NEWSARCHIVE

Period : February 4-6 1999
In this issue : dEUS, El Fish, De Afrekening, Coco Junior, Neeka, Zita Swoon, K's Choice.

Saturday February 6th, 1999

dEUS (it doesn't stop)
- About an hour ago Studio Brussel breadcasted the long awaited and much heralded new single of dEUS in "world-première" : unfortunately, they didn't play "Instant Street" - the new single -, but "Sister Dew"- an album track. Smout's Fault ? Anyhow, that song was already very good, so you can listen to a little piece of it.
- the CD "The Ideal Crash" will not carry a Rudy Trouvé-painting on the cover as their other albums, but a woman in red falling down on a pedestrian crossing.
- On the Frontstage-site you can already start pre-ordering the new album, but why you would want to do that at the price of 799 BEF beats me.
- For those going bonkers because they didn't open their internet or mail last weekend, and thus were too late for the 4.000 rare tickets for the concerts in the Ancienne Belgique, there's good news : elsewhere in Europe there are a lot of concerts planned, and most of them are no sold out yet. The official tourdates are being put together and put on a website by their management Musickness.
- For lazy bums, Germans or couch potatoes there's even better news : one of the stops on the tour will be the pittoresk & sympathethic Düsseldorf, where TV-channel WDR is already getting their material ready to broadcast the April 4th dEUS-concert live in the show RockPalast. Geil ! Stock up on plastic cups and lukewarm beer, invite your tallest friends & relatives, put your dolby surround on maximum and live it as if you were actually there.
- Meanwhile the record has already landed on the doormat of a selected number of journalists (not mine of course, but then I'm not a journalist) : the first reactions out of their mouths range from "whoohoo" to "ho". More eloquent specimen of the same profession already revealed that the tracklisting on the album is : Put all the Freaks up Front / Sister Dew / One Advice, Space / Magic Hour / The Ideal Crash / Instant Street / Magdalena / Everybody's Weird / Let's See Who Goes Down First / Dream Sequence #1. Only 10 songs, but very long ones.

EL FISH
Who wants to meet up with Steven de Bruyn & Co on one of their steaming live gigs, or who wants to learn more about this mean new bluesgroup than is mentioned on their page in this archive, now has the opportunity to do so at the brand new and official El Fish-site.
Roel Bex has put together a trilingual and concise website with concert dates, bio, discography, press-quotes and links. There's not a lot of "news" to gather at the site at this point, so we suppose that for El Fish "no news is good news".
Url : http://gallery.uunet.be/elfish/index.htm

Friday February 5th, 1999

DE AFREKENING
Belgium is (almost) on top in "de Afrekening" (Flemish Alternative chart) at the moment. Those in doubt about the current health-condition of inland rock, can safely go back to bed knowing that from the 30 records in that chart, last Saturday no less than 9 were of Belgian descent (30 %) :

• 30 Das Pop "The Little Boy"(dixit Humo : "irrisistible ... the young Bowie incarnated")
• 28 Sint-Andries MC's "Represent 2000 Antwaarpe"(Rap from Antwerp by MC's Too Tuff & KG, discovered by Quinte of ABN)
• 25 K's Choice "God in my bed" (quiet single released only in Holland)
• 22 ABN "Vet en Fonky" (their best single so far - my opinion - with A-team sample)
• 18 Hooverphonic "Eden" (gorgeous song, still from "Blue Wonder Power Milk")
• 13 The Romans "Space Girl" (see also my CD-review of "El Diablo")
• 12 Gorki "Ik ben aanwezig" (duet of Lukas De Vos & Tom Barman)
• 11 De Mens "Einde van de eeuw" (foretaste of "Sex verandert Alles")
• 5 Soulwax "Conversation Intercom" (was blocked the n° 1 spot by Fatboy Slim & R.E.M., but there are still enough terrific songs on "Much Against Everyone's Advice" left to get there).

And there's even no sign of songs such as "Jean-Baltazaarrr" by BJ Scott with Arno, "Inhaling" byOzark Henry, or "Maria"by Zita Swoon in the list.
Our tip for next week : NEEKA with "The Gardener" down under, Das Pop & Hooverphonic on top!
Vote yourself : mail your top 3 current songs to De Afrekening (include name & address)
Source : Studio Brussel or the teletextpages of the VRT.

COCO JR.

In the past, there was already the example of publicity by Levi's showing that ads can produce or relaunch hits, but in Belgium this must be a new thing : de clip of bank KBC is nothing less than a hit. This song, written and sung by Coco Jr. (see Dinky Toys) is just about the "talk of the town" - disgusting half of the audience, charming the other part with this piece of mellow "image-building".
The KBC, that has added a big part on her website about the song & video (you can find even the notes & lyrics) will be happy enough.
On the website there's a little film with the auteur in which he says "the melody was right from the very first try, the lyrics needed a bit of adjusting". See the Dutch version for what his original lines were.

Thursday February 4th, 1999

NEEKA

For those wondering who has been asking Sheryll Crow-wise & passionately "Baby baby baby baby, come and let me show my garden to you" (looks like the most stupid excuse since "can I show my stamp collection to you" ) : the singer involved is called "The Gardener" and is the debut of NEEKA, a group formed around singer-songwriter Ilse Goovaerts. This young girl has assembled quite an impressive line-up for her band : Roland van Campenhout, Lange Polle - known from BJ Scott, Wolfbanes, Guy Swinnen - and two jazz-oriënted musicians - drummer Bart Meeus and bass-player Bart De Nolf.
The first full CD of NEEKA will be available in the shops at the end of March, or the beginning of April. In a stunning performance of news-gathering, the Belgian Pop & Rock Archives has found out for you that the cd will be called "NEEKA".
For more info you can visit the not-completely-finished-yet-already-quite-impressive site of Oyster Records.

ZITA SWOON
Since last Saturday, the song "About The Successful Emotional Recovery of a Gal Named Maria", sometimes shortened to "Maria", is in the shops. On this Zita Swoon EP, there are besides title-track a new version of an "Everyday I paint Pictures on a Wedding Dress"-track and two completely new songs :
1. Maria (About the successful emotional recovery of a gal named Maria)
2. Spacelight One
3. A Stranger Came to Our Party and Changed Things
4. 50 Years In Dope Jittery (Homerecording)
The union of Belgian popjournalists has just decided to award Stef Kamil with a special price : that of "We are sóóoo grateful to you because our columns are already half-filled if we only mention one of your song- or album-titles". ).

K'S CHOICE
Boys & girls that start drooling with the prospect of a new CD by K's Choice, have something to be happy about this month : in the shops you can find "All Access : Extra Cocoon", a disc of the duo from Kapellen & Co. This "Behind the scenes" consists of some outtakes from a "Twee Meter Sessie", a remix of "If You're Not Scared", a few B-sides, "Not An Addict" in an acoustic version, a song from the soundtrack of Ad Fundum (when Sarah Bettens was still Sarah Beth) and a cover of Tom Waits "Ol'55".
Besides that, a number of bits and bytes on the compact disc were kept free for some stamp-sized video's with excerpts of videoclips & images of the group backstage. This cd was released only in a limited edition : : 10,000 in Belgium, 10,000 in France and 20,000 in Holland (disgruntled opponents of the group are considering pressing charges to K's Choice for "criminal insult" : calling 40,000 copies a "limited edition" has a devastating effect on the moral of Belgian musicians ).

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