Supersister (Dutch band)

Supersister was a band from The Hague, (the Netherlands), playing progressive rock ranging from jazz to pop. The most predominant band members were Robert Jan Stips (keyboards, vocals), Sacha van Geest (flute), Marco Vrolijk (drums) and Ron van Eck (bass).

The band started as Sweet OK Sister in 1968 as a school band with singer and songwriter Rob Douw,who soon thereafter left. The remaining members continued as a more serious musical quartet under thename Supersister. Their style was progressive rock (in Canterbury Scene style) in which Stips' keyboard play played a dominant role.

Their debut was the 1970 album "Present from Nancy," hitting the charts with numbers like "She was naked", "A girl named you", and "Radio". After three albums (Present from Nancy - 1970, To the highest bidder - 1971, and Pudding en gisteren - 1972) van Geest and Vrolijk quit. Theremaining crew, together with new members Charly Mariano (wind instruments) and Herman van Boeyen (drums) released the album "Iskander" in 1973, which is an even more jazz-rock oriented concept album based upon the life of Alexander the Great.

In 1974 Stips and van Geest release a final album "Spiral Staircase" as "Sweet Okay Supersister". This album marks the end of the band.

The band reunited in 2000 after a request by the Progfest festival for a performance in Los Angeles. The four 1970-1973 period band members decided to accept and the result was the requested performance, as well as a short tour through the Netherlands in late 2000 and early 2001. To mark the occasion a rarities album was released, called "M.A.N." featuring live and studio recordings from 1969-1973. The reunion abruptly came to an end when Sacha van Geest unexpectedly died in the summer of 2001. The reunion concert at the Paradiso in Amsterdam was recorded and later released on CD ("Supersisterious", 2001) and DVD ("Sweet OK Supersister", 2006), which also features several old and new documentaries, photographs and unreleased audio tracks.

Discography

The complete discography is available from the entry in the [http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersister Dutch Supersister Wikipedia page] .

Trivia

There is a picture featured on the "(They Long to Be) Close to You" music video with Karen Carpenter posing next to a Supersister poster.

External links

*http://www.stips.net/ Robert Jan Stips Official Site
*http://www.retsisrepus.nl/ Discography