1973 Born in Asse on 20th of february 1973. Don't know the exact time but it must have been late as usual.

1975 The family moves to Tremelo, 1 km from the Father Damien church and 500m from Allan's home. We don't meet yet. Tremelo is big when you're only 60cm short.

1980 Write a couple of Syd Baretty-structured a-capella songs (one was called 'Waarom regent het ?' = 'Why does it rain ?') after seeing Diana Ross perform in a boxing ring. Ask Freud.

1982 First public performance (not counting some sublime keyboard doodlings in the local UNIC supermarket) in a singing contest in Wenduine, presented by the late but legendary Jan Theys. Song in question is 'De Rode Duivels gaan naar Spanje ' (=The Red Devils - national soccerteam - go to Spain) originally done by Will Tura but not very original though. Also did a pretty good in-house radio show with my local buddy Jurgen, annoying anyone who dared entering 'our studio'...

1988 Tried a bit of music lessons, played drums in Harmony Sonora, the local Hardcore Big Band, later on to turn up on the outro of 'Poolbell' on the 'Surgery for Zebra' album. I go to my first concert : Michael Jackson's Bad Tour in Werchter. There were less MJ jokes back then and I kept talking about the concert for months. I also meet a certain Allan Muller there, introduced by a mutual friend.

1989 First band ('Band on the Fun' not at all inspired by a McCartney album), rehearsals take place in my bedroom. The band on duty is Christian Willems (your webhost at the moment) on bass, Jan Vanneuville on keyboards, ole-time compadre Jurgen Saerens on Honda-leadguitar and yours truly on vocals and drums. We suck major league and ugly cheerleaders. We rehearse every wednesday afternoon and first 5 weeks we concentrate on trying to play 'Panic' by the Smiths. Jurgen's guitar-hero career is tragically cut short when when he fails to form a C-chord shape before 'Panic' is already finished by the rest of us. The world misses out on some great solos but gains a great architect in return. The red Honda guitar is still lingering around my bedroom somewhere and can be admired in Metal Molly's 'Suncomfort International' and 'Superskunk' videoclip. Does anyone have a copy of that last video by the way ? If so, guard it with your life - fashion victims inside.

1990 Together with Allan I form a schoolband, meaning to close the annual variete/cabaret/half-baked sketches evening. Players include Wimmeke 'gimme a Death Metal grunt' Smeyers on drums who discovers that it's actually possible to play slower then 360 BPM, Christian Willems and Jan Vanneuville on bass and keyboards still, Allan on leadguitar, Sven Something on guitar and vocals and me on keyboards and vocals. We do 'Hotel California' in a shabby Velvet Underground version and sing 'So Lonely' by the Police with honest conviction. Never had such a great audience since, we must have gotten hooked right there...

1991 Continue to play with Allan in ao. Dominus Scrotum and Questionmark. Around this time we started writing songs together e.g. the immortal 'Johnny's ne kloot' and 'Samen op de schommel'. Towards the end of the year our band falls apart. Allan fronts a band called 'Lunatic Fringe' inspired by the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. Meanwhile I meet Gino Geudens (great drummer, great name and great length) and start up 'Helder Kelder'. This one has Christophe Mertens on guitar and Denis Jockmans on keys. I take up the bass because everybody we audition wants to be Flea. Or Mark King. We play a strange collision between Doe Maar, Beatles and XTC. On good days that was... On bad days we sounded more like Sting being throd on by an overweight elephant...On second thoughts that doesn't sound so bad at all.

1992 'Lunatic Fridge' and 'Helder Kelder', two historic bands in West-European Popmusic break up. HUMO decides to bury the news.

1993 Beginning of February : Allan, Gino and me join forces--> : 'Metal Molly' is born.
We decide Metal Molly is as good a name as any other and certainly an improvement over previous band names. Besides we'll never get to play much further then Leuven now will we ? That's also where we play our first gig on the 11th of March on a self-organized festival called 'Night of the Noise'. Self-written songs include 'Sally', 'Candystore', 'Granny Smith', 'The Void' and 'Romantic Midsummer Ballad'. First demo 'Granny Smith' follows in summer. We also get to be 'demo of the week' on StuBru. Most shaky interviewed voice on national radio ever.

1994 We compete in HUMO's Rock Rally, reach the finals but Evil Superstars win quite deservedly. They call us 'Simon and Garfunkel on speed'. We decide to win Rockschot and get to play with Teenage Fanclub, The Cramps and Bettie Serveert on tour first big summer festival. About 203 people show up and Rockschot Inc. goes broke. I get to urinate beside Norman Blake though. Later on we give him our first single 'Superskunk'. We smoked so much weed in those days we were planning on tattooing our names on each other's forehead. Sure.

1995 We do some demos and decide to use the most friendly human being Staf Verbeeck as a producer/engineer for our first album. It's recorded in 10 days in the Impuls Studios (Herent) in July. In August we continue overdubbing mainly vocals at Staf's place in Leuven doing a opening appearance on the Marktrock festival in Leuven. The album is released in october on Brinkman Records, first single is 'Orange'. We hope we get to play beyond Leuven with this one.

1996 By march of this year 'Orange' has become a international cult-hit : No 3 in de Afrekening, No1 on several Dutch and Scandinavian radiostations. We do several TV appearances (Tilt!, Prettig Gestoord, 2 Meter Sessies, 7de dag en het TVjournaal), a zillion radio interviews and some very nice concerts indeed : T/W, Pinkpop (live on TV), Lowlands, support acts for David Bowie, Therapy? and Bush. Metal Molly is Flavour of the Month. We get to play in NYC, sign an worldwide contract with Silvertone/Zomba, film a videoclip for 'Orange, reecord a mini-album 'More Cheese' (Brinkman Records) with Frans Hagenaars in Amsterdam :

and go on a small European Tour which brings us to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Luxemburg and France. By the end of the year Simon and Garfunkel sound like Tom Waits and look like Keith Richards.

1997 We start rehearsing the second album but general dissatisfaction sets in and by May Metal Molly calls it a day. Allan starts up a new band called 'Cabbage' with Gino on drums. I tumble my way into Nemo (remember 'Bicycle called love' and 'She loves Animals ?') and into a role as guitarplayer and songwriting aid for Peter Houben, Belgium's most underrated songster. Also playing : Herman Houbrechts on drums (nowadays playing with Mauro, ex-Dead Man Ray and responsible for quite a few Belgian album covers) and Bert Maes (Ex-Sister Pou Pou) on bass. An album is recorded in Peter's living room, my cellar basement and Studio Vitanova. The result is called ;"Kiss me, you fool" and includes the tracks "Starsign", "Girlfeel" and my favourite "Walk around the house".

1998 By the beginning of the year, me and Allan start writing together again ("A Higher Comedy", opening track of next MM album being the crappy mono recording of that very night) and we very happily decide to kickstart Metal Molly again. Meanwhile Nemo has sort of turned into Mitsoobishi Jacson. Exit Bert and enter Mauro Pawlowski (ex-Evil Superstars frontman, down-to-earth guitar hero) and Guy Van Nueten (ex-The Sands) on keyboards. We get called the supergroup of the Lowlands. I wake up sweat-soaked in the middle of the night, dreaming of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

We retreat into my basement and in July we record 'Boys Together Outrageously' on my 8-track. Total budget is 6000 Bfr., coffee not included of course. Recording is very shambolic, very amateurish and very fun. We discover it's not actually necessary to have mics in the same room as the band. And why not record a song while no one except Peter knows the chord, let alone the structure ? Very pleased with ourselves we give the remains of these sessions (22 songs in total) to Jan 'Jakke' Deryck for mixing purposes. After hearing the tapes, the first thing Jakke mixes is Scotch with Gin. We record an additional 5 ongs with Allan behind the mixing board in a real studio in Meerhout, the Willy Woop Studios". (It seems Belgians have a knack for superb names...) That's by the way also the studio where Allan recorded the Cabbage album 'The mysteriously winking Jesus'. If you ever get to find Meerhout, go and have a look. I also muddle around a bit with an embryonic version of Sukilove with ao. Guy, Stoffel Verlackt and Jethro and Mischa Volders. We do a little demo called 'The Sunny Side of Snuff'. We release one copy.

1999 Mitsoobishi album is released in March to much critical acclaim. We laugh our way all the way to Pukkelpop and then we split up for a while. (I seem to smell a pattern here.) In May I also do a vinyl only single "J'y pense et puis j'oublie" under the name Deweze + Deweze. I play the instruments while my father takes credit for the leadvocal. One take ladies and gentlemen, no computer editing here, no siree. We do one short gig only : in Dour we play the song in the middle of the Mitsoobishi set. Rehearsals and demo-ing for the new Metal Molly album are already well underway. We recruit Stoffel Verlackt as our human sequencer on all kinds of instruments, sign a deal with major independant Double-T and head for the Loco Studios in Llangibby, Wales with the second-hardest-working-man-in-showbizznizz Mark Wallis (of The La's, Smiths, Mano Negra and etc fame). Sessions are tough but magical. It's happy music with depressing lyrics. Nick Drake and Nick Cave on speed. It's the studio of former rockstars The Buggles ('Video killed the radio star - the Belgian gold record for 50,000 copies sold hangs above the toilet') and symfo-nightmare Asia (please don't remember 'Heat of the Moment', 'Still standing wrong' and 'Crying al the way to the bank'). It's also in the middle of absolutely nowhere. After a while you start talking to sheep. No one seems to mind. She's the best looking female around anyway.

2000 January : I move to Antwerp. By February I feel much artier already. In March Metal Molly's 'The Golden Country' is released.

Big Party, Big Video of single 'Suncomfort International', excellent album reviews and we get to play T/W again. One happy family, everybody seems happy. In July we get notified that Sony buys out Double-T. We get 'A Golden Handshake' and are thanked for the music. We're out of a record company. We stumble around a bit staring at the ceiling and our toes. Allan and Gino start working full-time dayjobs. I decide to breathe some life in Sukilove again. In august I record a twelve song demo with mainly acoustic popmusic. Stoffel brushes away on drums while Pieter Van Buyten nibbles away on upright bass. Together we do a gig in cafe 't Refrein in Antwerp. We like. Jonathan Richman might have liked it too had he been there. By the end of November this website opens for public. Again about 203 people show up.

2001 Begin of February : Fred Maessen (ex-Brinkman Records Mobster and nowadays Dingo Management frontman), Carol Van Dyk (Bettie Serveert frontlady) and I plot a coup-d'etat against country music. We plan on calling it 'Chitlin' Fooks'...

Me and Carol write some songs, steal some old songs and record the lot live in 3 days in Guy's living room on some borrowed equipment. Again Stoffel and Pieter show up and play along. Overdubs by Jeff Marinus on brilliant pedalsteel guitar and Reinhard of Das Pop on violin and banjo. We do a try-out gig in 't Refrein again (nice little mpeg's of it on the excellent Bettie Serveert website). By the end of March the album is mixed and mastered, from start to finish in 6 weeks. We like.

We do some try-outs with Sukilove in the beginning of June. By the end of June I'm trying out the swimming pool in Monte San Savino, Toscane. Both feel very good.

Because flying 6 country-loving Belgians to NYC weighs too heavily on the budget, me and Carol get the honour of defending the Chitlin' Fooks colours abroad. Just the tiny two of us, weaponed only with acoustic guitar and voice, make a little trip 'round the East Coast together with Jenifer Jackson and Joey - her accordeonist - and we play good venues, eat terrible fries and desperately try to phone Belgium while fat people walk on by. We travel in a big American car which would even be considered way too 70's by Starsky and Hutch standards. It's great and I finally get to meet some people outside the record sharkustry - they're not at all the cardboard, clichéd Americans I used to meet before. NYC is sweating and shining under the hot July sun - but still maintaining its cool, of course...

After summer, the Chitlin caravan goes on the road in Belgium and Holland and a lot of Beneluxarians get exposed to countrymusic for the very first time. Most of them recover, though hesitantly. Just as the Sukilovers start working on new demos in september, the WTC gets some ugly visitors. While no connection has been proven, it's hard to take popsongs seriously those next couple of days, though in the end good songs always prevail. We also record the 'X-mas for aliens' track for the Parasol Christmas compilation.
November and December are dedicated to the hometaping of the Sukilove EP (Extended Play) which quickly lives up to its name as the 4 songs expand into 7 songs making it a small debutalbum. A lot of friends join in the recordings and once again Jakke is driven to tears when he hears the unmixed tapes for the first time...We say it's the emotional impact of our music, he claims it's pure fear.

2002
The Chitlin album receives some very good press in both USA and Holland. We discover there is a parallel universe after all : it's called 'The Dutch Country Music Awards'. Very nice people all around, we received a very warm welcome but what planet is this and is there an exit ? Meanwhile, in Belgium country is considered illegal or at least obscene. Doesn't matter really : march sees the release of 'The Battle EP'.

Sukilove's "Talking in the dark" album comes out the same week as Hoobatank's "Crawling in the dark". True poetry just lingers in the air I guess... Although the single from that album (also "Talking...") is about 5 minutes long and way too slow, radio people accidentally mistake it for a hitsingle and start playing it a lot. A couple of months later, "Make sure my grave=kept clean" gets on the Belgian airwaves unhindered. Who says payola doesn't pay ?

Meanwhile, in may we're already recording the follow-up to the Chitlin' Fooks album. This time it's called 'Did it again", where we stray from countryblues to gospel and ragtime. Stoffel arranges some great horns for the single 'Did it again'.

In June, the Chitlin' Fooks record is done, so...on towards the Sukilove debut album which we record during the 2002 summer. It includes some of my personal favourites including 'As long as I survive tonight' and 'Please don't ever change'.

In november, right after the release of the" Sukilove" album, Carol Van Dyk, Mauro Pawlowski and me write some new music for something resembling a dark child's play "Shadowgraphic City", which we record at home until we stop for Holidays.

 

2003
Shadowgraphic City in St.-Truiden :

We play some 18 shows with this most decent of freakshows. About 204 people show up - there is definitely hope for the future.

In januari 'Sukilove is released in Holland and in april there's the USA premiere on Parasol records. We play some shows, mainly with Bettie Serveert. In the summer I record the second 'Groep Jezus' album probably called 'Follow that dream boy'.

In october the Sukilovers do a little tour of the East Coast mostly supporting the Betties. We also play the CMJ Music Festival. In New York City we sleep in an appartment the size of a small toilet. (Intimate footage available for hard cash upon request ).

Read Stokki's or Pascal's diary of the US Tour.

Somehow a producer from Richmond, VA gets a hold of our American touring plans and tries to slide us into his Sound of Music Studios. The producer "John Morand" (obviously a fake name) claims to have worked with Sparklehorse, Cracker, Labradford and A Camp. Who ? Word of mouth from the underworld informs us he was also responsible for Hanson's "Mmmbop". This gains our confidence and we decide to trust the man with our lives and music.

We record and mix three songs in 2 days (Start a life, Girl on the moon and My Son), fully unaware that the sessions for upcoming album "You kill me" have thus begun. Back home in Belgium we realize that these so-called "demo's" have a great vibe and we decide to make these 3 tracks (in the same version) the opening songs of the album.

2004
In January, John Morand and assistant Bryan Hoffa fly over to Holland and in 10 days we finish the basic recording of some 13 tracks. The Dutch studio had a little problem with the showers (there were none) so after a couple of days, the funk was definitely in the air.

Some sukilove members call it a day, others join in the fun : Pieter Van Buyten leaves shortly after the recordings, in april he is replaced by Tim Vandenbergh (Bal des Boiteux). Helder leaves at the end of summer to concentrate more on his own stuff and in comes Sjoerd Bruil, who until then had never even played in a band before. He gets his 'live' debut at Mauro's AB Freakshow evening in october.

First single 'Girl on the moon' gets released early april. A couple of weeks later the full-album "You kill me" appears in the shops in Belgium and Holland. Parasol will release the album sometime in August. We hope at least 205 buyers will show up and make this a growing thing.

2005
2005 is a slow year for the sukilovers.

Due to 'technical difficulties' our American VISAS due for early March wouldn't arrive until June, so we're forced to cancel a nice 13-date tour on the East Coast. We would have started in NYC's Knitting Factory and passed thru Chicago, Detroit, Washington, the lot... Next time...

Thanks to Arne Van Peteghem (Styrofoam), we get a-hold of a nice recording and rehearsal space until the end of the year. We do a live show here and there but mainly I write some new music and we rehearse until summer. At the end of August the actual recording start on a simple ProTools rig to which we add a small amount of vintage gear and microphones. At the end of december we have 6 (or 8, not so sure) songs in the can.

2006
So we continue recording our third album (4th if you include the debut mini-album) and by March everything is in the can. Normally John Morand would have mixed it but that fell through because of...reasons and I decide to re-locate the mixing to San Francisco, to the wonderful Tiny Telephone studio of John Vanderslice. In April I arrive, clutching three (3) different hard-drives, just to make sure one (1) of them survives the airport X-ray machines. They do.
Aaron Prellwitz handles the faders beautifully, helped by vintage studio equipment and after 14 days I fly back a happier man.

With the album finished I start a production-job-streak and record (a.o) The Van Jets debut album and Maskesmachine's second album 'Ge kun et' ('You can do it').

At the end of september the new album "Good is in your bones" comes out on PIAS Records and we tour the usual suspect places in Belgium, Holland and France.

Sjoerd and I make a video out of the concept : "we got 2 days and 400 euro, what the f#ck shall we do ?". Luckily, Sjoerd happens to be the proud owner of a large, cardboard, somewhat dumb-looking horsehead and we have the star of the video...

2007
In Holland we tour with the "muy sympatico" band Coparck in January.

We also build a new rehearsal space/small studio, tentatively called "Studio Jesus and the Black Smurfs", later simply known as "Studio Jesus".

From march on, a lot of people come and record in the new studio, which was meant as a sukilove lab but attracts other band also : Mauro (with the Grooms), The Germans, General Mindy, The Arquettes, Kawada,...

Thankfully there's also some time left to record some new Sukilove material and in the summer we release "Sun Sun Sun", our hymn to warmth and Beach Boy lovers. To our sundazed amazement the song receives quite some airplay on national radio. We could get used to that...

In november we play 2 concerts in London which boosts our energylevel quite a bit. We celebrate with an all-career-spanning gig in Charlatan, Gent (who always makes us feel at home).

And 2008 ?
Well, we will definitely be doing some gigs as a three piece and we will also release a UK-only EP including some new stuff and an old favourite in a new suit. After the summer we start recording a new album. Keep watching.

Cu

Pascal.