pomorza and Nivo Stilo. We looked at old magazins, the old tapes and pondered at how old we had become over ancient photos made at Willemeen at that memorable gig in 1987. I've enclosed one example here. The quality is not that good, but then again, neither were we. It is a testament of what we tried to achieve on that unfriendly stage. It didn't work of course, but what a great time to look back on! Rob is still involved in art and has a great site where you can buy his work http://www.robwoesthoff.nl/

Swans

Dear reader, last night I went to see Swans live at the Tivoli club in Utrecht. I saw Swans live before, in the late 90s, just after they had released the brilliant 2 CD Soundtracks For The Blind, which considerably brightened up the dark ages of the history of music. Anyways, before I went in, there were warning signs that the volume that evening would be Loud. Extremely Loud. Luckily I had brought my professional earplugs, so no morning-after peep for me. The set was loud, slow, heavy and classic Swans. Here are some images I took. I like the green one of Michael Gira, but also the one where the bass player and guitarist re-tune (which they had to do after each song, because of their string-abuse). A lovely evening that ended with me buying a souvenir double CD and dashing off to catch the train back to Nijmegen. The dashing proved to be premature, as there remained plenty of time to fetch a cup of Chai Latte at Utrecht's Starbucks. Bloody expensive at 4 Euros (for a size "tall", which means "small" but they can't spell at Starbucks), but hey, that is rock and roll.

A few pointers...

As Frans rightfully suggested, I should offer our audience some pointers for their browsers.

Are you comfy? Ready? Here we go!

Two nice movies on You Tube can be located at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzXn6AHpBk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC-gNiyVo58

And while you're at it, why not download the whole set in, alas, abnominal sound quality at:
www.beequeenarchives.blogspot.com

The Polish Tour

So Beequeen was invited to play the Wroclaw Industrial music festival in Poland. And we gratefully accepted! We sent quite some time putting a good set list together and rehearsing till we all felt it sounded fine. We then packed our meager equipment and flew to Krakow, where we were awaited by our driver, who drove us in his Karma-proteced van in 3 mad hours to Wroclaw. He was a good driver and we arrived safe at our hostel. We strolled around Wroclaw, enjoyed traditional Polish food (takeaway pizza) and had a great evening. The following day I bought new shoes and did the soundcheck at 16.00 hours. Again, everything sounded fine. We enjoyed some hurried dinner and later that evening we played as second band our 45 minute set to around 150 people in the old dining hall of a 14th century monastry. Later that evening, the hall filled up to around 400 people, all dressed to a tee for the evening. The organization was perfect and very professional. The Polish people were extremely friendly and willing to help us out with even minor quests. The set went really well, the audience seemed to enjoy themselves with lots of heads bopping to our tempting rhythms. At 01.00 o'clock we went back to the hostel and enjoyed a few hours of sleep, as Miranda (who came along for the ride), Olga and me had to get up at 05.30 hours for our journey back to Krakow airport. Frans, being the true trooper he is, had some hours more to sleep. Later that day he went to Germany and Scandinavia for more live shows. This very brief tour of Poland was truly a wonderful experience. The atmosphere in the band was great and we all had a loverly time! Marcin Pflanz took some amazing pictures of all bands at the festival and I've taken the liberty to include three shots here. A few days after the event, movies turned up on YouTube. So far, two Beequeen movies have been posted. Both of these include The Lord Is My Shepherd; trust the audience to film me making my only guitar mistake of the evening and put it on the internet!