The Stranglers, 47 years young

 September 11, 1974. In the UK, drummer Jet Black has founded the band The Stranglers. Other members are Hugh Cornwell (guitar/vocals), Hans Wärmling from Sweden (who returns to Sverige and gets replaced by Dave Greenfield (keyboards)) and Jean Jacques Burnel (bass/vocals).

Three years later, in '77, the albums Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes are released, followed through Black and White a year later.

The band has an own identity and is difficult to place in whatever genre of rock music. In the 80s they have a smash hit with Golden Brown, next is La Folie, in fluent French (JJ's roots are in la Normandie). 

Somewhere in '85, their song Skin Deep is on the radio. I'm 7 years old and I really like the tune. 

Many years later, in March 1998, I have a 2nd rendez-vous with their music. I need a café noir and stumble upon a rock bar in an emblematic old little city in eastern Netherlands.

Martin, the owner of the joint, serves a coffee and hits the play button. Bass sound, quircky keyboard and the first line: Strawlin' along minding my own business....

I'm getting more curious by the minute, so I ask the bloke the name of the band. "The Stranglers" is his reply.

After a search in a record store I buy their 1977-1990 Greatest Hits. 2 years later, I manage to find 5 or 6 LPs in newly opened vinyl record shops.

Mitch, one of my best friends comments: "Dude, you really got hooked by these Stranglers",when I'm visiting him and my CD plays No More Heroes in his stereo. 

Friday night in Apeldoorn becomes a "traditional" meeting starting in the summer of '96. The centre has two fabulous pubs, our evening starts at "de Tapperij". Later on, I walk 50 meters to "The Swing", where the music is a bit more alternative. 

The Razzmatazz is a disco / concert hall in Barcelona. When I read the announcement of the Stranglers gig in January 2009, I buy two tickets without hesitation. 

C., a girl from the south of France is a new friend I met at the pub where my basque homie used to work. 

"Tiens, j'irai au concert des Stranglers, tu veux m'accompagner?"

"Les Strangleuurs? Ba.. bon OK."

Back to the present day. When I read about Dave's passing last year May, I felt really sad. The virtuoso must be jamming up there with Deep Purple's Jon Lord...

Nevertheless, the band still exists and celebrates it's 47th birthday today with their new marvellous Dark Matters album released yesterday. 

Un grand merci a Jean Jacques Burnel for keeping the band together.

The bloke celebrates his birthday

In February 1982, my parents sent my brother O. and me to visit the neighbours. Mommy was expecting a baby and the little fella was born on Friday the 19^th around 5 PM. Hereunder I´ll dedicate a few lines to him. Not that I´m not fond of my other brother O. and I wouldn´t like him to be jealous, but he´ll understand.

L. was almost 8 Lbs when he was born, heavier than me or O. but eventually he grew up and never had any overweight.

Probably the cutest picture of him is from summer 1984 when we drove for the holidays to north-west France (probably Normandy) and the guy holds a baguette equal to his size at that time.

Seven years later, logical for an Aquarius, he was very fond of fishing and he tried his luck on camping sites in Sweden and Norway. This was a notorious holiday trip because on a German “Autobahn” the car had a flat tire due to the overstuffed caravan.

Between 1991 and 1992, we both became rock and heavy metal fans, with AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Metallica among our favourite bands. My brother must´ve had all Metallica albums on tape and/or CD. Obviously our nephews from the border town Aalten were influencers, as well as school mates.

One of his talents at young age; the ability to speak the Dutch language with accents from Amsterdam, The Hague and especially Rotterdam, where he rose to “child actors fame” after a photoshoot for and advertisement, to make publicity for the company our daddy was working for at that time.

In 1994 our “Amistad fraternal” was completely different. L. was growing up and got into his puberty which meant that at that time he didn´t need his big brother to bother him. Puberty is bloody nasty, at least it was for me, there are a lot of issues and you sometimes interpret things the wrong way and then you lock yourself up in your room with loud RATM (me in 1992) at full volume. Eventually it passes. The rock and metal path we used to walk together splitted; my brother discovered punk and hardcore (Bad Religion, NOFX, Black Flag, stuff like that) while I was more into Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, general grunge, thrash metal and old seventies bands (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple etc.)

Somewhere around 1998, my old school buddy M. invited by brother to play in his (sort of) punk band Nijntje Heerst (for non Dutch people, Nijntje is that cute little rabbit drawn by Dick Bruna, called Miffy in the rest of the world). They had some gigs and made a demo album, then the band broke up and they all went their separate ways.

Around the start of the new millennium we often went together to discotheques or other events. We had a splendid night in a bar in Doetinchem where the owner put a Creedence CD on and once at the Radstake, this cute blonde girl walked to me and asked me: Hey, who is that cool dude on the dancefloor? Well darling, he´s my brother.

Eventually they wound up together for a couple of months, in that period we went a few times to the P8, a dark and bit alternative discobar in Terborg.

Sometimes there were punk concerts at Elbekurkie (adaptation of Albuquerque in New Mexico?), a meeting centre for young people in a small village that belongs to Winterswijk. Since my brother had friends in that village we used to go there every once in a while.

Then I left the Netherlands to go and live in Valencia, Spain. In the summer of 2003, L. came to visit me although unfortunately I had to work during the day. In less than a week he learned Spanish, not using any books, but by heart, grammatically incorrect but Spanish people could have a conversation with him.

Only a year later, I left Valencia and moved to Barcelona. The first year was a bit hectic but in 2005, thanks to my Russian friend A., I could move to a house of a friendly landlady. I invited my brother to come in the Christmas period and so he did. We had a couple of cervezas in a typical tapas bar on the Madrid avenue and he improved his Spanish.

Christmas 2007 was sad because our granny passed away. Dad phoned me and said, just book a ticket to Germany and I´ll pick you up there.

After greeting the family at my grandparents house, being suddenly back in my country and not having any plans, what should I do?

L. was playing in a hardcore band called Strike First. He had a show at the Goudvishal in Arnhem and I could come. I made a video there and he uploaded it on Youtube.

3 days later, after granny´s funeral, we both visited the carbide shooting event, organized by O. and his buddies, a “happening” with a lot of beer and we got the idea to go back to Arnhem to visit friends of my hermanito there. It was a great new year; lots of booze and the girls, Marie and Jeanne where there too. January 1^st I woke up with a little hangover and we drove back to Barchem, our home town.

In May 2009 our niece A. had her wedding and we attended. I came with one of my excolleagues in his lorry from Barcelona via the French A9 and A6, through Luxembourg and Cologne to the Netherlands. My parents took me to visit my granddad, who enjoyed a glass of liquor in his retirement home. It was my last visit to him as he left us in February 2010.

L. posted a picture of him with his sunglasses on his FB. Curious enough, my brother does have a resemblance to his granddad, most curious was though that the funeral was arranged on February 19; for L. a day of mixed emotions, for the rest of the family too.

L. had created an account on Soundcloud and organized his birthday party in Enschede, themed “Stiekem” (sneaky or secretly). The windows were decorated with newspapers and he revealed that he liked techno music. I was a bit overwhelmed by this “sudden” change in his music style, but it turns out that he is a great composer and he is now even a DJ on gigs.

About 6 years ago L. found a nice girl, M. and they are still together. She is also talented and hardworking, so hope she´ll stay with him for years to come.

My last visit to my hermanito was in May 2016, we had the 40^th wedding anniversary party of my parents and I stayed afterwards for a couple of days in Enschede. This Monday the guy turns 36. Happy birthday hermano!! Though we´re separated by the ocean, we´ll always be HFL.

Un dimarts de gener. Tuesday 8

Dimarts, mardi, Tuesday, martes

The new year started a week ago. New Years day was like a Sunday. Nice party.
The work is back and there is enough to do here. I'm getting overwhelmed by a writers block.
Twitter in that way is easy, 140 characters. Let's talk about 8 January then.

Today my mother has her birthday. She was born in a border town in the Netherlands, in a time that Elten and Selfkant also belonged to the Netherlands.
Happy birthday Mom!

Then again, yesterday it was the night (or madrugada, early morning) of 3 AM, January 7th, the panther blouse and the jeans by a dutch song of 1983.

And at 5 pm...I'll turn on the radio again on spanish dial 103.80. And I'll drink a beer. And I hope that the IT Help will be available soon

Paquito goes Down Under

Everything started about 7 years ago in October. With many pleasure I was working in a logistics company in an office which was way too expensive. Speaking french and trying to change my dutch to flemish when talking with the belgians. That same month I had moved to the western part of the city Barcelona, to this little flat with a small bathroom and an even smaller kitchen, but with a very nice terrace.

A gorgeous greek girl asked if I would come to her birthday party. "Of course, it´ll be great fun".
What is a greek party? Tons of tzatziki (delicious) an enormous pie, and plenty of booze.
While I made my whisky coke, suddenly I met the guy. "Soy Francisco, llamame Siscu".
Vale, I said, yo soy Robin, encantado de conocerte.

My friend Victor brought him to the party. The typical thing about parties is that there are always people who get in although most people do not know them.
It was in fact the first evening that I really got to know the Barcelona city centre, we went to the Karma at the plaza real and I got home quite drunk.

At that time, in winter 2004 and spring 2005, Siscu had the habit of calling me and ask me to go to the liquor store and bring 300 bottles of beer and fetch also 10 kilos of Doritos. Then, either we drank beer or martini and listened to music.
Meanwhile he had also found himself a nice job where he must have learned a lot during those 7 years. He is one of my brothers, just like the guy from Russia and the other from Navarra.

Funny in the begin was mainly that he and his other friends used to speak in a typical catalan spanish with strange words which you will not understand only with 3 year of studying spanish from a book. Catalan is a nice language, but complicated with accents and stuff...
In those times, when people could still spend more than they earn (3 years later the whole "casa de naipes" fell down crumbling), we had the idea to get a couple of days away from Spain.

So we got to the south of France, in the pittoresque little city of Narbonne. This first visit to France will stay in our memories for the visit to Carcassonne, the huge steak and the Merlot wine that hit us like the man with the hammer hits the participants of the Tour de France.
This was only the first of many trips, we have travelled on and saw more things, like Perpignan, although it is French Catalunya, the people do not use it there that much. Perpignan we´ll remember for the visit to an industrial area discotheque with extremely expensive alcohol.

Toulouse was also waiting for us. But as usual, the french SNCF threw carbon in our breakfast cause they had another "grève". So we went by bus, it rained a lot and we spent too much money on pralines.
The last french visit was Montpellier. We had experience in France. But when we arrived in Narbonne and the rails were blocked ahead, the personnel of the SNCF told; it´ll probably be one hour before we can proceed.
I do not know if they are bad predictors or they just lie very good. We got out of the train to have a beer in a bar and 30 minutes later we got back to the station and the train was gone.
So I went to information and I said: "Bon, nos valises sont dans le train a Montpellier, veuillez informer vos colleagues là qu´ils nous gardons les valises, nous achetons des nouveaux billets, etc. etc."
I also said them that they did not tell us the truth about the delay, but they were not really having fear from my threatenings.

More places we went: Berlin, Germany (in a freezing february cold) screaming together on the Brandenburger Tor, various cities in the Netherlands and Belgium, a couple of times to Murcia, eating splendid "prawn horses from el Torrao" and Basque Country and Rome, Italy. Apart from the tons of parties we have celebrated here in Barcelona and other parts of the catalan territory.

Cesc, this is for you. Happy Birthday and I wish you all the best in Australia. Your english pronounciation will improve day by day. Don´t forget to listen music from Australia. You won´t be here, but we will know what you will do around there. Remember the time you had and look forward to the time you will have there! Wear your hat and sunglasses or your skin will get burnt.
Anyway before you leave we´ll surely have that last Murphy, Guinness or Foster pint.
Cheers!