This is a memory-lane kind of post…
So, we had Jean listen to some of his band-years-tracks and gave him a dictaphone and a couple of beers… And the rest is as vague as his work…
This is the transcript of his mind flowing out of his mouth…
"Recorded live in an abandoned theatre in the middle-east of the Netherlands… It tells the story of the dog who used to whisper in the ear of Berkowitz–later better known as The Son of Sam, the serial killer. Recorded in one take, and even though we tried different takes on the song, the first one was the best. We also had this weird little rule, that, if it takes three times or more to record a song, it probably isn't a good song… And then we'd skip the song…"
"In 1999 we, kind of, were adopted as a band into this squat-scene… And we became part of this little Society called "Book Your Own Life", which send us off to off-the-map places in France and Italy and Germany and all over the place… And they were, kind of, these Grassroots Persuasion Communities… And they loved us… Which was the most important thing, because we used to combine art with politics and life and human rights and… you know… the works… And there was this little label in the Czech Republic that wanted to do a double A Side for both us and this band 'Seratone' which we used to travel around with… And we had, like, a lot of success with this song we used to perform live… It was a PJ Harvey song… And a lot of people asked to always do 'Snake' and so we recorded it… I think I don't know where… Must have been China or something… And we put that on the double A Side which is worth a lot of money at the moment if you have one of those copies… I like this song and I sometimes, when the when the crowd is as aggressive as I am, I sometimes play this song in my solo sets… I love this song…"
"I remember I was on my bike one day… And this new Nike-ad entered my brain and I was thinking about it all day long and I had this midnight session in the studio… And we didn't know what to do, yet we had some songs to record, but there was also this moment of improvisation and so this ad was in my mind and I thought about this one time I was in a room and two people were having sex in that very same room… And they both had their socks on… And I was thinking… you know… they also could have been wearing Nike shoes… And that became this whole dark fantasy about having sex with Nikes on… And then he was wearing the dress and she was wearing the dress… And they would trade all the time… And it was like a very steamy and almost aggressive type of lovemaking… And I talked to Van Weely, the drummer at the time, and I said to him: 'I have this dark fantasy about having sex in Nikes and the exchange of dresses and stuff like that…' And he was going wild… And we had this synthesiser, and we were in the process of programming it... since we were going to record… I think it's 'Bones'... But I'm not quite sure… But I thought it was… We were going to record 'Bones'... And then we started out as an improvisation… This little thing… This mantra… About them having sex… And he added this fantasy about me having sex with him, the drummer–who is as straight as an arrow, I might add… I don't know… But it was something like that… So that's how 'Let's do it' occurred… And then later on Nike™ send a letter to the record company, that they didn't want the 'Just Do It™' as a title, because it was trademarked and they didn't want an underground art-band to go off with that trademark tagline… Whatever you want to call it… And I'm… So we just recorded 'Let's Do It' instead of 'Just Do It™' and we were cleared… It's a f****** great song… And I went completely insane… I guess… And it was just a warm-up to record 'Bones'... And I think that's a very pretty song… It is very much in that aggressive mode…"
"I was in a plane once going from Los Angeles to Seattle… And I had to sit next to someone who was wearing a jacket that was quite familiar… And I knew it was my jacket, because I had bought it for a lot of money and it used to belong to Jimi Hendrix… And I said 'that's quite a nice jacket' and he said: 'yeah, I bought it from somebody who stole it from somebody in Europe…' And we were heading to Tacoma, before we started approaching Seattle, when there was such a… such a weird story… It was clear this used to be my jacket… And I couldn't explain it… Because… Well… It was stolen from me in Belgium… And then I was going from LA to Seattle, and that flight had me sitting next to my own jacket… That was such a surreal thing to go through… It was really pretty much intended for a song… And I think I commemorated Jimi Hendrix as much in my guitar playing as in the little story that I once bought his jacket and then it was stolen from me… And I saw that jacket on a Red Eye to Seattle… Great… I'm still in therapy…"
"Burning down the Shakespearean 'to be or not to be'... And then 'to be'... This is a story about two guys in a taxi going from one party to the next party… And I was never a big fan of going from one party to the next party, because the next party was always lame… Because all your energy and your tension and your stamina is used… well… Being used during that first party… The second party is always lame… The after-party is always lame… Bad… And this is… This isn't… In a taxi and it's a true story… It happened… These are two people who really love each other… Well… They are fond of each other… They have sex, but they do not want this relationship, because there is too much testosterone in that relationship… So they will probably end up killing each other… It's a true story… I was there… I was one of the two guys… And I think I was 18… Maybe 19 at the time… But it kind of reflected this world that I was going through… And then years later, while creating 'Notes from Purgatory' I went through that emotion again... And I think it's a nice thing… We recorded this in an attic, because somebody said: 'I have this Ghost Piano, that hasn't been tuned for–what?–80 years… And we were looking for the special places to record the album, because that was kind of the concept of the album… And so we travelled to his attic… And there was this Ghost Piano… And in the corner there was this drum-kit, which was really peculiar… Because it had… It didn't have the toms or didn't have… You know… The bass-drums… An irregular drum kit… But it was destroyed… And we had to tape it down… Because once Van Weely started drumming on that thing, while I was playing the piano, it almost fell apart… So we had to duct tape it, in order to record the song… And so it's this one… It's really special to me… And we had this… I had this story… I was reading it… With a lot of echoes and stuff like that… And it became this song and I truly love this song… It also portrays my love of basketball..."