Masters of Periodicity

Among the many different projects I've been involved with over the last decade, this one deserves some extra attention, because of the very special nature of this 'band'.

First of all it shares its origin with several other bands in Delft: the anual M.O.E.-festival in the club De Koornbeurs.
For the festival of May 1998 I was in an unusually large band of 8 people (including a 3 girl horn-section).
With our performance we came in second, and so we were asked to perform in the Opening Week of the University's new year in August. As few of us had reckoned with that option, we failed trying to find dates for full-size rehearsals, due to overlapping hollidays.

Frank Maarsen

Not willing to give in without trying, the drummer (Tjeerd Faber), the bass-player (Frank Maarsen) and the guitar-player (me) decided to get together and write some songs, to be able to perform even if the others couldn't make it. So we got together on a Sunday-afternoon in July, in the basement of "De Koornbeurs", and improvised five songs within three hours with amazing ease. Two weeks later we met again and rehearsed what we had done before, and wrote another three songs.

By that time the three of us had come to realize that there was a very special sort of chemistry between us when we were jamming. This was something very unexpected, as we all had quite different musical backgrounds: Tjeerd in Funk and Jazz, Frank as a Singer-Songwriter and myself in Classical music and Symfonic rock.
The final conformation came with the performance in the Opening Week: we only performed one song with the entire band of 8, and some 8 songs with just the three of us. But somehow it wasn't half as much fun and the songs didn't sound quite as good as when we had first played them.
All three of us felt that way.

So we decided we wanted a rematch.
The opportunity presented itself when we were asked to perform for a small audience at a private party.

We went in without rehearsing. We did a soundcheck at the end of the aftenoon and then spend an hour and a half playing each other some themes we thought might work. We went on stage that evening and just started playing and let the music find its own way.
It worked. And it has continued working since, until Frank had to give up playing bass for at least two years due to RSI. Fortunately Frank has recovered and we're all looking forward to playing again some time in the near future.

Tjeerd Faber Photo's by Wendy Westerduin