The website for the Spinshots was the first time i worked with Peter Hordijk as a technician. This was the start of a very delightful and fruity professional relationship where we could flourish in our roles but also created a synergy when it comes to UX design. The Spinshots no longer exist, so i don’t know how long we will keep the site up. But for as long as it lasts: www.thespinshots.com

‘Gone Before He Left’ was my attempt to write a John Barry style kind of song – as if related to the James Bond franchise.
For this single, drummer Emanuel Wiemans and I did the production and we had great help by Sietse van Gorkom, who arranged the strings orchestra on this track.

The cover was drawn by Emanuel Wiemans, who is, apart from an excellent drummer also an excellent visual artist.

On the B side of the vinyl is the signature tune for my animation film ‘Deep Shit, sang by Boyd Small, and ‘Comic Sexy’, the hymn for the fashion brand I started up with André Oosterman. It is used in a videoclip and was played in venues for the models to dance the special ‘Comic Sexy’ choreography to.

Gone Before He Left is an interesting track – i don’t play the piano but i wanted to write a song in the John Barry tradition. I figured he’d probably wrote on the piano and so i tried – the song ‘Gone Before He Left’ is the result.

But the lyric had it’s own incentive: My friends Balder Westein and Patrick Raats, both animation directors had this character, a magician that constantly fails doing his tricks. I think he’s based on Tommy Cooper, but mixed with a dangerous stuntman. They asked me to write an opening track for their film and i thought it needed to be something ‘James Bond-esque’. I thought it would be nice to make a song about a ‘living disaster, who does not understand the consequences of his own failures’ and turn this guy into a mysterious phantom-like personality, as if he is a real bond-like hero. The film never made it, but the song was recorded with the Spinshots and the Red Limo Orchestra backing us up with their strings!

When the Spinshots presented ‘Gone Before He Left’ we threw a ‘spy’ party – with prices for the best dressed spies. We also just finished recording the mini soundtrack i wrote for the leader of the Dutch animation festival ‘Klik’ – and performed it live here. Since i did quite some editing I present this as a videoclip rather than a live presentation. The sound was recorded and mixed by Jan Jaap Snellen, video shot by Jelle Mulder and Nicolai van Nunen.

Promo picture for the Spinshots. I wanted to communicate a link with the 60s and Exotica without being obvious.

these are the offical pictures i drew for the design of the ‘Exotica’ dress for Flora Dolores. Later i used it as one of the dresses in the ‘Comic Sexy’ line ‘The Magnificent Seven’.

Credits go to Emanuel Wiemans, who drew this cover art after a sketch I made, probably on a beermat. Emanuel is really good at capturing this 50’s / 60’s look so his style fitted the purpose perfectly.

These are the EPs that the Spinshots brought out as a ‘Whodunit’ – all together the EPs were one album unfolding a story about a girl who got murdered. The audience was invited to find out who did it.

Line of Life is the very first song i wrote for the Spinshots. Just before we quit after 9 or 11 years (i forgot what it was) this version made it to be the B side of the singe ‘Balkan Dinosaur’, and I am really happy we recorded it. It never reached it’s full potential but i still like to hear it – there are some versions on the web so give it a try 😉

I wrote ‘Balkan Dinosaur’ for the Spinshots in an attempt to mix ‘Balkan’ with ’70s ‘glam’Rock. It’s part of the EP series ‘Seven Bullets, One Gun’ in which we unfold a story about a young woman being murdered. Fans can find out who the killer is by following clues from lyrics and the graphic designs of the covers.

Cover for the EP ‘Balkan Dinosaur / Line of Life’ by the Spinshots. Part of the EP series ‘Seven Bullits, One Gun’: The Spinshots brought out this series over their last year of existence but never quite finished it. The idea was that the album was a ‘Whodunit’: it tells the tale of a murdered young woman and listeners can guess who the killer is by following cues from lyrics and design.

Cover art for ‘Love Antenna’ and ‘Cuba Libre’ EP by The Spinshots.

Poster promoting the single ‘Balkan Dinosaur’ by the Spinshots. The poster is made from squares so we could upload a square at the time on instagram, building suspension with giving information about the event bit by bit through instagram.

Logo for the Spinshots during the ‘seven Bullets’ period.

‘Love Antenna’ was the final song I wrote for the Spinshots. I think it is one of our best productions – I really love everything about it.

‘Cuba Libre was written by Ruud ‘Trompie’ Kleiss and me, and the lyrics are by Flora Dolores and me. At the time we called the music of the Spinshots ‘Neo Exotica’ – which meant a danceable kind of beat-music mixed with Latin, African, eastern European and Indian music.

Part of the singles series ‘Seven Bullets, One Gun’ – with clues in the artwork and the lyrics.
Emanuel Wiemans made this beautiful drawing and I did the design.

Love Antenna is one of the last songs i wrote for the Spinshots. i made it a habit on the covers for the single series ‘Seven Bullets, One Gun’, to already show a propagation for the next single. This would be ‘The Great Black Open’ – hence the space girl.

Seven Bullets, One Gun was meant as a whodunit, our fans could solve a murder with hints in the lyrics and sleeve designs. But i already knew by the time Love Antenna came out, that this was our last single. Hence the seven lost & lonely astronauts.

‘Seven Bullets, One Gun’ was an EP series by the Spinshots. The idea was that we made a ‘Whodunit’ over 7 vinyl singles. Clues about the murder of a Romanian runaway girl were given in the texts and the covers.

Note: the drawings on the first two covers were made by Emanuel Wiemans, the drawings on the last two covers were made by me.

‘Never So Right’ was the Spinshots’ first and only album. We tried to make a variety within a range of ‘exotica’ related styles and at something of ourselves to it. All songs on the album were written by me, except ‘Qui est ‘in’, qui est ‘out’ which was written by Serge Gainsbourg and ‘If I Would Fall’ which was written by Andreas Tscholl and Hans van Grasstek.

Well, the word ‘Love’ often means ‘Lust’ in Rock & Roll. I thought it was nice to present it as a drug that could give you a hangover and the cure is: love again!

The tricky thing with rock ‘n roll lyrics is that you have a short song, a chorus that usually repeats a part of the lyric and that you are commonly need short sentences that rhyme. If you think you have a bit of an insight and want to express that through a rock and roll lyric, things are way more complicated than they seem.

In ‘Never So Right’ i took a take on the phrase ‘circumstances make the guy’ – an often heard argument in discussions about nature vs nurture. I thought that we don’t have as much of a free will as we like to think and changed quote into: ‘but circumstances do not make the guy, they just reveal him when he waves goodbye’. This way i could write a song about the singer having a broken heart as well as give a little thought provocation.

We can cherish our past but we should not cling to it – and it’s great if we learn through experiences but we should not be defined by our mistakes only.

‘Qui est ‘In’, qui est ‘out’ was written by Serge Gainsbourg. I arranged this cover version and we recorded it with the Spinshots for the compilation album ‘Gainsnord’ – Ditch band playing music by Serge Gainsbourg.

the Désirs Mutuels single came out as a dvd with a videoclip. For the clip, we went into an abandoned warehouse with a working elevator. This was all done ‘no-budget’ and the cover art was silk printed by hand on the cheapest DVD packages we could get our hands on. Still love the song, the clip and the package art, though.

Original cover for ‘Qui est ‘in’, qui est ‘out’. But since the track came out as the single for the compilation album ‘Gainsnord’ this one was never used, in stead it had the ‘Hanco Kolk’ cover.

Désirs Mutuèls was the first clip we made for the Spinshots.

I had they idea finding out that the first recordings we made without microphones. A needle was sunk into turning wax and the band would be playing around it. So if somebody had a feature in the music, they had to com closer to the registering needle. In my head, this transformed to a videoclip in which the Spinshots would live in an elevator and we had to come close to the camera on a tripod if we had a feature.

My friend Rudy had a key to an empty gigantic office building in the middle of the city. We built up our set in the elevator and shot our clip in one night.
Although the colossal building was empty, the elevators were still working, even by themselves. This made filming the clip quite a challenge as we ran the risk the elevator we were acting from would suddenly take leave. During this one-take shot, it actually did not leave when we wanted it to and kept that in, because it provided a funny, very ‘Spinshots-like’ moment.

Never So Right is the first (and only) LP recorded by the Spinshots. I wanted the cover to look like one of those albums with a great cover and shitty music on it, as a practical joke. We asked photographer FotoFloor and stylist Iris Satijn to help us with the cover image. Emanuel Wiemans helped me with the handwritten typography and on the inside you see the musicians of the band in a toy rikshaw. This all should represent the serious-but-not-serious outlook of the Spinshots.

When Cookie left the Spinshots, we asked Flora Dolores to be our singer and had a great 9 years with her! We also released a mini album where we introduced her – silk screened by hand indeed!

Early poster for the Spinshots, during our ‘Smiths of Rhythm and Tunes’ period.

Hand silk printed poster for the Spinshots featuring new singer Flora Dolores. I have always liked the term ‘Rhythm & Tunes’ to explain ‘what kind of music i make’.
Later we tagged in ‘Neo Exotica’ but i never really liked that denotation – it feels restricting to have a genre that seems too framed. But yeah, bookers want to know what they book.

Anyway, here is a poster for a band that really is inspired by the ’50s and ’60s exotica wave but mixed it with punk, beat and soul. Beat, not Beats.

Early material of the Spinshots – this is during a talent presentation at Paradiso. I actually have warm feelings of this period of the band, when the future was open and unknown, and musically it could develop in all directions. We weren’t that good yet i guess, but i like this.

Somewhere at an early stage of The Spinshots I organised a monthly vaudeville show in a circus tent, together with Patrick Moonen.
We had bands, act and deejays, and here you see the Spinshots performing their son ‘Fetish for Veils’ with Maya Acid dancing to it.

‘Rhythm and Tunes’ is in my opinion the best name we had to describe the music of the Spinshots. I never wanted to be tied down by a genre and this was a humorous way of saying that we could not be placed in a genre. The mini album ‘Smiths of Rhythm and Tunes’ is not the best album we did but it was played more or less live in the studio, so it showed what we could do.

I like the song ‘Smiths of Rhythm & Tunes’ though. Too bad we never made a recording of it the way I fancied. And i like ‘Cleans-o-tech’ a lot still.

i drew the Spinshots being very inspired by ’50s and ’60s illustrator Jim Flora. For a while, you’d see this image on our poster as the ‘Publicity Photo’.

The Spinshots played a song called ‘Cleans-o-tech’ and pretended it was a tune they had to play for they were sponsored by the company. I drew this mascotte, we had some advertisements and at some point in our career a dancer in a suit that looked like a cleans-o-tech- bottle.

Early poster for the Spinshots, during our ‘Smiths of Rhythm and Tunes’ period.

Hand silk printed poster for the Spinshots featuring new singer Flora Dolores. I have always liked the term ‘Rhythm & Tunes’ to explain ‘what kind of music i make’.
Later we tagged in ‘Neo Exotica’ but i never really liked that denotation – it feels restricting to have a genre that seems too framed. But yeah, bookers want to know what they book.

Anyway, here is a poster for a band that really is inspired by the ’50s and ’60s exotica wave but mixed it with punk, beat and soul. Beat, not Beats.

Promotion pictures for the Spinshots – early stage.

Illustration for the Spinshots in our Turban period. I tried to have a good look at Jim Flora’s jazzy illustrations from the 50s and 60s and tried to make my own style from what i learned. The characters actually lok like the band members, that much i can tell for sure!

At the start, the Spinshots wore turbans and Indian suits. I think I still like that image best of all the different outlooks we chose, but not everybody in the band was so happy with it. Anyway, at this stage we had this logo for awhile.

In their first period, the Spinshots played wearing turbands and Indian wedding suits that I had tailored for them. This was before we called our music ‘Neo Exotica’ (I always liked ‘Rhythm & Tunes better) and when, for communicational reasons, we started calling our music Neo Exotica we stopped the turband thing.

The black and white photo was made by Annuska Steixner, the photo of The Spinshots at Winston Kingdom was made by Walley van Groningen and the ones with the green curtains in the back were made by Vi Mahabali

Cleans-o-tech is a fictional product and there was a time The Spinshots, the band I was in for 11 years, pretended to be sponsored by it. here you see a dancer performing as a bottle of Cleans-o-tech during a show.

One of the nicest ways to describe our music was, if you ask me, ‘Rhythm & Tunes’. I wrote a song called ‘The Smiths of Rhythm & Tunes’ as a bit of a joke: since we wore turbans at the time because I am a huge exotica fan, I thought it would be funny if we our own ‘Sultans of Swing’.

We had some changes in the personnel at that time – hence different covers. It was re-released as ‘Cleans-0-tech’ which was a song that sounded like a commercial break in the set.

(Shut Your Trap and) Sell Your Soul is sung by Boyd Small, a friend who happens to be a fantastic singer. He did the voice for ‘Lucifero’ in my animated short Deep Shit.

It’s a given fact famous people sold their soul to the devil, and in this song the devil explains why that isn’t as bad as it seems: ‘effortlessly making waves!’ – and what is your soul worth anyway? (In Deep Shit, God is dead long time, and everybody goes to hell. The devil has a merely ceremonial job and he is really, really tired of it).

Mascotte ‘One Hit Wonder’ for the Spinshots

This digitally pulled together promotion picture turned out to be really cool as a poster: i just had to add where we’d play and voila: killer gig poster!

The Spinshots made ‘Rhythm & Tunes’, later called their music ‘Neo Exotica’. What stayed was their wild liveshows and their exciting performances.

Photos by Vi Mahabali and Wrecker Walley. If i forgot to mention a photographer please mail me and I’ll adjust…

Poster to promote the show of the Spinshots at the yearly ‘Haarlem Comic Days’. Laura A Dima did a go go dance on stage dressed as my character ‘Lucy the Home Made Maid’

When the Spinshots adjusted the name of their music to ‘Neo Exotica’ we needed a poster. I wanted a clear link with the 60s that we loved so much and at the same times something new, and having a sense of humour.

The female members of the Spinshots used to get a tailored Comic Sexy dress i designed. Here is Loes, one of the baritone Sax players in a ‘Lava Caliente’.

This photo of The Spinshots is made by Pearl Vink and me, with the stylistic help of Laura A Dima. Note that Babette and Flora are wearing Comic Sexy dresses.

Flora Dolores was the singer of the Spinshots, a project i started to perform my musical compositions. Flora is, besides a great singer, a good friend and a perfect model for the dresses of Comic Sexy. She wore several of them on and off stage and i made some nice pictures of her as a Comic Sexy Ambassadorette.

When the Spinshots started, they wore turbands. This has a lot to do with my love for Exotica and Bollywood. Traditionally, Sikhs are playing the ‘funny’ roles in Bollywood films and we did not take ourselves too seriously although we made the best music we could. And it looked pretty damn cool, so as an identity item, we had a turband for a logo

present for Flora Dolores, the singer of the Spinshots, who could have any of the designs of Comic Sexy made for her in the identity colours black and cherry red.

i made zillons of logo’s and logoësque designs for the spinshots. This one made it to the lid of my effect pedal suitcase.

‘One Hit Wonder’ was the original mascotte i designed for my band The Spinshots. I am a huge fan of ‘Blaxploitation’ music and I thought the combination of the term and this super karate heroine girl would be a fun teeshirt.

Ir Vendermeulen, the ‘Godfather of Amsterdam’ and initiator of the Amsterdam Beat Club, asked me to perform with the Spinshots and create a fashion show with the models presenting the designs while the band backed them up live.

This all happened at Paradiso, the rock temple of Amsterdam.

‘Sell Your Soul’ was sung by Boyd Small. I wrote the song for my animation short ‘Deep Shit’ and performed it with the Spinshots. Boyd did the voice of ‘Lucifero’ in the film and since he is a great blues singer – I asked him to take the lead on this one.

‘Sell Your Soul’ (and shut your trap) is the key tune from Deep Shit, an animated short I did with quite a team. (check the film here)
We performed the song with the Spinshots, with the Van Dijck Sisters at the backings. It turned out to be a great tune so we made a videoclip for it as well – in Jelle Mulder’s studio around the corner of mine.

If you swipe to the right you’ll see the 10 minute animation movie with more music by the Spinshots and friends!

In 2013, The Spinshots had the honour to back up Arthur Brown at the Amsterdam Beat Club Paradiso Show

The Spinshots live at an Amsterdam Beat Club event at Paradiso Amsterdam