‘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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.