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!

You and me and Sinterklaas makes three

A few weeks ago I was aked to join the UNA orchestra in Kekerdom as a guitarist. The UNA orchestra is actually a very old orchestra, over 100 years old, who used to play traditional music, but now focusses on big band, jazz and even film music. They needed a guitarist for the annual live show on October 23. I joined on a very short basis: with only 3 rehearsals to learn 21 songs! In the end, I managed to squeeze out 11 and I must have done something right as they asked me to become a permanent member after the show. It was hard work as I don't read sheet music and everybody else in the orchestra does (they must have been quite desperate). The evening was great, and slightly surreal, fun. Around 80 people were present. We had a 16 year old girl singer on a few tunes and a dancing couple who demonstrated the Rhumba and Mambo. The town vicar was present as well (in full ornate). So now it's every Tuesday night off to Kekerdom for me, trying to work out complex chord schedules, tempo changes and wondering what the hell all those funny symbols mean on the sheet music. Great fun! As there are no images of the night yet, I thought this nice image of Sinterklaas would to. After all, it is the season...

Fame, fame fatal fame

Local television station Nijmegen 1, a station I readily confess to not knowing even existed, will be filming a documentary on Frans de Waard. And rightfully so. In order not to show the identical live image of Frans behind his laptop too much, it was decided to include some Beequeen as well. On Friday 20 August 2010 Olga, Frans and myself performed three songs (Breathe, It's A Fine Day and The Honeythief) live in the Extrapool Geluidwerkplaats. Bits and pieces will be included in the upcoming documentary, about which more information can be found at http://www.nijmegen1.nl/. Unfamiliar with being filmed, it was quite a fun experience. Even more fun was the fact that we played the songs really well. Aural evidence of the fact can be found at http://www.beequeenarchives.blogspot.com/ where you can download the full set. The arty image shown here was photographed straight from the camera. A fun way to spent an afternoon!

THE MAGIC HAS ARRIVED!

I am very proud indeed to announce the release of CRITICAL MAGIC, the brand new cassette by TAPAJAWA on Beam Ends records!

TAPAJAWA is in fact guitarist extraordinaire Barry Gray, who used to play guitar in The Legenday Pink Dots in the 80s, where, due to his amazing guitar skills, he was known as Stret Majest. On CRITICAL MAGIC, Barry offers 9 blistering new recordings featuring him using drum programs, bassguitar, guitars and his own fierce vocals, giving the music a nervous edge. the cassette was released in an edition of 50 copies only. The cassette is professionally made and features an on-body print and full colour artwork.

A copy can be yours for 15 Euros (or the equivalent in most valid currencies on this planet) including worldwide postage. To order, simply send a friendly e-mail to me at info@beequeen.nl and it will be my priviledge to send you a copy of this blistering manifesto.

Maria Roepaan

Two pictures of the recent Beequeen live show at Maria Roepaan in the nearby town of Ottersum. And what a lovely day it was! Not only is Maria Roepaan a beautiful location (in fact, it's an old monastry), it was also gorgeous weather and quite a few friends took the efford to travel to Ottersum to see us perform, which was much appreciated. We had actually rehearsed for this show quite a bit - it featured some older songs (Sad Sheep, The Honeythief), some newer (Port Out Starboard Home, Patience), some borrowed (Jane's It's A Fine Day) and none blue. Beequeen was on first and played a 45 minute set that wasn't exactly free of mistakes, but full enough of good notes, minor chords and fine vocal work by Olga. In short, a very rewarding set. Shame about the mistakes in Patience, but you can't win them all! In the end, we were all quite pleased with our performance. Also performing that day at Maria Roepaan was Stahlkwartett, who played Bach and Bjork on four home-made-of-metal-sheets-then-bowed instruments. Slow bow - very impressive! Third on the list was Use of Ashes, who perhaps struggled on stage, but put on a good show nevertheless. The atmosphere they manage to create is always highly tense yet fragile. Final performance was by Frans de Waard, Roel Meelkop and a host of others in the specially designed soundlab in the basement of Maria Roepaan. They played a good improvised set using both laptops as acoustic gadgets. In all, a great day with good friends and amazing music. The whole Beequeen concert can be downloaded for nada via our Music For The Head Ballet site. Two brief films of It's A Fine Day and The Honeythief, made by Miranda, can be found on YouTube. Someone stated we looked like a band from Twin Peaks. I quite like that description! The next Beequeen show is planned after the summer in the Lux Theatre in Nijmegen. A date is yet to be set. The evening will be with Legendary Pink Dots and Use of Ashes. Hopefully it will be as special as our day in Maria Roepaan. Thanks to Huub for organizing the lot!

One step beyond!

The first single I ever bought was Tarzan's Nuts by Madness. This was in 1980, now 30 years ago. I actually wanted to buy Embarrassment, but once in the shop, couldn't remember the title of the single. It was just as well, as the b-side to Tarzan was the wonderful Nightboat To Cairo. I still have that single in my collection. The first album I bought was also by Madness; it was their second album called Absolutely. I was so much of an über-fan in 1980, that I even joined the fanclub. Strangely enough, this folded the day I joined. Coincidentally the same happened when I joined the Adam and the Ants and Alice Cooper fanclub. Folded the day I joined. Strange. Anyways, ska was a wonderfully upbeat way to spend a downbeat decade. I loved The Specials, The Beat, The Selecter and Bad Manners, but most of all Madness. They were so utterly zany British. I loved that. Oddly enough I never saw them live in the 80's. To correct that awful omission in my live career, I bought a ticket for their show last weekend in Amsterdam. And what fun we had! I was right up front, in the middle of this uncontrolled mob, jumping, dancing and singing and pushing and shoving like hell. I've got the bruises to show for it! They played a lot of older tunes as well as some ditties from their latest venture The Liberty Of Norton Filgate. The boys clearly enjoyed themselves on the stage as well; they were slightly older, balder and fatter (like most of the audience), but having a lot of fun. All images I took at the concert are blurred due to the dancing, but this one, taken from a distance, is quite nice. The following day, the "day after", I played all my Madness albums again. Always a sign of a wonderful evening.