NEWSARCHIVE

Period : October 11-18, 1999
In this issue : dEUS, Arid, Kl@sh, Eeltentstudio, DAAU, Soulwax, Zap Mama, Waterloo, Luna Twist, Noordkaap, JF Muck, Les Slugs, Zita Swoon.

October 18, 1999

dEUS' LAST CRASH
While dEUS is wrapping up the last concerts of their "Ideal Crash"-tour, Belgium has already seen the last of them with their three concerts in Schaarbeek. The band provided plenty of surprises during these concerts, such as guest performances by Rudy Trouvé ànd Stef Kamil Carlens, reuniting for a brief moment the original dEUS-line-up. Those who have missed all three nights, can relive the entire concerts by a real-audio broadcst on Netbeat :
- Thursday's concert (with the reunited dEUS in the first "encore").
- Friday's concert (better quality recording)
The band just released a third single from the album, the title track. Musickness revealed that so far, TIC has sold 150,000 copies "worldwide", of which 40,000 in Belgium. As they told press-agency Belga, this is well short of the expected numbers (although about the same as the previous albums), but the concerts have had much better attendance then before.

ARID LEADS, NOVASTAR COMES STORMING IN
A week later than expected - sometimes I have a life besides maintaining this side, you know. Really. - the 6th edition of the Belpoptop has been published.
The new and proud leader is Arid with the song Life. Soulwax goes down 1 to with "Too Many Deejay's", while Novastar comes storming to the top with their first single "Wrong".
Once again, there a plenty of new suggestions for the next edition (ranging from Stricktly Rockers, dEUS, Läis, Rival & Zita Swoon to 2 Fabiola & Technotronic) and a prize for those who enter their personal top 5 here (this week : a copy of the album "Nachtschade" by Kolk).

KL@SH = A NEW MUSIC CULTURE IN LEUVEN ?
VTK, the faculty of civil engineers, has come up with an idea to do something about the strange fact the the city of Leuven, despite it's enormous student population, is a blank spot on the map as far as good concerts go (exception = Marktrock o.c.).
For a modest prize, they will start organizing concerts of good bands on various locations in the city. The programme so far includes :
- Bar 8 (Michael Nyman goes rock-stage) & Jaune Toujours (bal musette) on 19 October.
- The Seatsniffers on November 11
- Blues Lee on December 12.
Tickets at JJ Records & De Blauwe Kater.

SOULWAX, DAAU & dEUS "Composing Apart Together"
Telenet, the cable-company offering phone & internetservices in Flanders, has come up with a musical stunt to gather publicity for their booth at the upcoming fair "Media Planet", since they have gathered three of the finest belgian bands to do a "jam from a distance".
Julle de Borger (of dEUS), the entire DAAU, and Stephen & David Dewaele of Soulwax have all been provided with a nice computer and a Telenet-internet connection, and are coöperating from their own rehearsal rooms to a joint music piece. The final mix of the song will be done on a 'virtual 128-track studio" at the multimedia fair, after which date the song will be available in mp3 to the public.
The internet-location of the project is http://www.telenet.be/eeltentstudio.

October 14, 1999

ZAP MAMA KICKS OFF AMERICAN TOUR
Yesterday evening, Zap Mama kicked off their U.S./Canadian tour in the Sommerville Theater in Cambridge (the American one). Today, it's the "Iring Plaza" in New York, and the next weeks it's a different city every day (Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles ...), to promote the release of the excellent new Zap records "A Ma Zone" on the Continent.
People from over here can follow the tour through Luaka Bop (David Byrne's label), and in a special webcast on The Rolling Stone Network : they will broadcast the concert of October 23 live on the internet.

WATERLOO RE-RELEASED
At the occasion of the "international record fair Ghent" - November 28 - a "legendary" Belgian album will be re-released on CD. "First Battle", which appeared first in 1971, was done by the band Waterloo, the Belgian answer to Jethro Tull which enjoyed a bit of success in France. A number of the A and B-sides of the singles will be added on the cd as bonus-tracks.
Most famous member of Waterloo is Gus Roan, of the band Nie Neute singing in the dialect of Ghent and in French. It is hoped that the entire group will be present to hand out autographs at the venue.
Driving force behind the project is Johan 'Bo' Bollenberg, a journalist en enthousiast of the progrock genre who writes for magazines such as Stage (B), IO Pages (N), Mellotron (Ar) and Progression. Any "prog minded" belgian bands can contact Johan for a place in these spotlights.

October 12, 1999

DRUMMER LUNA TWIST DIES
Dirk Van Gansbeke, the (ex)drummer from bands such as Luna Twist, Luk Vankessel, Starvin' Marvin and Kevin Ayers left his life in a car-crash on the roads in the region of Ghent last weekend.
In Belgian pop-history, he will probably be best remembered as one of the authors of "African Time", the biggest "hit" of Luna Twist and one of the best songs of the early eighties.

"IK HOU VAN U" BEST BELGIAN SOUNDTRACK-SONG
During the "night of Belgian Film" at the international Ghent-Filmfestival, there were a number of special awards. Apart from the regular Jozef Plateau-awards (that were won most by "Rosie" of Mauro Pawlowski's upstairs' neighbour Patrice Toye), there was also a "Radio-1-prize for the best Belgian soundtrack-composition of the past 15 jaar". Noordkaap went away with the honours for their 1995 waltz "Ik Hou van U" from the movie "Manneken Pis".
At the time of the ceremony, Noordkaap were playing their last "rock"-gig in Ternat. The group is currently finishing the new single that will accompany the pre-posthumous compilation album "Avanti".
Other pop- vs. filmnieuws is that Jan Leyers apparently will be playing the main part in the next film by Jan - la vie sexuelle des Belges - Bucquoy.

October 11, 1999

JF MUCK TOURS WITH FUGAZI
The trio from Limburg called "JF Muck" will play a number of gigs in France, opening up for the brutal band Fugazi. On Friday October 15, however, they will present their new cd àfter Fugazi, at the Club of the AB in Brussels.
The band consists of Raf Wathion (graphic designer for TV, his work includes the titles from "Morgen Maandag", "Commissie Wyndaele"), Fred Vrancken and Wilfried Vanormelingen. Their first album "Wood & Iron" was released in 1997, got good press-reviews but no sales. At that time they described their music as "Lo Fi alternative post rock (this can be discussed)". For their brand new album (out on Labelman), they went to Chicago to record with Bob Weston, bass-player of noise band Shellac. Their motto : "Less is more", their search : looking for simplicity, creativity, emotion, atmosphere.

20 YEARS OF "LES SLUGS"
The walloon punk band, Les Slugs, will be celebrating it's 20 years of existance with a concert at Magasin 4 in Brussels, on Saturday October 23. During this 20 years, the band has evolved from punk (UK Subs ...) to cold-wave, and from ska to fun-rock (à la Priba 2000, Brochettes ...)
Other bands at le Magasin 4 will be "Les Tueurs de Brabant" and "The Kids" (it was at a concert of The Kids & The Ramones, back in 1980 that the guys first met). Price : 200 Bef. Info & Reservation at 02-537.79.80.
Aredje, the little independent firm for René Binamé & Les Slugs, also commemorates this event with a special cd containing their earliest material (K7 "le quatre heure", the two vinyl albums (the white and the black one) and a rehearsal tape. Will be for sale shortly via Bang! at " 250 à 330 boules".

ZITA SWOON GETS GOLD
It was announced last week that Zita Swoon's album of last year "I Paint Pictures On A Wedding Dress", finally has gone to gold status here in Belgium.
The new single that will be released at the end of the month will be the song "Our Daily Reminders".

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