#guesteditorarchive

The best apocalyptic song I know. It would not have made the list (too familiar for the kind of audience I expect to have here), if it weren’t for Donald Trump resurrecting my fear of imminent global catastrophe. Of all the prophetic lines, the most chilling I find the frantic ‘Let me hear both sides!’, reminding me of our increasingly desperate attempts to have reasonable public discussions.

Childrens! The Guest Editor of the Week Project will be back next week.

Starting up with Gudo Jonker. The guy’s been a friend of mine ever since we were teenagers and both in (another) high school. He’s amazing, smart, kind, likes the best music (we went to The Cat Empire and Mala Vita all the time) and he does important work at the First Aid as a radiologist. 

A few months ago I got to share the attic I’ve been living now for over six years with a new home mate. Gilles.

The guy’s great. He’s strong as a Gorilla, that’s why I call him Gorilles. His music taste really fits our attic. We never complain or whatever. As a matter of fact, we actually listen to each other’s music together in the living room between our rooms. 

Also I lend Gilles four to six LPs sometimes, he then listens to them, gives his opinion and when he returns the LPs I give him a fresh package of good music.

So, since Erik was so enthusiastic and although I planned him to be guest editor just last week, I hadn’t been clear about my wish for him to write the text accompanying the songs in English. He sent in his content like the same day I started asking everyone to join. I could only be grateful and therefore I switched Jimmy and Erik, for I wanted to do right to Erik’s wonderful, respectful texts about the songs he sent in. So I did my best to translate them. (Or I do, for it’s a tiny bit of more work than just copy and paste.)

Erik van Geer, in my opinion, is one of the best clarinet and saxopohne players I have ever encountered or been able to listen to (especially live). I admire his musicality, his kind smile and his being in general.

He plays and has played in many bands, collectives, projects of which the band Coco Bowles and the still going strong (and standerd jazz joke (but it’s kind of a joke only Dutch people will understand)) Kaptstok Duo, in which Erik plays with amazing jazz guitarist Midas Ghijsels, are two of my (many) favourites.

The story behind meeting someone, and how, and when, and all can be so dull. This is not the case with me and my good friend Rik. 

We met each other in a field in Flandres. 

If that’s not being poetic enough, it was at dunk!festival so we knew immediately that we both were huge music lovers. Then Rik performed some poetry which really amazed me from the beginning to the end. Then I performed one or two poems for him and his friends (whom some of have also become friends of mine) and we probably knew Rik Sprenkels and Jelmer van Lenteren were special in the same way: our music taste overlap a lot and we both are poets (Rik becoming better and better every time I see him perform or read something by his hand).