Private
Patrick Conrad.pp : Gelukkig als in het bijzijn van een vrouw (B,1973)****'
Patrick Conrad was first acknowledged with his Antwerp poet project, The Pink Poets. He also made three movies (of which “Mascara”, with Charlotte Rampling is the most famous). He also wrote some crimi’s, and is supposed to live in the Provence, France now. I assume that this LP is the result from his Antwerp days with the Pink Poets (the “pp” to his name).
Roland was one of the participators on it. Roland is a capable guitarist who’s first two albums from the seventies (I have his second) are worth tracing. On these albums, he still had a more independent and original guitar style, like Michael Chapman or so. After that album he completely committed himself to the blues style (blues artists hardly ever look beyond this style), winning fame and recognition with that (under the name of Roland and the Bluesworkshop, and later solo and in cooperation with other artists). He remained a friendly personality who still is willing to play on every occasion and with everybody.
Flanders is the Dutch-speaking area from Belgium. Antwerp always had a brooding and channelling creative energy (a harbour city) with lots of change and a possibility to come to a certain depth, but because of this change and not enough confidence and acceptance (we think we have so many experiences at hand), nothing is grounded enough to keep it safe for future generations, so not much of it is ever recorded, while in Holland, and not only in the seventies, people always have all the confirmations available they need, so if someone there has a talent be sure it is also recorded. It is so sad that only little records with an original style were ever recorded in Flemish (Flemish is the locally styled Dutch language in Belgium and South Holland). This album is THE biggest exception, and therefore also is one of the most important albums from those days, although hardly anybody knows about it. It was an extremely limited private release in a 200 numbered edition. It is only a bit over 25 minutes long but is a great masterpiece of serious poetry mixed with musical improvisation.
The literature is a narrated poem in different sections, sometimes with a bit more echo. It is about thoughts driving towards trying to find comfort towards the idea of a woman, but not going further than into a metaphoric landscape with reflections of a female sexual organ exploration, with fear to meet love on its way, and preferring to keep all this in a dream-like state of thoughts in loneliness expressed in literature, carefully exploring borders, but solely in its imagination.
The music is a psychedelic improvisation. The introduction of flute with guitar sounds more like a cross of Elly & Rikkert & Witthüser and Westrupp, in a simple pleasant, grassland evoking way. Acoustic guitars meander further along in between and during the sections, with additional electric guitar, sometimes echoing or backwards, and with a bit of wa-wa to it, and with additional flute and violin. This sounds like real art-like literature into music. Compared to what I have experienced of Antwerp poetry nights this sounds more like the real stuff, because it really is what it is, in full expression and under the best circumstances...
However, I must add another aspect of background reality to all this, which seems to be typical for the history of the Antwerp scene as well. In reality, the Pink Poets group was an attempt to win a kind of historical fame, hanging firstly around a surviving figure of the ‘group of twenty’, Floris Jespers, not even the most gifted philosopher of its days, thus creating an energy with extreme pretentiousness and haughtiness and a feeling of overly self-importance, using everything to make it be something, even using plagiarism, false interpretations of what is supposed to be literature or without having any ability to interpret anything just for real. It is this fake plateau that made the group fail and fall in the end. Like with almost each attempt I saw in Antwerp of poetry groups it was led not by the most gifted and earnest people and energies (the real guys, I always noticed, mostly read something of their own, went back to their corner, and in the end also left the scene), while the least gifted, were also always the most committed people to the public, and to make it, mostly started to lead the continuation of scenes, started magazines and in the end also made the choices of who was entertaining and who is not. Within such a background and overall tendency it still is fantastic to hear how it could have produced a music album like this.
Participants on the album were : Roland (Van Campenhout) : vocal, guitar, flute ; Luc Renneboog : German flute ; Philippe de Chaffoy de Coursel : violin.*
* Philippe De Chaffoy also plays on "Nice and Easy does it" on the forthcoming Bob Theil release "The Ghent sessions", in April, June this year, recorded in Philippe's studio in 1997.
Thank you Michel, for borrowing me the album.
Anyone wants me to sell the album ? Please e-mail me.
