October 7, 2020

Guitarist Eddie Van Halen passes away, aged 65

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 2:24 pm

Dutch-American guitarist and arguably the heir to the technical guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix, Edward Lodewijk van Halen, better known as Eddie van Halen, passed way yesterday at age 65 after an ‘arduous battle with cancer’, according to his son Wolfgang (Wolf) van Halen who broke the sad news on Twitter.

Eddie van Halen was that unmistakable high end, loud guitar sound of 1980s rock band Van Halen. As well, he also guest starred on many other songs, including ‘Beat It’ by Michael Jackson in 1982.

Sticking to the Dutch angle, here’s all of Van Halen running around downtown Amsterdam in 1981, courtesy of Dutch music program Countdown (in English):

And because we all want to know if Eddie spoke Dutch, here he is with his brother Alex, also Van Halen’s drummer, speaking some Dutch (English subtitles).

Now go put some Van Halen on.

(Link: nu.nl,
Photo of Eddie Van Halen by Carl Lender, some rights reserved)

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September 11, 2011

Bettie Serveert reunites with drummer for band’s twentieth birthday

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 3:21 pm

Twenty years ago Bettie Serveert was the sort of indie rock band that made producers everywhere pay attention, but they never managed to surpass the success of their debut album Palomine.

Yesterday the band reunited with former drummer Berend Dubbe for a special birthday gig on which they played the entire Palomine album at Paradiso in Amsterdam. According to 24 Oranges reader Jeroen Mirck, who was there, “Bettie Serveert played songs like Tomboy, Balentine, Kid’s Allright and Brain-Tag with as much urgency and as dynamically as in the early nineties, as if the songs had been written yesterday.”

The name “Bettie Serveert” means “Betty to serve” and is a reference to Betty Stöve, a Dutch player who managed to reach the Wimbledon tennis finals in 1977.

Listen to title track Palomine here.

(Photo: bettieserveert.com)

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July 28, 2009

Zone 5300 in the land of the Dadas

Filed under: Art,Comics,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 8:19 am

The Summer edition of Zone 5300 contains a large retrospective of The Cramps, the psychobilly dinos that put the fun into punk, because of stiletto-heeled front-man Lux Interior’s death earlier this year. Writer Eric van der Heijden handcuffs you, then shows all the clean versions of rock ‘n’ roll and the dirty parents they sprang from. Guess where The Cramps belong?

Lars Fiske reports on a 1922 visit of Dada to the Netherlands (illustration).

What do you do if everybody is already shooting nice pics of microbes, hell, if nice pics of microbes are really old hat in your country? Stereoscopic photos of the creepy-crawlies! Plus you try to get American art schools and Dutch museums to believe your story that art can only be objectively enjoyed after you have dunked classic works and instruments in a bath full of micro-organisms. Such is the wondrous sense of humour of Wim van Egmond.

Maaike Hartjes tries her hand at photography. Eerie! Cute! How does she do it? (Maaike’s got a new blog by the by, so go check it.)

And finally a long comic of Fool’s Gold contributor Milan Hulsing about collected collectors, so you know he knows what he is talking, er, drawing about.

(Illustration: Lars Fiske.)

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