The Wonderful World of Freek Kinkelaar

An update for the Russian tour: the venue at the Yaroslavl show will be Dom Muz.

12th October Wander in St. Petersburg (at Sigmund Freud Dreams Museum www.freud.ru)
13th October Beequeen in St. Petersburg (at GES-21, support act to Beequeen: Badoseneticcube)
14th October Beequeen in Yaroslavl (at Dom Muz)
15th October Beequeen in Moscow (at Dom)
16th October Wander in Moscow (venue to be confirmed)

Follow me, follow you, ahaaa…. there’s a thin line between TWIT and TWAT, so we’re careful which beans to spill on Twitter. Still, we’re there. Why not follow us at beequeen_music.

Good news! The brand new Beequeen album PORT OUT STARBOARD HOME will be available from Important records, USA in the first week of September 2011. Just in time for the Russian tour. The front cover art of the album is pictured here. We have worked long and hard on this album, which we feel is our best one so far. If you want to pre-order your copy, please send an e-mail to info@beequeen.nl

For updates on the Russian tour of October 2011, please see the previous post below.

Yes, the 2011 Russian tour! How about that! Beequeen have been invited to play shows in Russia in October 2011 and we were thrilled to accept. Visiting Russia is quite a dream-come-true. A provisional tour schedule is listed below.

Updates will be provided via this post, so check back frequently!

12th October Wander in St. Petersburg (at Sigmund Freud Dreams Museum www.freud.ru)
13th October Beequeen in St. Petersburg (at GES-21, support act to Beequeen: Badoseneticcube)
14th October Beequeen in Yaroslavl (venue to be confirmed)
15th October Beequeen in Moscow (at Dom)
16th October Wander in Moscow (venue to be confirmed)

Come up and see us!

Just today I received a file chock-full of lovely pictures taken by Hans Cras of the Beequeen show at the Lux theater. One of which is pictured above, the other one is in the picture gallery. Thanks to Hans for sharing these with us!

Much like the “old” Freek Kinkelaar blog pages (remember them?), I thought it would be a nice touch to add some descriptions of records or vinyl object I happen to like on these pages as well. The first one in this new series, called Digging for gold, is a wonderful 50s children’s toy object, the Red Raven Magic Mirror. Pre-dating the moving newspapers in Harry Potter by 60 years, this gorgeous toy holds more magic than professor Dumbledore. 

Enjoy the series!

Being a kid in America in the mid 50s was an exciting time. Even when you were a little too young to listen to rock and roll, there was still money ‘a plenty to spend on America’s thriving youth. As a result toy companies were imaginative and explorative, searching for new concepts to keep the young happy. The Red Raven toy company was one of those innovative companies. In 1956 they introduced the Red Raven Magic Mirror player. Imagine finding one of those in your Christmas stocking! The Magic Mirror was in fact a “praxinoscope”, more commonly known as a “zoetrope”, which loosely translates as “wheel of life”; a perfect name for a device that produces the illusion of movement using a rapid succession of static pictures. Chinese prototypes of the design go back to the year 180, but it can be said that the popular western zoetrope was introduced in 1834 by British mathematician William George Horner who called his invention the Daedalum (or “the devil’s wheel” – a name which certainly would have put off parents!). Red Raven’s version of the zoetrope used mirrors which reflected the images on the picture disc and made them come alive right before your eyes. Pure Magic! Movies of the Magic Mirror spinning in action can be found on YouTube. The music on the discs, which rotated at 78 rpm, was provided by the Red Raven Orchestra, directed by George S. Chase and featured exiting titles such as The Wobblin’ Goblin, The Little Red Engine and Raggedy Ann all with suitable animations on the discs. The first series of Magic Mirrors featured a replaceable cap and were tailored for use on old-fashioned tall-centre pin record players (enabling you to stack and play more records on the record player without having to change them). When these players went out of fashion, a second design of the Magic Mirror was introduced with solid top of the mirror, which were suitable for short centre pin record players. Early editions of the records were 6 inch-sized picture discs with a metal edge. When these proved too expensive for retail, they were replaced by colored vinyl discs, which had the zoetrope image printed on an enlarged carton label. Even though there were literally dozens of different discs, they are annoyingly hard to locate in mint condition today, as they were produced as children’s toys. The earlier type Magic Mirror is slightly more valuable as are the metal-edged picture discs, but once bought they give pleasure for many magical hours, not just to children, but also to record collectors (who are big children anyways).

Not me of course, I don’t care much for the Arctic Monkeys at all. John Schoorl, music correspondent for Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant (among others), however does. He compiled a number of his stories about music in this book, his latest. The book also contains a condensed version of the longer feature about Korla Pandit, which appeared a few months ago in De Volkskrant. For this article John Schoorl interviewed me (as proprietor of the official Korla Pandit website) and wrote a fine piece on this most fascinating musician. The book is great fun, but even more fun is a visit to www.korlapandit.com to learn all about one of the most intriguing men to have walked this earth. Serious. The book is in Dutch, which might put some readers off, and should be easily found on the web under its original title “De dag dat ik naar de Arctic Monkeys ging”.

… in fact, Beequeen at the Lux on the 18th of May was actually pretty good! And we’ve got the recordings to prove it at our archive site Music For The Head Ballet (see http://www.beequeenarchives.blogspot.com/). Download them and see if they can put a smile on your face. It turned out to be a great night; around 80 people showed up and enjoyed great sets by Beequeen, Use of Ashes and The Legendary Pink Dots. The Beequeen stage looked like a small, surreal blue room, which fitted us three. Just. Olga looked smashing as always (changing dresses midway) and Frans wore a tie. All hail to merry hare Raymond Steeg who provided us with a stage and sound, Jesse for the light and Charles for the merchandise. It all looked and sounded very professional. Before the show we enjoyed dinner with our friends at De Plak in Nijmegen, which was more than 20 years ago since I last ate there. Interestingly enough, the menu hadn’t changed much. Lux in Wonderland was basically just that; three small bands, each with their own identity, no egos, just the drive to create a very special night. Certainly worth considering repeating! The Beequeen setlist consisted of: Bring In The Sheep, Breathe, Someday Today, The Lord Is My Shepherd, Gilbert, Giant’s Hill, Sad Sheep, The Maypole Song, Fine Day, The Honeythief, White Bike. The last one was a surprise to many!

Saturday 2 April 2011 the UNA orchestra played a diner-dansant at the De Waard in the tiny village of Kekerdom. I say tiny and I’m not kidding; Kekerdom has around 540 inhabitants and it seemed they were all present at the diner-dansant. They weren’t really of course, but still around 70 found their way to the restaurant where we played a three hour set (with short breaks to give the horn blowers minor relief), while they ate their meals. During dinner there were demonstrations of the Samba, Rhumba and Jive by a professional dance couple. Great fun! After the demonstration-bits, people danced the night away to our temptuous songs. A really lovely evening, proving the orchestra is vibrant and well. Here’s a nice image of the evening…. More shows are promised, more soul is intended. For those in the know, here’s the setlist for the evening: Tune, Putting on the Ritz, All aboard, Trumpeteer’s holiday, Bubbert kicks back, Pink panther, Sway, Besame mucho, Quantanamera, Mambo nr 5, A night like this, Ole guapa, Sing sing, Mas que nada, Big spender, String of pearls, Rock around the clock, Darktown strutters ball, Basing street blues, Fly me to the moon, Sir Duke, Moon river (I love Moon river – what a great song!), Jumping at the swing traing, Splanky, Vehicle, Mambo jambo, Born to be wild and a host of others.