GIVE BUZZE

Belgian R&B-band with an incredible live-reputation.

The band was founded in 1979 and is still very much alive today, and despite it's long life still in the same "cast" : guitar and vocals and songwriting by Dirk D'Hondt, bass by Frans Vlaeminck, and drums by Luc Vanderhaeghen. The name of the band is in the dialect of Ghent and means something like "C'mon, Go for it, Step on it ...". Initially, the full name of the band was "The Give Buzze Blues Band", later it became "The Give Buzze Band", now it's simply "Give Buzze".

The music that they produce is rhythm'n boogie, somewhere in between George Thorogood, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Status Quo and ZZ-Top. Unlike many bands in this genre, they have never resorted to playing endless covers of these American examples, but have always brought their own work.

The most important artifacts of the band cannot be measured in hits, record sales or other commercial stories. In fact their loathing of publicity and shyness for any media-exposure was called "legendary" in Humo once. The actual existence of the band lies in the rehearsal room (still 2 times a week so it seems) and of course on stage. In it's 20 years of existence, the band has given over 1,100 concerts all across the country in both the best and the worst conditions.

Or as they write in their own bio : "The endless driving, the toiling to set up and break down everything before and after the show ... it all melts like snow in the sun when we finally can get things going : Give Buzze on stage, rock rhythm’ & blues, the rough stuff. A steaming rhythm-section, with a tearing slide-guitar on top of it. A Three-man-piece that has grown together over the years with only one goal : give good shows, rough yet with attention to detail, sober yet entertaining. Three man, not a simple set-up to keep an audience interested, but easy to keep the band together. A set-up that makes it difficult to play, yet easy to pay the bills ..."

The 1,000th concerts was given in a airplane that the group had chartered for itself (a Beechcraft 36). As the always witz-ready PDW wrote in the TTT-agenda at the time "there was - in ancient Buzze-tradition - of course no recording of the show, although the pilot was allowed to broadcast it trough his radio. At one time things got a bit hot, when they were getting close to the German border and a border patrol interpreted the sound as a war-declaration.".

In 1993 they took the step of recording a chunk of their material on CD, in a production of Jean-Marie Aerts (see TC Matic, Big Bill, JMX ...). On this album, they took care to record the songs as "live" as possible.

Band members :
- Luc Vanderhaeghen (drums)
- Frans Vlaeminck (bass)
- Dirk D'hondt (guitar / vocals)

Buy CD's of this band at

Albums :
- Give Buzze (Parsifal, 1993)

Websites :
- Official site of the group, with concert calendar, MP3's, pictures ...
- Give Buzze at Roc'nCo

Forum :
- Read the messages/questions about Give Buzze
- Add your message, question, cd- or concertreview ... about Give Buzze