‘Blue for the Occasion’ is. except for the drums, recorded in my kitchen. We nailed mattresses to the walls and installed ourselves behind the computer drummer Edwin Slothouber brought over (which was then the only in our circles that was fast enough).

We had food and drinks for a week and recorded this album. We prerecorded the drums at Studio Yland. The song ‘Goodlooking Girls Are Always Right’ was considered the best song title of the year by a critic.

‘Blue for the Occasion’ is Paxy Dragon’s third CD album. (hey guys, those were the ’90s!)

We recorded the drums at Studio IJland, and the rest in my house. I lived in a squat at the time, and the band members stayed over for a week, living on coffee and pizzas. We stapled mattresses onto the walls to sort of respect the neighbours and worked for a week, perhaps two weeks in a row.

‘Blue for the Occasion’ is Paxy Dragon’s third CD album. (hey guys, those were the ’90s!)
I hope to find back some pictures of that time, I might post it in the ‘behind the scenes’ section of this work. My Friend Vi made it to the cover and to the teeshirts. Must have one of those somewhere to…

Omnes Tredecim Boni was Paxy Dragon’s answer to the accusation that we would be ‘pretentious’. We thought we had a perfect understanding of perspective so we gave our album this Latin title, that loosely translate to ’13 big hits’.

Omnes Tredecim Boni is fake Latin for ‘Alle Dertien Goed’, which is Dutch for well, loose translation: ‘Thirteen Top Hits’.
This is a bit of a joke since someone once  said we were pretentious. So we thought a Latin title is exactly what we needed.

‘Omnes Tredecim Boni’ is the title of a Paxy Dragon album in which they sing about rituals and habits of their island. The title is a bit of a practical joke: the band was judged as ‘pretentious’ regularly so they made up a latin sounding title that translates to ‘All 13 Great’ – referring to the 13 songs on the album. In the Netherlands, it used to be common that you could buy ‘All 13 Great’, of ‘All 13 Hits’ albums on which the masses’ favourite tunes were covered by anonymous bands. Usually, these tracks were lame.

Since CD’s usually are so ugly, i thought it would be great to print the transparant plastic as part of the design to go with the paper behind it.

‘Kathy was Paxy Dragon’s first CD album. Kathy was a Paxy Dragon’s song, written by Roelof de Groot, that was very popular amongst fans. Wherever we used to play people in the audience would shout for ‘Kathy’, so it became a running gag to play it late in the set..

The song is not on the album, so it ends with a fan shouting ‘Kathy!’ after the last track.

The cover illustration is made by Ingrid Bockting.

press photo for my former band Paxy Dragon

‘Kathy was the name of a song that was favourite amongst our fans. The song is not on the album, but we had a fan in the studio shouting for it, which is the final thing you hear on this record, after the last song.

‘Y’ came out on casette – as the 2nd cassette album by the band. The first one was ‘As Experienced on the Famous Last Breath Show’ but I can’t find that one any more.

In that time (early 90s) I was reading a lot about alchemy. So kings, queens, sulphur, crimson, dragons, boiling pots – all found a way into my work. Fortunately, I had a sense of humor so the depicted phenomenon of ‘killing the dragon’ did not work out too pretentious. I think.

The ‘Daily Drag’ was a newspaper from the island on which the band resided: Oaxakaah. In there was gossip and the lyrics.

Paxy Dragon’s ‘Y’ was a cassette album, recorded on Roelof’s or my 4-track. For this album, I designed a letter font and we developed a language, including native signs… making it impossible to read the credits.

With the cassette came the ‘Daily Drag’ – the International Newspaper written in English so people could understand a bit what we were all about.

After winning a contest that was called ‘which band is the new Dutch sensation’ we were allowed a few days in the studio. The owner liked our work so much he proposed more studio time if we’d write a rock opera. This is how far we got until we all went other directions.

‘Don and Dave’s Sit And See It Happen Show’ was a cynical rock opera, written at the early days of ‘Opinion TV’ that is nowadays so common. The story is about two TV preachers who both have a habit: Don likes young girls, and Dave likes the drug ‘Serotonine’ a bit too much. Don and Dave was what happened to the world 20 years later: opportunistic narcissist politicians and celebrities guiding the masses, having a big mouth about moral and such, without caring for anybody else but themselves.

The story develops around a young ‘Romeo and Juliet’ kind of couple – the son of a ‘Don And Dave addict’ and an asylum seeker. Unfortunately, Paxy Dragon decided to quit in the process of making this rock opera. But here are the songs I wrote for it.

Poster for one of my former bands: Paxy Dragon. The white space on the down site could be used to print the name of the venue on.

logo for the label of Paxy Dragon, one of the bands i was in.

‘Mascotte’ for Paxy Dragon. The fins were used as ‘identity particle’ in other illustrations, like the ones with the band members

This is truly vintage! I think I made this (with bass player Roelof as a special effects technician) in ehm, 1996…
Notice the Most Unreadable End Credits Of All Time at the end – only somebody educated as a graphic designer can come up with a thing like that. Phooey ‘Form Follows Function’!

This is a videoclip we made for my band Paxy Dragon in, eh, 1998. With Maggie Boogaard dancing and Paul Lomans coaching the dance. And lots of other people as mentioned in the credits.

This film was shot in two takes on 16 millimeter. Everything in the background is animated frame by frame and Maggie dances on half speed to sort of match the feel of the animation. Later, I blended the two films so that it looks as if the dancer is in that surrounding destroying everything. I’d do such a better job nowadays, hahaha! But it has it’s own ;vintage’ charm I guess. And the music never got out other then on this video. De drums are made in a computer program I had: you could tick boxes on a timeline and then you’d hear a specific drum sound on that place. Rooney of thee Wreckers, who plays bass here, had a hard time playing exactly the guitar line but then one fourth later. But he did a great job – this is al pre -quantise, guys! And I asked Wendy to play violin as if it was played backwards – not a bad job either!

Some 60 people were involved in making this clip in 1996. Check the end credits!

The idea behind it is based on Jung’s notion of ‘Animus and Anima’. I thought it would be great to translate that to a live chess game with a black king and crew symbolising the ‘unconscious’, making all decisions (for all we do comes from unconscious impulses). The white king and crew copy the black king and everything works as nature demands. Then a white and black pawn start kissing and turn into a purple queen. Things get messy from there.

So yeah, this was done on video in 1996 – I’d do a better job now. There was still much to learn, as there will be always.
But I like to be as complete as i can on this site, and de clip does have a certain naive charm.

I am sure it’s not easy to be a friend of mine. You always run the risk that I might ask you to be in one of my videos. Here you see a very old one, called ‘Fake Away Spray’ – stay until the end credits – I think they are the most unreadable ever made!

Well, maybe the end credits of my other Paxy Dragon Clip ‘Dance Of Djapozzit’ comes close. Well that’s what you do when you study Graphic Design at art school.