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Yes? Come again? Before joining the band that would become Paradogs, Eric had played keyboards ("or rather, one shitty Casio") in only one other band, in the early eighties: The Use (short for Underground Sound Experiment), led by singer/guitarist Jeroen Elfferich who is now one of the Netherlands' well-respected jazz drummers (!); his current band, the Elfferich Four, has made a couple of jazz/pop/fusion albums. |
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Paradogs however was the first serious attempt for Eric to get something off the ground, although it was the other guys in the band that more or less knew how to get things off the ground, arrangeing places to rehearse etc.. As for the musical influences...: "Apart from the late seventies punk and early eighties bands like Joy Division, I had been listening a lot to progressive rock, early Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator, King Crimson - and about the same time that I started discovering the roots of that music, there was a revival of bands that returned to those roots." Being excited by listening to The Syn, Tomorrow, Bodast and more obscure bands like Jimmy Winston and his Reflections or Mabel Greer's Toyshop (all of them predecessing Yes in some way), Eric discovered some more wild-rocking bands from the mid-sixties along the way. At the same time, the "eighties garage rock explosion" scorched the stages, and one band in particular made Eric pick up the bass guitar. Dutch garage-rockers Claw Boys Claw (named after a song by Motor Boys Motor... by who?) were Holland's hottest live band back then, and their female bassplayer Bobbie Rossini was a total revelation. "I realised you didn't have to be some virtuoso musician to play garage rock or sixties punk," Eric says, "in fact this was music as good as it could ever be - with the DIY ideas I liked in punk rock - and, well, I started playing along with the first Claw Boys Claw album on an acoutsic guitar with only four strings on it!" So this background was more or less Eric's contribution to what would become Paradogs. The 'pre-Yes' thing would resurface when The Ace-Tones actually recorded a song by The Syn... as we'll see later on. |
(Photo credits unknown) |
An encore as a debut Seeing Claw Boys Claw live at a couple of shows in a row brought Eric Danno in contact with the band personally - and when they played in Eric's home town Delft, they had some favour to return to him and Bobbie invited him to join the band on bass for one or two songs - unaware that Eric had, in fact, only played on that crappy acoustic until then. Never too shy to make a fool of himself, Eric said "sounds great" and in the encore he joined and played on Bobbie's spare bass ( "I think we did their version of 'Venus' and one of their originals, probably 'Understanding Her', I don't know...") |
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Jelle van Buuren, the booker of that local venue, saw this long-haired bassplayer jamming with Claw Boys Claw (little did he know...), and asked him if maybe he would care to join a new band, named Paradogs. Using a borrowed Fender bass, somewhere in 1986 Eric joined the band that consisted of Jelle on drums and another musician frequenting that same venue ("De Eland"): Jaap Deelstra, guitarist. As a trio they rehearsed songs like "Kissing Cousins" (Wise/Starr) that Jelle found on the Saints' "I'm Stranded" album, and they wrote some originals in the Stooges/MC5 vein, with Jaap bringing in some serious Hendrix fury and Jelle developing a machine gun sound. In a short period of time, people joined and left (the most noteable being guitarist Toon Moerland - later in Hallo Venray); it was after a couple of months that a lead singer joined and kinda fought his way into the loud, agressive, sometimes bloody fast and hectic "psychopunkrock". His name: Toon van Bodegom. |
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Demos and deals
| Paradogs catapulted themselves to the 'bigger' venues by playing very, I
mean very wild shows. After one or two demos recorded at "De Eland"
(during daytime hours when the venue was closed), a more serious demo was
recorded at the (then pretty new) DDL* studio in Amsterdam, with Marc de Reus as
producer. This untitled demo brought them 'gigs' and, after a while, a record
deal with Scorpio Records in Belgium. Recordings for the album-to-be were made throughout 1989 and 1990 in the Tango Studio (Eindhoven) and the Orkater Studio (Amsterdam); Marc de Reus produced and mixed the recordings... * "De Domme Lul", Dutch for "The Stupid Prick". |
L-R: Jaap, Jelle, Eric, Toon |
Recording Artist!
| When recording, friends of Marc de Reus would occasionally drop by. One of them, Michel Schoots, suggested some backing vocal ideas and ended up doing some of them himself. During breaks, he would complain that his band (called the Urban Dance Squad) was thinking of quitting because they were trying to explore a mix of hard rocking songs with rap and hiphop that nobody seemed to accept. Later on, the Urban Dance Squad toured the USA and influenced bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against The Machine... |
Photo: Michel Schoots, |
When the record was about to be released, singer Toon van Bodegom told
Eric: "They have put a large photo of you on the back of the album, do you
mind?" Since Toon was known for his piss-takes at the rest of the band
(like announcing the guitarist on stage as "this is Jaap, he was born as a
girl but they did a pretty good sex change"), it came as a shock after all
that this time it was true... Eric says "I swear it wasn't my idea!" and there's no reason not to believe this... |
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"I remember Kurt Cobain allright..." The release of Paradogs' debut album, "Here Comes Joey", and the 7" single "Lost In Music" (indeed the Sister Sledge tune thoroughly ruined, plus two non-album cuts) placed the band under the attention of the Dutch media. Airplay, articles in magazines, resulting in bigger gigs (and better money, although "it's a mystery where that went"). Paradogs played the Noorderslag festival, lots of open air festivals (especially in Belgium where they gained quite a cult following) and a shitload of clubs. Some of those booked them straightaway for a follow-up show, some banned them forever. One weekend, Eric and his (then) girlfriend Jeannemieke Hectors, with whom he had founded the Ace-Tones around that time, went to the "Metropolis" open air festival to see a band called Dead Moon. They were impressed, and this great garage/punk trio would certainly leave their marks - and they would become friends. That same weekend, summer of 1991, Paradogs played the huge "Ein Abend In Wien" festival in Rotterdam, and they shared a dressing room with another trio. They were from Seattle and they were called Nirvana. |
 This photo comes from a video sequence on the Dead Moon CD-ROM version
of their "Hard Wired In Ljubljana" album. (Video shot by Hans Kesteloo) |
 | "I remember Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, allright," says Eric; "and
although I honestly can't remember what was said, I'm sure I talked to
Kurt Cobain. Probably just hello, I'm Eric, hi, we're Nirvana; that kinda thing.
What I do remember is that one of those other guys from Nirvana tried to
steal our beers after the show, and we got into a fight..." According to Eric, it was Dave Grohl, being pissed as a parrot, who tried to nick a sixpack. Somehow he slipped and fell, got up, accused Eric of pushing him, and tried to punch him. Which isn't easy when you're drunk... so after some fisticuffs, security took care of things and threw Mr Grohl out... "My claim to fame, kids..." |
Artwork and logo by Peter Pontiac; |
Although Paradogs was a band playing big venues, with a well-reviewed album out, business-wise things started to crack. Scorpio Records went bankrupt, and "Here Comes Joey" was rereleased by Dutch record company Provogue. They decided to put the inner sleeve drawing, made by Peter Pontiac, on the front of the album (a CD only release this time). They didn't notify Pontiac, who took the proper legal action - resulting in a ban on his designs for the band, including the band's logo that was printed on shirts, sweaters, caps: all of those could no longer be sold. Furthermore, Provogue had changed the inner sleeve without the band's consent, adding liner notes that would never have been 'okayed' by the band (though there were some suspicions that it was done in cooperation with Toon, since the compositary credits also had changed from "all songs by Paradogs" to "all songs by Toon van Bodegom" - which wasn't true at all!). |
Fire...
| After Paradogs had played a show at De Koornbeurs in the bands home town, Delft, on May 30th 1992, a fire broke out in Eric's room -
probably a short circuit in a lamp. Being vast asleep, Eric had to be rescued by
the fire brigade, and it was a very close call. Two months in hospital
(three weeks of them in an artificial coma, being on respiration machines, morphine, you name it),
plenty of skin transplants and a couple of months of physical therapy later, he
could climb the stage again - wearing a 'pressure suit' against the development
of scar tissue. ("And this was a real hot summer, mind you!") Another
thing left behind in hospital was his long hair: "The fire and the drugs
had made my hair look terrible, so I asked Jean (who came to see me every
day) to cut it. Man, I can't tell you what she meant for me then. I can never
make up for that!" The touring scheme of Paradogs was too heavy though, and Eric left the band by the end of 1992 - also being fed up with the business side of things, and with the band moving more and more towards "one-foot-on-the-monitor bands like The Cult, and retro-bands like The Black Crowes". Besides, there was Eric's and Jeannemieke's "hobby band", the Ace-Tones, to focus on - taking things one step at the time, and playing garage rock in its raw and pure form. Paradogs however continued playing with Haiko Rippen on bass; later on Jelle quit the band and was replaced by someone named Frenkie, but the band never made their second album and folded halfway 1993. |
Photo: Jeannemieke Hectors |
