The first album by Harry Merry & the Must is ready and at the pressingplant. The Cd will be delivered to us on July 1 which means it will be within due time for the releaseparty on sunday july 6. You can preorder the album right now and we'll send it as soon as it's ready. Send an e-mail to info@tocado.com if you want to do so. The party is held at Exit-Rotterdam; doors will open on 21:00 hours. Since the Exit is quite small it's advised to reserve your ticket(s) to do so send an e-mail to info@tocado.com and you'll receive your ticket a.s.a.p.Entrance is 10 euro's and you'll get the cd with your entrance money. If you are a couple and you only need one cd you can also choose another cd from the Tocado collection.Wally Mc Kee and Liz Vera; well known from Rotterdam based seventies glam-rock band Lemming will be our special guests.   About the album:The album is called VeronikaIt contains 11 songs:  1. Turnpikes and roundabouts 2. Jailbird 3. It's hard without a card 4. Hey, hey put that gun away 5. The Testgame play 6. R&B slam 7. The Panorama paper 8. Don't touch the clutch too much 9. Been through friday 10. Harbour fair 11. R&B slam (remix by Nanko) Harry Merry & the Must are: Harry Merry - keyboards/ lead vocals Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva - bass Wouter van Wijk - drums Martin Ruyten - guitar   Additional musicians: Julia Reinhold - back ups in Turnpikes and Roundabouts and R&B slam Ingrid Schaap - back ups in R&B slam Elle Bandita - back ups in Turnpikes and Roundabouts Maia Daw - back ups in Jailbird and it's hard without a card Martin Meijburg - back ups in the Testgame play and Hey, put that gun away   Produced and engineered by Fonckeltoff at Epic Entrum studios Rotterdam jan- june 2008   R&B slam remix by Nanko   Artwork by Daniel Baggerman and Kim CosterGo to the Harry Merry & The Must myspace to listen to two new songs from the album

Footage shot at the 10 years celebration of 3voor12 at Waterfront -Rotterdam is online.Both Harry Merry & the Must and De Dood are represented in an 3 hour documentary which also features a score of the best of what the rock scene in Rotterdam has to offer: Mark Lotterman, Sir Ian, La Grace, Fuck The Writer, Riske de Rat, Malorix, The Riplets (featuring Elle Bandita) and Convoi Exceptional.watch the footage here (click on the Rotterdam section on the bottom left)If you're not up to the whole 3 hours you can sort out the footage of Harry Merry & the Must at 1:42:30 and De Dood at 2:42:54 pics by Vincent Vermeulen

This week it became obvious that the first album of Harry Merry and the Must will not be finished in time for the release on june 7.Despite assurances from the studio that everything would be ready in time a few setbacks and additional recordings caused us having to postpone the release of Veronika. We've been working so long and hard on this album we can't go for less then perfection now so although it's very hard to swallow for the people who have been working on the promotion of the releaseparty we have no other choice..On the bright side we just got word from the Metropolis festival; the nr. one outdoor festival in Rotterdam-Holland, Harry Merry and the Must are asked to play the festival. A quick counting of our blessings resulted in the idea of doing the release of the album that same day. So now we arranged that after the festival the Must will do a second gig at the Exit - Rotterdam where the album will be officially presented.People who visit the Metropolis festival can buy the Veronika album there also with an additional free ticket for the releaseparty. The album is also included in the entrance money of the releaseparty.We hope you all be there!!

Stöma did a radio interview at  Radio Mortale in Amsterdam yesterday (may 20-2008)The interview is in Dutch.Click here to listen to the radioshow

On June 7 it's finally there; the first album by Harry Merry and the Must. It's called VERONIKAThe band did the final recording session yesterday at the Epic Entrum studios. The last bits of the backup vocals are on tape and Ed Fonckeltoff is now working frantically to finish the mixes in time. All in all we're just going to make it; meaning we can't afford any setbacks now.The Must started recording in january and really took their time arranging Harry's music, doing recordings, rerecordings, back ups, raw mixes etc. The way the band worked on the album was a nice expierence. Usually a band goes into a studio and finished an album in about one-two weeks; at least with a small fry label like ours. But this time round we wanted perfection and perfection costs. It's really nice to have a chance to avoid all these little mess ups one usually only hears after about one hundred listenings and after the album is out for months. Hearing this album will send shivers down anyones spine; Harry lMerry lovers and haters alike.Daniel Baggerman and Kim Coster are finishing the artwork for the album at the moment. The dolls that are on the flyer for the releaseparty (watch it on our homepage) are being used in this amazing set up. We've seen the first pictures and it's awesome, really awesome. The album will come in a digisleeve with a 16 page booklet containing all lyrics.The album will be presented on June 7 at Exit-Rotterdam.The entrance fee is €10 and the album comes free with that. We take pride in spreading this music around to the people who supported Harry for all the time he's been doing his thing; we don't make any money on this deal, it barely covers our expenses but it's worth it!  We're still fucking crazy here...It's uncurableWally Mc Kee from Lemming will open for Harry Merry and the Must and that's not coincidental since it was Wally who talked Harry Merry onto forming a band to take his music to another level. That's about 4 yars ago now; as always it took a long time, but why do anything that's not worth taking a very long time to do?The Exit is a small place that holds about 200 visitors. It's probably a good idea to reserve tickets,  especially if you're coming from outside Rotterdam, since chances are the place will be filled to capacity and you'll miss the show after all. Reserve tickets by sending an E-mail to info@tocado.com stating the number of tickets you want and will send them to you.

Pony Pack has finished the recordings of their first album at the SingSing studios in Friesland.The album is recorded, mixed and mastered by now. Next thing to do is get some good artwork done.The album is due for september and will be called "Claws and Fists".Tocado bookings just started calling promoters around Holland to book shows for a small promotional tour in september/oktober 2008. Get in touch if you have any leads for gigs...Here's the tracklist of Claws and Fists:1) I don't want to know what kind of hell you're going to go to2) Painted Eye3) Philanderopist4) King of Clubs5) Johnny Diesel6) Samlee7) Medicinal Mother8) Bread & Circus9) Mal de Ojo10) Thigh Bone11) GSS12) Dying Bird (extra track)Jane, Pony Packs singer/bassplayer did an interview with Leonieke Daalder and Ron van der Sterren in a radioshow called Dubbelcheck on 3voor12 on may 14. Check it here (it's in the second hour)

Spektr video wins two awards 1st time at the international AFIA filmfestivalin Denmark (click on link to view the official AFIA site with the jurys verdict)Read below:Best Music Video:"The nominees: SPEkTR: THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT(DK), Near (USA), Moi Caprice: The Town and the City (DK), RinneRadio:Untitled (Finland)The Winner: SPEkTR: THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT (Thomas Pors, DK)In the Music Video category, the winning production is a traditional 2-D cut-out animation which succeeds in telling a big story about our own hybrid civilization in very little time"AND2nd one at the 5th annual Calgary underground film festival in Canada read below:2008 Festival Awards!* Audience Award Best Documentary"Frank & Cindy"* Audience Award Best Narrative Feature"Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer"* Audience Award Best Narrative Short"The Windfisherman"* Audience Award Best Short Animation"SPEkTR : THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT"* Jury Award Best Feature"Baghead"* Jury Award Best Short Animation"Their Circumstances"* Jury Award Best Narrative Short"Spider"

De Dood is the new band of Singer/guitarist/songwriter Vincent Niks.About two years ago Vincent blew his way into the local Rotterdam scene with a duo called Sanne en Ik. Sanne played the drums and Vincent did the rest. This band made quite an impression bringing punkrock to a new level with the most outrageous lyrical content you ever heard. (all in Dutch I'm afraid, but that way you people who speak the other 1055 languages of the earth won't get offended and that's something at least) Titles like "ik heb geoefend op het lijk van je moeder"(I practiced on your mother's corpse) and "zomaar zonder reden mensen in elkaar slaan" (brutalising people without any reason) may give you a hint.If you have to compare Vincent to foreign artists Jay Reatard comes close; about ten miles...Sanne and Vincent weren't ment to last so Vincent turned to some male companions for a change and got Floyd on drums and Joost on bass. They're not that cute but the band gained in sheer brutality. The music is tight and the mood is tensed; very tensed!De Dood just made their first promo. It's for sale in our webshop and if you can arrange a gig for the Dood you may even get one free!I still have to translate the Bio into English for the bandpage, but at least you're warned now...Buy the Dood promo hereOr have a listen to the song in our player...visit de dood's myspace page

Here are some pictures taken by Daniel Baggerman on the Stoma releaseparty at the N.A.I. in Rotterdam on april 5. It was fun. 330 visitors, loads of friends on stage, great venue (the sound was not too bad after all considering the absolutely non acoustic features at the NAI - thanks to the LAN soundcrew!), too bad the beer ran out that early but we managed to get druk anyhow.... soundcheck (isn't the hall a beauty?)Bruno and WouterDJ Eniless, guest singer Martin and Brunoguest drummer Robin and Fonckeltoff on the keyboardsWouter and FrankyBruno and guest conga player NiqueWouter and NiqueWouter and BrunoBrunoDJ Eniless, Bruno and the choir (Robin Schaeverbeke (Bruno&Robin, New Earth Group), Martin Meijburg (Ringer), Leen Steen, Harry Merry, Martin Ruiten (The Must, Firetime), and Ingrid Schaap)Click here for the footage of ll ll ll ll on you tubeClick here for the footage of Harry Merry; a portrait song and tribute from Bruno to Harry)

The new album of Stoma will also be available in a limited special edition.This edition has as an extra; a highly original handmade handbag designed by Maroesja.The special edition will cost €.25 euro's but this will buy you the fashion accesoire of a lifetime; this handbag is impossible to steal by any street mugger unless they want to go as far as cutting off your hand.The bag is about the size of a cd and you don't need keys to open the handcuffes.No girl can do without if you ask me!Both the album and the special edition will be available on april 5.here are some samples of the handbag; they all have different designs so none look exactly the same.

Harry Merry & The Must are almost finished recording their first album. Only some back up vocals remain to be recorded and the band hopes to finish that in the next two weeks. We asked Julia Reinhold from Lenya, who also is Harry's singing teacher and vocal coach,  Ingrid Schaap and Elle Bandita to form a choir on the album. Harry's girlfriend Maia will also do some vocal parts. It won't be an easy task for the girls since these back ups are all written out and should sound exactly as Harry planned it to sound.   The album will be called `Veronika' after the Pirate Radio station that used to roam the North-sea in tyhe seventies. Harry used to listen to this station at an early age and got infected by the popmusic virus through that.   The tracklist will be, in random order: It's hard without a card Turnpikes and roundabous Hey, put that gun away The testgame play Jailbird The R&B slam The panorama paper Don't touch the clutch too much Been through Friday Harbour fair   Nanko (DooDoo's Coffee, Firetime) made an exellent drum&bass remix of the R&B slam which may end up on the album as a bonus track. It's up to Harry to decide but the rest of the band and the management are totally exited about the idea.   Kim Coster and Daniel Baggerman, the same team that did the artwork for Elle Bandita's love juice album, are working on the artwork of Veronika. Kim is making clay puppets of all the bandmembers and a pirateship diorama to put these on. It will no doubt look awesome.   The official release party will be on june 7 at Exit-Rotterdam, but the album may be available sooner if all goes smooth.    

Spektr from Denmark, of whom we already did distribution and promotion for their first album; the highly aclaimed 'the microfilm album' back in 2001 (which is sold out by the way), are back!The band has taken a somewhat new direction. Their aim is still to make soundtracklike tunes filled with traces of Surf and Rock 'n roll  but the new album called B/W versus Technicolor has an Enio Morricone feel as opposed to the microfilm album which was Tarantino-esque to say the least.The New album contains the following tracklist:1.  SPEkTRSCOPE-JINGLE2.  BRONSON BEAT3.  B/W vs. TECHNICOLOR4.  THAT GOAT LEGGED FELLA5.  THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT6.  DROPS O' CURARE7.  UM 13 UHR SCHNAPPT DIE FALLE ZU8.  SHIVERS, THE RETURN9.  GLASS...NOT DIAMONDS10. MICRO-CAINE11. BETONVILLE12. ALL GO IN/ NONE COME OUT13. SPEkTRSCOPE JINGLEThe LP version of the album is being pressed right now and will be out in april 2008.The last bits on the CD version are being done right now and the CD will probably arrive early May. Meanwhile you can feast your eyes on  the exellent video clip for "Things that go bump in the night'.click on the image or hereWe just replaced the video for a better high resolution version! (march 31)

The Sounds music store at de Korte Hoogstraat 24 in Rotterdam carries ALL the Tocado-records releases (as far as we still have them in stock that is).This is the first recordstore in Holand that has a special Tocado-records slot in their store. Furthermore Sounds regurarly books our bands to play instore-gigs for presentations of new singles and albums, so go check 'm out...

new Stöma album The date for the release of the new Stöma album is set on april 5! The album is called Boe! And will be released at the N.A.I. (national architecture institute) in Rotterdam. Our friends and neighbours from the New Earth Group will support Stöma on the releaseparty and all guest musicians on the album will participate along with extra guest dancers and more surprises...   The Boe! album will be available on march 31 at our webstore. To preorder it click here And those who just can't wait can you can download it from our site as a legal download from march 10 on.   About Boe!   Ever since the release of their first titeless album the Rotterdam Jazz funk duo Stöma (Wouter van Wijk-drums, Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva – bass)built a following throughout Holland and all over Europe. Everywhere the band played since starting early 2003 they left audiences in awe about their musical skills. The band started working on a new album early 2007. A lot of new songs were already added to their live set and more were written and/or rewritten. The sound of Stöma has evolved a lot over the years and some of the songs they played earlier have changed dramaticly. The new material is less noisy and have a clearer structure though the band still loves to improvise but nowadays they do that within a more fixed frame.   The Nik Nok single was released by Tocado-records in march last year to serve as both a teaser and as token of the new direction the band is moving into. Both songs on the single won't appear on the album though. Stöma started recording the album after their Russian tour in september 2007 and have been working on it ever since making this by far the most compelling (and expensive) record Tocado has ever produced. The album is engineered, mixed and co-produced by Fönckeltoff, who also recorded the NIK Nok single, at the Feed The Whole Studio in Rotterdam-Holland.   Boe! sounds like a score for a movie; the songs provoke images while listening and soundscapes weld the songs together making it sound like some insane horor movie. Influences from movie music makers like Bernard Hermaann (Taxi-driver, Psycho) and Danny Elfman (Nightmare before christmas, Edward Scissorhands) are imminent alongside other influences from very different angles like Hendrix, Beastie Boys, Fantomas, Primus and Fela Kuti. A lot of guest musicians did their part on Boe! adding ever more layers to this complex album; turntablist D.J. Eniless did his part same as he did on the Nik Nok single and is now considered as a third bandmember. Furthermore Nique (Dr. Schnitt) did percusson, Robin Schaeverbeke (Bruno&Robin, New Earth Group) played some extra drums and Fönckeltoff (Firetime) played the Clarinet. Wouter van Wijk added some accordeon sounds and Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva also played the marimba, the triangle and more exotic instruments. A choir consisting of Harry Merry, Elle Bandita, Martin Meyburg (Muego, Ringer), Robin Schaeverbeke (Bruno&Robin), Leen Steen, D.J. Eniless, Rob van Gameren (DooDoo's Coffee, Cheech Wizard), and Martin Ruyten (Firetime, The Must) contributed in the lala song. This is the only track on the album that contains vocals; the rest of the album is completely instrumental. Track Listing 1. Overture                        9. Tesnus 2. Fulano                            10. Agua 3. Spallanzanie                  11.  II II II II 4. Druppels                        12. Kata 5. Ikra                                 13.S treickbout6. In the club                      14. La la 7. ndre la                           15. Shotgun8. ̴̴                                      16. "Blaue stunde" le fin?  We added one song of the Boe! album called 'Fulano' to the player on this site. Go check it out! Here are some links to live versions of songs on the album recorded o the Russian tour Stöma did september 2007 Stöma live @Club TIR - Pskov - RussiaStöma live @Club Revolution St .Petersburg - RussiaStöma live @ESG 21 artcenter, St .Petersburg - RussiaStöma live @club Ikra Moskow - Russia

Pony Pack ; a three piece Indie/New Wave band from Amsterdam has joined the Tocado-records familly.The band participated on the Hit The North fest and compilation album and toured with the Suicidal Birds after the Hit The North festival. It was the Suicidal Birds that allerted us to the band and after seeing them at the Hit THe North festival we were convinced they would be a nice addition to the familly.Pony Pack will start recording their debut album in March. We will release it this year; hopefully before the summer, but we'll take our time.visit the Pony Pack websitevisit the Pony Pack myspace pageLook at the Pony Pack video shot at the Hit The North festival.

Here's the Url to the new Lushus video clip.watch the lushus clip; click hereThe song is called Kill and hasn't been released yet.The video is beautiful and the song is powerful; where are you waiting for?

Our Mp3 sections are renewed. First of all all MP3's are now 320 kbps which means the sound quality is much better then it used to be.Since we don't want to much data traffic we decided to delete all albums that are still for sale as psysical albums and on the other hand we included a lot more rare stuff from our back catalogue.Snippets are included with all seperate tracks so you can listen to parts of songs.Go visit the download albums and Rare MP3's sections and find out.

Merel of Lushus who is still studying in Japan is back in Holland for a couple of weeks.Lushus takes this chance to do some gigs in Holland, Belgium and France celebrating their reunion.After this short tour Merekl will head back to Japan and come home permanently in september. We hope to send the band straight into the studio by that timeHere are the dates of the Lushus minitour:31.jan.2008 OCCII Amsterdam08.feb.2008 Buk Buk Heilo14.feb.2008 EXIT Rotterdam16.feb.2008 ORKZ Groningen19.feb.2008 "Les Instants Chavirés", Montreuil Paris France20.feb.2008 "Grand Wazoo", Amiens Paris France22.feb.2008 Carlo Levi Luik Belgium

There's lots of releases coming up from Tocado-records this year. First four releases we've been working on for quite some time already:   Boe!, the second album by Stöma is almost done. We need to do the mastering and the artwork isn't completely finished also, but finally it's almost there. The album will contain a staggering 17 songs and has a running time of almost an hour. Needless to say it took a long time to get everything on tape and the band took it's time recording at the feed the whole studio, all for the sake of quality. We hope to release Boe! in april, but lucky bastards like you who get our newsletter can get the album earlier by pre ordering it. That way you'll receive the album as soon as it's back from the plant and get a copy signed by both bandmembers! Boe! Can be preordered as soon as the mastering and artwork is done which will probably take a week or two. There's one song of Boe! on the player on the right hand site of our homepage; it's called Fulano!   The Harry Merry&the Must album is also almost finished. We need yet to do the back up vocals, mixing and mastering and Daniel Baggerman and Kim Coster, the same team that did the cover of the Elle Bandita album are working on the artwork right now. The album wil contain 6 brand new songs plus the 4 songs the Must recorded with Tony Mc Adam of which some are already to be found on the web. If Harry Merry&the Must get their much desired slot on the SXSW festival their album will be out early march so we can present it at the festival and take it on a two week US tour. The Must will hear if they're on the bill the first week of february so fingers crossed.   Around the same time the long awaited album by the Stinksisters will appear. The title will be underground. The album contains songs the Stinks recorded in France and the album will also be distributed there.. click here to visit the stinksisters myspace   We've been negotiating with two other labels from Greece and France about releasing the long awaited b/w versus technicolor album by Spektr. The French DV label and Tocado are ready to release the album asap, but the Greek `onstage' label only wants to do it exclusive so now were waiting for the band to decide what to do...   More: The Stilettos have recorded 8 songs with producer DNA, who used to be the D.J. of the famous Urban Dance Squad and is now rediscovering his punk roots. The band wants to record about 20 songs in total and are now saving up to do so. Hopefully a new album by the Stilettos will appear in the second half of this year. And otherwise there will at least be a single or something.   The Suicidal Birds are in the process of writing and recording new material for an album. Maybe the Birds will record everything in a studio this time instead of in their own garage but nothing is decided yet. There are some contacts with studios and things are tried out. We're thinking about doing a single first.   Vincent Niks has a new group called `de Dood' and we're negotiating with him about releasing an album. Mr Niks reached instand fame with Sanne en Ik; the most far out thrashpunk duo ever to emerge in Holland. The Duo broke up last year but Vincent is back. Vincent's lyrics are all in Dutch and are violent, packed with humor, totally insane and very very catchy. Songtitles like "ik heb geoefend op het lijk van je moeder"(I practised on your mother's corpse) say it all.. First we;'re going to present De Dood by doing gigs in Holland and Belgium while the band starts recording. De Dood is a treesome so bass will be added to the already furious sound of Vincent Niks! click here to visit Vincent Niks his myspace page   We want to do a new album with Lushus in the second half of this year when Merel returns from Japan. Can't wait for it actually. Lushus is going to record withn Corno Swetsloot again. He's the guy who recorded the big fat man single...   A lot of mails are coming in asking about Elle Bandita's new upcoming album. All we can say is she's working on it and is also very busy with the Riplets at the moment. Be patient. Elle recording deal with Tocado has expired by now so we don't know shit! We're negotiating with Pony Pack from Amsterdam about releasing their first album. Things are looking good and we hope to release their album in the spring. click here to visit the Pony Pack myspace page Tocado is also talking with a lot more bands about future collaborations

Madame P. , Eva Braun and the Moi Non Plus; all from Amsterdam, performed at Exit on thursday january 17. All three acts did a fantastic show. All they people who did show up had a good time. The Exit and Tocado crew also had a good time. And you were at home acting like a couch potato!Here are some pictures to show what you missed! Madame P.Madame P.Madame P.Eva BraunEva BraunEva BraunThe Moi Non PlusThe Moi Non PlusThe Moi Non Plus

If you're interested in music from our local scene here in Rotterdam-the Netherlands check out Antenne Radio on the internet. This site does radio as well as internet TV and Antenna also has two hours airtime on Rijnmond TV, which is the biggest local TV station in our area.Check out the antenna site hereA brand new episode of Antenne internet radio is online now. Click on the logo below to listen to it. Last but not least there's an item on antenna TV featuring our own Leen Steen talking about the local music scene check that one out here!

We have a winner!Only one of the 35 people who send in answers to our 10 years Tocado-records competition answered all three questions right:Eric Krul from The HagueCongratulations Eric: The 25 Tocado albums have been send to you! The right answers were:The last track of Heel Erg Punk Vol1 is not a song but a registration of a fight that broke out after The X-Men finished their set. The reason for this fight totally iluded us at the time and noone can remember exactly why it broke out. All we know is Marcel (now in the Quotes and das Oath etc) was involved. And don't worry; Marcel mellowed out in 10 years time! The man that produced the first 4 songs ever recorded by Harry Mery & the Must was Mr Tony Mc Adam from London.The projects Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva recorded albums with were: Stöma, Dr Schnitt, DooDoo's Coffee and Bruno&Robin.

Hit The North   The Hit The North Festival part 2 hit Leeuwarden on Friday november 30. Tocado-records released the Hit The North compilation album on that same day. Buy the Hit the North album for only € 5 here Hit The North is a concept created by Chay of the Suicidal Birds. The first issue was last year and focused on a collaboration between Dutch and UK bands. This time HTN it was all about Dutch and French bands. The line up consisted of 6 Dutch bands and 4 from France. All of them are presented on the album also.   Oso El Roto http://www.myspace.com/osoelroto A French performer/musician, though on his my space it says he's from Chile (?), well maybe so. This guy could just as easily be from another planet, his music really is something else. Armed with a guitar, a tape recorder and his voice he took the audience on a trip to a galaxy far beyond. It's impossible to explain just watch his video on you tube here The Suicidal Birds http://myspace.com/suicidalbirds were the first band to play on the mainstage. I could only hear them play since I was busy setting up the Merch stand at the time. They rocked as they always do and I think they showed how much this band is devoid of ego by kicking of the festival. No footage from the festival this time but watch this: video for better off Madame P. http://myspace.com/madamepi Who is from Italy originally, but lives in Amsterdam was the second act on the small stage. She is a friend of Nora Keyes and judging from Madame P's music they are kindred spirits. Both are a kind a vocal performance artists (remember Diamanda Galas?) . The main difference between the two is Madame P. improvises everything she does on stage while Nora Keyes composes songs. Look at this very special performance here   Pony Pack http://myspace.com/ponypack is a band from Amsterdam. Their singer and drummer are originally from Scotland though. The band play a nice kind of indie rock with punkrock influences. Their performance was really strong. I don't know how long they have bee playing together but this trio really fits well together; they were tight. Judging from the amount of vieews on the youtube channel this band must have quite a big following also.Watch the Pony pack footage here   Minuscule Hey http://myspace.com/minusculehey Are from Bordeaux France. This lovely duo does warmblooded tunes. The singer's appearance remembered me of Buddy Holly (I bet that's not the first time this guy will read this!). His voice was really good too. The band consists of Emily on Bass/vocals and Laurent on guitar/vocals added with a drummachine. They played songs in French but mostly in English but of all the bands tonight they were the most typical French band in the best sense of the word. Watch The Minuscule Hey Footage here   Eva braun http://myspace.com/musicevabraun Broke loose at the mainstage after that. What a whirlwind this was; singer Britt is one hell of a performer that draws all the attention towards herself. I saw they had Teenage Jesus and the Jerks in their top friends list on myspace and that's exactly what they reminded me of. In a wayYou can't get more punk then this outfit from Amsterdam, but they also harbour a lot of Nowave totally crazy stuff. Watch Eva Braun here and here     Le Club des Chats http://myspace.com/leclubdeschats was another mighty nice surprise from France. Paris is the hometown of this illustrious duo. Their music is all about cats and they really do meow in songs. Guillaume plays drums and sings and Maia plays guitar, sings and plays percussion for about half their set. They were a one of a kind band and also so absolutely charming. The audience really appreciated their set which was well rehearsed and absolutely tight. It wouldn't have done without the tightness since this theatrical kind of performances are all about timing which was flawless... watch le club des chats here   The Moi Non Plus http://myspace.com/themoinonplus played a bit earlier since Tes Yeux Rouges failed to show up. This band from Amsterdamis also a duo; a guitarplayer/singer and drummer. Leon, their drummer also plays in Blues Brother Castro and is the guy behind the Subbacultcha nights in Amsterdam who also invited the Suicidal Birds to play at the Subbacultcha showcase at the Popkomm in Berlin in september. It felt really good to do something for him this time. The Moi Non Plus was heavy stuff; I saw them in Berlin too, but this time they were even harder. I loved the way Leon plays his drums; it's not far from dancing. People asked about their album at the merchstand a lot but the band hasn't released anything yet. Keep your eyes pealed for their album which will be out early 2008. Watch the Moi Non Plus here   Stöma http://myspace.com/st0ma was the last band on the bill tonight. The small hall was paced at the time the boys started their performance and poeple really got of on them. Usually Stöma is the band that's the hardest to dance on on festivals, but this time they really set people up for dancing probably since a lot of the bands tonight weren't about shaking those hips at all. Tonight it was the perfect mix between the really dancable funk rythms and the weirdness. Finally another audience that really was into the band. Funny thing was Bruno sneered at the press people saying he already knew they were going to write bad shit about Stöma and told them they could fuck off ; ofcourse they only wrote nice struff about the band but found the singer a bit arrogant.. million laughs Watch the Stöma footage here   read the review on 3voor12 Friesland here (dutch only)  pictures by bor Fotografie

Anti scene Tocado takes on a new adventure here. After we started selling art by Bruno, again we've have something new; we're going to sell this awesome photobook by Rotterdam photographer Carla van Marel. Carla documented the punk/noise/hardcore scene in the eighties and nineties and now there's an overview of her work out called Antiscene. The book contains pictures and posters taken all over Holland from local Rotterdam bands as well as punk/noise/hardcore heroes such as The Ramones, No Means No, Dead Moon etc etc.  And what's more the Book comes with a compilation album featuring Rotterdam bands from the eighties/nineties such as Debiele Eenheid, Döppelgangers, Spasmodique, Stinksisters, God knows the abscence, Rotterdam Pig Fuckers, No-Men etc. etc. Antiscene's issue is made in 1500 copies only so if you want one be quick about it. The book will be on sale from DEcember 1 on at www.tocado.com and in good bookstores across Holland. Antiscene will be released on November 30 at a bog party in the Arminius church in Rotterdam. See flyer below...

Hit The North vol 2   Hit the North is a festival organised by Chay of the Suicidal Birds. Last year's first edition was a collaboration between UK and Dutch bands this year the festival features French and Dutch bands.   To commemorate the festival and keep something of it's spirit left for future generations, Tocado-records releases a compilation by the same name as the festival featuring all ten participating bands. The album is a crazy collection of far out music made by bands who are all part of the (post)punk experimental underground. Hit the North is another proof not every band on the planet has sold themselves out to the corperate rock machine. There are still scores of bands who stay away from paths travelled before and reuse to be part of boring sub genres such as goth metal, (pop)punk, emo and so on. Bands who reinvented Rock `n Roll for the 1000.000th time and nevertheless manage to make it sound groovy, chunky and mind bogling once again!   The participating bands on hit the North vol 2 are Oso El Roto (Fr) The Moi Non Plus (NL) Minuscule Hey (Fr) Eva Braun (NL) Le Club Des Chats (Fr) Pony Pack (NL) Stöma (NL) Les Yeux Rouges (Fr) The Suicidal Birds (NL) Madame P (NL)   The Hit the North compilation will be presented on the festival on november 30 at Poppodium Romein in Leeuwarden. All visitors of the festival receive a free copy of the compilation. Non of the bands on the compilation had to pay to get on it and every band will receive a couple of copies.. The Hit THe North compilation album is on sale on this site now Buy it here for €.5 only

The Tocado crew has survived a full week of parties for our 10th birthday jubilee.It was fun!we had a good time and all our bands feel more bonded together in this crazy little familly of ours then ever before I suppose. READ THE REVIEW ON 3VOOR12 here (IN DUTCH ONLY, SORRY!) watch the item on Ik Op TV on the Dutch regional broadcast And since a picture tells a thousand words we made a couple of cute little movies on the festivals and you can find them at our you tube channel. click here for the Tocado-Records you tube channel click here to watch Harry Merry at Het Paard Van Trojeclick here to watch the Stilettos at Het Paard Van Trojeclick here to watch Lushus at Het Paard van Trojeclick here to watch Lushus featuring Bruno from Stömaclick here to watch Harry Merry and the Must at Waterfrontclick here to watch the Suicidal Birds at dB'sclick here to watch the Stilettos at dB'sclick here to watch Stöma live at dB'sclick here to watch Mindscan at Wormclick here to watch Harry Merry & the Must at Wormmore videos from Stöma and Bruno & Robin will be added soon; we needed a break from editing!Here are some pictures!!find more pictures here (dont use these without permission of the Photographer!)lushus at WaterfrontLushus had to play without their second bassplayer/singer Merel since she's in Japan studying at the moment. But Lushus brought a guitarplayer along and Bruno from Stöma also practices a couple of Lushus songs and played them very well (duh!)Lushus with Bruno at Waterfrontthe Suicidal Birds at Watefrontthe Suicidal Birds at WaterfrontHarry Merry & the Must at WaterfrontWe had to buy Harry a new plainticket to get him back from his latest USA tour on time. Seeing tyhe Must perform it was well worth the money and effort. What can I say; getting into trouble is just part of rock 'n roll I suppose... The Must performed three nights in a row. We thought it would be good for them since the band is about to record and needs to get fly time. But in the end that's also a bit of a lame excuse since we just want to see them play as much as possible; they're the cutest band in the world!Harry Merry & the Must at WaterfrontHarry Merry & the Must at WormStöma featuring DJ Eniless at WormThe Stilettos at Wormthe Stilettos at WormMindscan at WormJohn rejoined Mindscan a few months ago and that's a relieve. The band kicks even more ass then ever before and they say Julia who's giving them singing lessons plays a big part in that.Mindscan at Worm

Tocado organised an absolutely freakish Halloween night at Exit in Rotterdam this year.We had a monsterball and a very nice time indeeed. Bruno, Nique and Eniless performed a ghoulish set of eerie music.The Happy Couple DJ's mixed 50's halloween rock 'n roll with all kinds of monsterfilm soundtracks and other chilling music. The 3xS people sponsered us by providing make up for anyone who didn't show up dressed in a halloween costume and made sure all the members of our crew looked absolutely stunning.  here's the 3xs websiteMaroesja won first price for best costume with her dead bride outfit.We drank death in the afternoon cocktails (champagne mixed with absint) and got stinking drunk.The party made the headlines in the Metro newspaper and we had an item on the local TV network which was good against the hangover....Here are a couple of pictures. here's a link to the Rotterdam TV doc about our Halloween partyMake sure you'll be there too next year!!

The Megabig Leen Steen interview Sash who is studying to become a journalist in Utrecht conducted this interview with Tocado's founder Leen Steen. All in al they talked for over six hours and the interview became much too long to publish in one piece so we decided to make it into a series and put one episode on the site every week until we run out of material.   Sash : How are you at the moment; busy I suppose?Leen Steen: At the moment I sit here and I'm talking to you. I'm just about ready with the promotional bit for the ten years festivals so unlesss more press people start showing interest in the upcoming parties and want to do interviews I can take a short breather and get set for the festivals.Sash: Tell me about the 10 years Tocado festivals; What exactly is going to happen?LS: I organised 4 festivals and an special appearance by Stoma at The Exit for all our friends and (business) aquintances.The first festival is on Saturday november 3 at Het Paard van Troje in the Hague.Bruno&Robin will play with two extra musicians: Fonckeltoff on keyboards, he played with Bruno&Robin earlier at the Exit and he produced both the NikNok single and the new Stoma album and <!--[if !supportLists]-->Martin Meijburg will sing. He's used to sing in muego and now does his thing with a duo called RingerCan_of_Be play in a kind of skeleton crew at the moment without their drummer and bassplayer but their keyboardplayer Roeland Drost who left the band after the recordings of the Don Quichot album has rejoined the band, which is an important factor I think.Harry Merry will be back on Friday from his latest U.s. tour. We had to move the heavens to get him back on time due to a wrong airline ticket. But we managed to do so...The Stilettos and the Suicidal Birds will play a regular set. The second party will be at the Exit on Wednesday November 7. This one is more like a reception of friends and business partners, but anyone who shows up is welcome untill the place gets too packed that is. Stöma will play here. It's not even on the posters, but nonetheless it's a part of the festivities. The third festival is at Waterfront on Thursday november 8 in our hometown Rotterdam.The Stinksisters will play in their current line-up that will release an album on Tocado-records soon. Peter; our chairman is the guitarplayer/singer of the band nowadays, that'why we let them play as the only band in the line up that hasn't released an album on the label yet.The Suicidal Birds will play again, this being their Rotterdam gig for the 10 years jubilee.Lushus will play and Bruno from Stöma will play a couple of songs with them as a guest musician. I'm very curious how that will sound and I'm very pleased they get along so well. Maybe we can send Stoma and Lushus on tour together at some point in time; that would be a great line up.Harry Merry & The Must will play for the first time since february. This time round I want the Must to get ready for the road and a full length album. This is going to be a blast; I'm convinced theMust has a great fuure ahead of them. That is if they manage to get Harry to give them enough time to get a 45 minute set together and get on the road. We're booking as many shows for them as possible at the moment. Harry will play solo at Het Paard only because Wouter had a gig with Clayborn that same day; otherwise the Must would have played the Hague also. The fourth festival is at dB's in Utrecht on Friday november 9. Utrecht is the hometown of The Stilettos and Lushus and they both will play obviously.I'm very pleased Elle Bandita agreed to appear this night since she's very busy with both her new album and touring with the Riplets. She's our headliner this night.The Suicidal Birds will play again too. Some people asked why the Suicidal Birds get to play on three seperate occasations at these festivals and that hasa good reason; they are the best known band on our roster and their vs life album was the album that broke even the fastest of all the albums Tocado ever released; in a mere two months!Stöma will also play, making this one heavy night for Wouter and Bruno since they also are the rhythm section of Harry Merry & the Must and like I said before the Must will play too. The fifth and last festival is at Worm, Rotterdam on Saturday november 10. Harry Merry & the Must will headline again.Mindscan will play since Worm puts real heavy bands like this on their bill too but mostly bands from Japan or the UK. We want to show efveryone there's good metalcore bands here in Rotterdam too.Stöma and the Stilettos are on the bill also. The people at Worm dig Stöma very much and I'm sure they'll love the Stilettos also.This one came in latest but we were absolutely pleased we could do a night at Worm since we think this club is the coolest club in Rotterdam at the moment. OK it's a bit elitist but as long as they consider us part of the elite.... (laughs) Sash: Explain what's so funny here.LS: I wrote a column about the Rotterdam clubscene recently and I called Worm "the most beautiful club in town but helas they're a bit of an elitist bunch. I gave them that sneer since they are very particular in the bands they put on their bill. Needless to say they weren't too pleased to read my column but they also managed to choke myself in my words since their program works very very well and the place is always packed. But I just pictured them reading this one that's why I laughed.   Sash : That means you have nothing else on your mind for the next two weeks?LS : Naw, I wish. I sometimes try to take a day or two off after a really heavy job for the label, but in the end I always find myself doing the regular stuff that needs to get done. I call it maintenance work; checking sites and magazines for reviews and articles, listening to demo cd's, answering long overdue e-mails and what else you've got. And in the mean time there's always booking new shows for the bands I manage. Sash : is that all the bands on the Tocado label?LS: No, that would be too much to handle. I book shows for Stöma, Harry Merry and Harry Merry and the Must. And I'm still trying to get Spektr to tour Holland again as soon as possible. They want to play the Eurosonic festival in january and I promised to try to get them on.   Sash: Spektr is the only foreign band on Tocado?LS: No we released plenty other foreign bands. We do that together with other European labels and we even participated with a Korean compilation a couple of years ago. Spektr was the first, at that time their name was a little bit different; it was Spectre, but it turned out too many bands already used that name which isn't too remarkable since the name comes from James Bond movies. We promoted and distributed their `the microfilm album' cd here in Holland. Soon after that we did a Russian band called the Paukie from St.Petersburg and so far we released two of their albums along with a compilation that also featured Disturbance and Totaal Verlept among a host of other European punkbands. We also did an album and a split album by the Killdaddies from Italy and a split by a French band called The Oc-toons and American based girlband Fabulous disaster.   Sash: Were these succesful releases?LS: Spektr was the most succesful of those, but we must have sold no more then about 150 copies of that one. The Awesome fromage split was a disaster; the worst selling album ever did. The rest was nice to do since most of them we traded our older punkstuff for instead of paying for the release and it's always nice to see foreign bands sell a lot of copies of our stuff abroad, but I still have a lot of these traded cd's somewhere in the basement. And I also traded a lot with punkrocklabels in the early days. I had very nice releases from over there that are sold out by now but also absolute crap that is now rotting away since I don't want to sell it.   Sash: Why is that?LS: I just don't want to sell bad music. And we're talking about music I don't like and nobody that listened to it liked either so it's not about my personal taste only, you know. Crap is crap and noone should have to bother; I can't put bad shit in my merch stand and sell it with a smile on my face to some kid who saved his beermoney to get him/herself an album. I simply don't have the heart. Some people say it's not very good for business to think that way but they can go to hell for all I care. This world would be a much better place if everybody would refuse to sell shit to the people; that's what I think!   Sash : Do bands give you a hard time in general?LS: No, if that was the case I wouldn't have lasted this long. The bands I work for want to play, period. They want to play as much as possible, whenever, where ever. I never go sign any deal with any band that doesn't want to go that far. Believe me; many a band did fail the test, regardless of their god given talent or what else you've got.   Sash: Did that happen to bands recently?LS: Ehhr to be honest; yes it did. Damn; we're in this interview for fifteen minutes and already you start asking awkward questions. Sash: You promised me I could ask you anything and I could publish it all on the Tocado site, didn't you?LS: Yes I did; Go ahead and put on the squeeze...as long as I don't have to mention any names here. (laughs) Sash: Tell me more about thatLS: I really wanted to take this band on the label because I think they're really good and they can grow into something much much more. But they rejected a couple of shows here in Rotterdam saying they didn't want overexposure in their hometown. They wanted to stay away from shows in Rotterdam untill the release party of their first EP, thinking not enough people would show up on their release party if they played Rotterdam a lot in the months before the party. I thought that was a kinda unsound reason not to play. They made it look like they played Rotterdam every week for the past six months or something. And so what if they did anyway...But nevertheless we negotiated further about a deal one day at the office, and I waited two weeks for them to make up their minds about the deal I offered them. After that time I started to grow impatient since the new concert season was coming up and I needed to start booking a release party date and more shows for them since they only had one or two scheduled. There's not much point in releasing a cd if the band in question has no shows to play. So I called them and they said something like they didn't take the time to sit and talk among themselves about the deal yet. And since everything the band decided had to be agreed upon by all members it would take them much more time to decide. I pulled the plug on it after I heard that. I don't like it if band's don't have a sense of urgency about their upcoming releases, their gigs, and about whatever more you've got when playing in a band. A band has to have a sense of urgency, like it's now or never; if they don't have that, it's just a waste of time, money and effort to promote them. And democracy is nice if you run a country, but it really does not work for a band. The best situation a band can have is all members know what has to be done and are in for it regardless. If that can't be achieved they need a bandleader who takes decisions for the collective; a dictator if you like. Sash: What does a band have to do to get signed by Tocado-records?LS: A lot of bands think just sending a demo will do. They send one and then they keep asking if I want to sign them. I any band sends Tocado-records a demo, I listen to it whenever I got time to spare listening to it. But I receive quite a lot of them and they pile up, so first of all it takes a long time to get listened to. It really helps if the band name, artwork, songtitles or what else you have get me curious. That may cause me to listen to it immidiatly, same goes for bands I saw live and asked to send me a demo myself. 99% of the demo's I receive don't do that so they wind up on the big pile. That means they wait untill I and my associates feel like listening to demo's. Most of them get about one minute to convince us. If they don't strike a nerve by that time the band can forget about it.If it does, we'll go check them out on the internet and see what traces they left there. If they have a lot written about them that'll help. And bad reviews don't necessarily mean we'll lose interest. I mean look at the reviews people like Harry Merry, Ariel Pink and John Maus get. They are hilarious. If a reviewer is really disgusted the music just might have a real strong appeal on us.A good myspace page with a lots of friends helps too, but the upcoming gig list is vital. If the band has no gigs to play, or just one or two it just doesn't make sense for us to get into it. That means they're really just starting or that they are already over their top. There's a simple rule that gives any band a clue about where they are heading: all gigs you do will result in getting more gigs. You play with your band and noone comes up after the show saying they can arrange another gig for you or at least know a place that may be interested in booking you, then that's a sign your band is not on the right track. Sash: So demos are really useless?LS: The only thing a demo can do is trigger some form of curiosity towards the band. The thing to do after sending it is inviting labels to come see one of the shows by the band. The fact most bands shun that is just a sign that says they are not convinced about themselves being a good band with some kind of following.In the ten years I worked with Tocado-records not one single band was signed through a demo. All the bands we signed, we signed after seeing them live. They didn't have to bother about demo's. Demo's are nice to let the producer of the record come up with ideas about how the band could sound with a good production. That's all.There's one exeption and that was Spektr, though it was their first album that got us onto them and not really a demo. We received their first album since we traded stuff with the Danish Alternate label one time. It wasn't the artwork or the bandname that triggered us but solely their music. I remember putting it on; it starts with this surf riff and then all a sudden this deathmetal like grunt rolls over it taking it into another dimension. I was hooked instantly and listened to the whole album and over and over again. I called a lot of people that day and made them listen to it by phone; I was totally exited. Turns out Willy van der Meer who was booking DooDoo's Coffe at the time had heard about them too and wanted to get them to tour Holland so I offered to be their tourmanager and helped them out on two seperate tours. Live they were even more awesome and now I poised on releasing their second album. Sash: What do you think about the music press in Holland?L.S. Most magazines and newspapers devote their attention to the already well known names only. It's not like in Britain where the press is always searching for the new hip bands. Here in Holland it takes a decade to get anywhere in terms of press coverage, but once that really happens bands, and especially their singers, get to be well known personalities and they'll be asked to do T.V. talk shows and be on panels in any kind of shows until they're retired. It's so fucking boring to keep on seeing the same old faces, bands like Bløf, The Golden Earring and the stupid wankers that were on Idols, that really haven't got anything new to say and didn't have anything new to say for at least five boring years and worst of all is on top of that you still read about them in the press too. It's all because here in this country things are played safe and most magazine writers are totally blasé.Meanwhile all music magazines have seen a sharp decline in readers but they still don't see that's because they're not providing their readers with the information these people are searching for. If I read a magazine I want to know about the best new bands and not about bands I already know enough about. Sash: Do you still put any effort in trying to get your bands covered by the press?L.S. I've put a lot of effort in trying to get attention for my bands. It's something a label shouldn't give up on, I think, and some magazines have picked up on a couple of names by now. Elle Bandita has had a lot of press coverage. Somehow she managed to get things rolling. It was like they (the press) picked up on rumours about her outrageous shows and it was funny to see how they all copied each other saying what a foulmouth Elle was. I mean it's so obvious very few of the writers ever go see bands live, because most of the time Elle plays she really is quite charming towards the audience. On a few occasions she was taking it out on stupid assholes who provoked her, the press wrote about that and before we knew she got provoked by idiots at a lot of shows. Idiots who read sensationalised press outings and then come to shows and expect the things the press talked about to happen and if it doesn't, they make it happen. That's a downside of getting your name in the papers and magazines. Sash: And in the end they don't write about the music, but only about the show?L.S: That's the press. They get interested in the things that surround a new name easier then they do in the music. That was always the case I suppose and I don't really mind that most of the time. It's just the way these things work. They grab the things that stand out the most. When they talk about Harry Merry it's mostly about his music, but in his case the music stands out the most. It's easiest to write about that. And most of the times they write about how much they hate what he plays, haha. Sash: Doesn't that get to you?L.S.: With Harry's music it's better to accept that most people don't get to see the beauty of his song writing. They hear the Casio sounds and go: no that's not for me. The nice thing about it is that the people that do find his music appealing get a sense of togetherness from knowing this music is not for just anyone. They kind of find kindred spirits in the people who also dig Harry Merry. Harry has a big and really devoted fan base and the fact his music is certainly not for the general audience certainly is a factor in that. Sash: But you are looking for ways to get Harry in the limelight nevertheless?L.S.: Sure, that's what we're here for. And Harry gave us the perfect weapon to convince people how good his music really is by putting a band together called the Must. Sash: Is there so much difference between Harry solo and with the Must?L.S.: Yes there is. Harry's music played by a band is a whole different thing. The music is much more accessible for the common listener when played by a regular band. Audiences pick up on the Must much, much easier since the sound is easier to grasp, and influences are easier to detect. The Must has traces of 70's pop music in them which are really easy to spot. Harry's solo stuff has that too, but one only hears after really getting into it. The Must hasn't performed that much so far but every show they did they convinced even real sceptical people who hated Harry's solo performances that this music was really something else and quite catchy too. Sash: How did you ever get to know Harry anyway?L.S.: Harry played at the Waterfront club about six years ago when I first saw him. I was the stage manager of that club at that time. I really was totally blown away by his performance; I never heard anyone doing what he did and it really struck a nerve.Back in those days Tocado-records was into punk rock only and I remember saying to Harry after his show that I would sign him immediately if Tocado hadn't been a pure punk label. He mumbled something about why such a trivial thing would hold me back and later that same night I started thinking he was right and what was more: it just depends on your point of view but in the end what Harry does is punk as fuck. Harry makes his music absolutely regardless of what anyone thinks about it or about him. If there's an attitude that's really punk you can't get more punk then that. Sash: So you called him?L.S.: No, I told him that same night I would get in touch soon. Later that week I met Bruno from Stöma and we got to talk about releasing his stuff too. I saw Stöma play a couple of weeks after that and again I had the same feelings about Stöma I had about Harry Merry; this is too good to let me pass by and in the end this is the kind of punk I want to promote. This music is really worth putting in the effort.So I talked to Bruno some more and I also mentioned Harry to him and he told me he was a big Harry Merry fan. So in the end we decided Bruno would join Tocado as a board member and help me do a sub label to release both Harry Merry and Stöma and after a while the sub label which was called Stöma too became the most important segment of Tocado-records allthough people never really noticed that the music by Harry Merry, Elle Bandita and Stöma was released on a sublabel anyway.  Sash: I heard someone say you betrayed the Rotterdam punk scene by starting to sign non punk bands?LS: Everyone who knows anything about me and Tocado-records knows that total bullshit. Most of the bands we worked for in the beginning of the label either fell apart or left us for other, bigger labels. That's just the way things go and it didn't cause me to rat out on the punkscene. I still like the Rotterdam punkscene a lot; especially the mohawkscene. There's few towns in Holland that have such a big thriving scene as they do here. I met Rob from Disturbance and Gunnar from Keesus Krijst a while ago at Waterfront and I'm always glad to have a chat with these blokes. I'm still a follower of Disturbance and I'm glad they do well at their new label. I did features on most Rotterdam bands while I was working at the VPRO broadcasting corp doing my punkrock radio show. So the guy who told you this crap is full of shit. I started doing different genres because of the reasons I explained earlier; I met these great musicians who needed my support. I was totally in awe of their music and what more reason does one need to get involved? And by the way I still do bands like The Suicidal Birds and The Stilettos and you can't get more punk then those two I suppose.   Sash: Tell me what music you grew up with?LS: My musical taste is much more diverse compared to when I was younger. I think that's just a natural thing. When you're young you pick a team, in this case a style of music and you go all the way with that. For me it started with punkrock but soon I really got into this hardcore thing. Me and the guys I used to hang out with back in the days got to know these American punkbands that were so much faster and more political then what the English made in the days which was for the most part pretty bad Oi. I'm talking early eighties here. The high point of English punk was over by that time, the bands who started it all like the Sex Pistols and Stiff Little Fingers were gone. The only real good English bands left were Crass, Discharge and the Subhumans, but in my opinion even those bands got really blown away by American bands like Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, the Germs and the Dead Kennedys.   Sash: those are still well known names nowadaysLS: That's true but we also had heroes not many people ever heard of then and are still largely unknown now. Really kick ass bands like ISM from New York who were about the only hardcore band to have a piano in the line up, The Flesheaters who made a kind of swamprock with really evil lyrics, The Freeze who had the best writer of lyrics in punk; mr Cliff Hangar, MDC who were the most angry and political and so on.We also got interested in bands that weren't all about being hard and fast. That began with the Butthole Surfers. The drummer of my band (Persona non grata) bought their first album because it was released by Alternative Tentacles and that was a pretty safe buy. He told me to come over and listen to this new record since he thought it was the weirdest band he ever heard. We listened to it and agreed this was really something else and quite good too. And not long after that a lot of the guys in our crew were converted to the evils of the Butthole Surfers. And the Minutemen also became pretty popular with us. Today they suddenly are big after that MTV show called Jackass used one of their songs as their main theme. We saw the Minutemen supporting Black Flag at the Paradiso in Amsterdam and some of the guys in our group of friends thought they were even better then Black Flag that night. At the time I didn't really agree since I was totally into the fast and angry stuff at the time, but nowadays I'm really glad I saw them play. Younger people sometimes go green with envy when I tell them I saw the Minutemen; Mr Daniel Boone alive and in the flesh. It's like saying you saw Jesus to some of the youngsters today haha... Sash: So what music do you listen to nowadays and is it different from what you used to listen to earlier in life?LS: I listen to lots of different stuff; almost everything from classical music to hiphop. The only exeptions are Techno and Drum&bass which I still don't like. But I got into this electro thing pretty heavily. Electro reminds me of the postpunk electronic music we used to listen to like early Human League (before they had those two awkward female singers!), John Foxx, Tubeway Army and Gary Numan.I always tend to like at least a few bands in most genres. Hell, I even like the Kaiser Chiefs. It's not really original music but made very well.As it comes to loud music I still like metal like Slayer, Ministry and Dillinger Escape Plan, Metalcore like Hatebreed and Blood for Blood and some psychobilly as well, Postpunk and New Wave like Joy Division and Bauhaus, The Fall, Siouxie etc.But I also like Reggea, Dub, African music and some ska. I don't play it all the time but sometimes I'm in the mood for sounds like that. Just like with hiphop. I hate Dutch hiphop; they call it nederhop. The only Dutch rapband I ever liked was the Osdorp Posse; all the rest that came later on can kiss my white ass.And I'm a real sucker for Laibach now; I admit it came a bit late, but I had to read a book about them (Club Risiko by Fred the Vries in Dutch only; sorry) and see a documentary about them before getting into their music and actions. I really got my two latest interns fed up with Laibach this spring since they didn't dig it at all while I played it all the time. They said they liked Rammstein and that was their big mistake; I love to teach people a thing or two...(laughs) And I also rediscovered the Violent Femmes, Bongwater, Knorkator and I always been and will always be a big Frank Zappa fan.   More of this mega interview in a couple of days...        

Stöma was on tour in Russia from september 11 till september 18. The band did four shows in Moskow, St. Petersburg and Pskov as part of the Dutch Punch festival which allows bands from Holland to play in Russia en vice versa. Last year Elle Bandita played the Dutch Punch festival too and she loved Russia so Stöma wouldn't pass on this one. The Dutch punch festival is a series of shows in several Russian cities and some are on the same day. We admired Stefan and Natasha who organised all these shows and were present at almost all of them crossing from one club to another and city hopping the whole two week period the festival lasted. We loved the guides they provided. Very nice people who spoke good english and in case of St Petersburg they even spoke Dutch fluently! Two girls who studied Dutch at the university for 1 and a half years!! Awesome; how do they do that in such a short time; remember the Russians have an intirely different alfabet too! This year The Low Point Drains, Aux Raus, (missed both band's shows since they played the same nights Stöma did), Blues Brother Castro (played before we even got there) Deformer, D.J. Eniless, Malorix, Apple Garden, Jules Deelder and Leen Steen performed, did poetry sessions and D.J'd. Furthermore Bruno had an exhibition of his silkscreen drawings (on sale on this site!) and Daniel Baggerman, who does most pictures on this site also did two exhibitions of his photographic work. So there we were; we flew to Moskow on September 11 with Swiss air (knowing even the Bin-Laden dude has a swiss bank account we figured swiss air would be the safest ;-) and Stöma played their first show at the Ikra club on Thursday september 13. Club Ikra has two stages and Stöma played the small stage. D.J. Eniless played the turntables which is always nice! The local television station filmed part of the show and we hope to see this footage one day. There wasn't a real big crowd but people were very enthousiastic and bought a lot of T-shirts and cd's and we didn't carry a whole lot of those since we couldn't take that many with us on the plane. Deformer and Eniless played a set after us and I must say Russians love drum&bass!watch the live video made in Moskow here After the show we had to hurry to catch the night train to St.Petersburg. After arriving there most of us decided to catch some more sleep and not going into town since performing was our main reason being there and not playing the tourists' game. That same night Stöma played the ESG7 art centre which was located in a huge squat. Again not a huge but very enthousiastic crowd showed up. I sold my last male size Stöma T-shirt there already. watch the live video made in ESG 7 artcenter here Next day Stöma, Deformer and Malorix played Club Revolution in St.Petersburg. This time a huge crowd showed up. Club Revolution was the biggest and most beautiful club I saw in Russia. It's a wet dream for anyone who ever ran a club, honoustly! There are three stories in this club; one concert hall, a dance hall and a small penthouse overlooking the city with another dancefloor. Stöma gave all they had this night and got the crowd going. Russian girls really like to dance and considered it a challenge to dance to Stöma's music which almost never has the usual 4x4 beat. watch the live video made in club revolution here Again we couldn't party all night since our bus to Pskov left early next morning. We had a difficult time saying goodbye to this club and all those very nice young Russian girls... Next day we arrived in Pskov to do our last show. Pskov is a middle sized country town and it looks like time has been standing still and the country is still under communist rule. We liked this climps of the past and the people in Pskov were surprised to see us westerners there. We are a rare breed in towns like that. To our surprise the club TIR in which we played resembled a club in Amsterdam our bands play regularly called the Occii a bit. The place was absolutely packed which surprised us even more since the show was on a Sunday. Pskov had the most appreciative crowd Stöma saw this tour. The band played a very long set since Malorix didn't make it to the show due to a broken laptop computer which prevented him from playing. The crowd went absolutely wild and even started singing along to Stöma's eurothrash song called `fashionmodel'. watch the video made in club TIR here Yet again we had to catch a nighttrain back to St Petersburg so we couldn't party with our newly made Russian friends. But there's always next time. We recommend touring Russia for any band. The people over there simply love music and are still hungry for it which isn't always the case in the rest of Europe. Pashiba, Russia!!   Read the weblog by Leen Steen on the 3voor12 site here (in Dutch only!)   Read the tourreport by Daniel Baggerman here.   And the second one here   And if that ain't enough more Daniel Pictures here!   Watch Inge Schaap's photo's from the tour here!    

Here are some links to reviews to a review (with pictures) of Lushus' last show in Utrecht and a radio interview on 3voor12/Utrecht (in Dutch, sorry!)The review hereThe interview hereLushus played their last two shows with Merel at the Acu - Utrecht and Exit - Rotterdam this weekend.Merel is going to Japan to study one year so the band will have to do without her this year. But don't worry; Merel will be back next year and Lushus will continue to play shows throughout this year with additional musicians.  And Merel will no doubt arrange some Lushus gigs in Japan this year! There will be a live video shot at the EXit on our you tube channel soon!Before the last two shows in Holland Lushus played three gigs in Paris. These two pics are from there!

Here's a message from Elle Bandita directly to her fans:Hey there!!Here is a word from yr favourite lowland hardrocker! Sorry for not keeping y'all up to date for so long, but you know, i had things on my mind.First of all, i split with producer Vincent Kooreman. Too bad he thought he wasn't the right producer for me after all, so now i'm working with 2 other guys from amsterdamned (yeah i know, but if you can't beat 'em... use 'em!)and we're heading towards a brilliant Elle Bandita full length. You can already start growing yr hair, cuz it's gonna be HARDROCK HALLELUJAH!!Second, i'm really involved with the underground project HER DICK, which is a platform for alternative/punk queers, riot grrrls and genderfuckers. We've only just started, but have already released a fanzine, a myspace website a radioshow, and there's a benefit party coming up on september 8th, which will be revolutionary! Read all about here: www.myspace.com/herdickAnd listen to the radioshow right here: www.pinqradio.comOk well that's about it. There are some Elle Bandita shows in the near future, but there is more to come in the new year. KEEP ON LIVING!- Elle Bandita

Stoma has been recording a new album this week. Most recordings are done by now. The band recorded 11 songs and while they were at it they also did a couple of jams with guest musicians such as D.J. Eniless - scratches(who was also featured on the Nik Nok single) and Robin - drums (the drummer from Bruno & Robin), Fonckeltoff - oberheimer (keyboardplayer of Firetime), Nique Quentin - conga, shaker (drummer of Dr. Schnitt) . A lot of people were asked to add vocals to one track such as Harry Merry and Martin Ruiten from the Must, Elle Bandita and Leen Steen. But don't let that give you a wrong impression; this album will be totally instrumental; there will be no songs with chorusses or even any lyrics at all on the album! You may ask yourself what al these vocalists did, but you will have to find out for yourself since I'm not giving anything away here. It'll be a bitch to choose the tracks that will wind up on the album since there's too much material for one cd. It's nice to have a couple of tracks for compilation albums and such but Bruno is going to be heartbroken if any of these babies has to be abandoned...Titles of tracks (only the ones who already have titles obviously..) Overture, // // // //, Indre La, Fulano, LaLa LaLa, Aqua. The album (no title yet!) is recorded at the 'feed the whole' studio and Fonckeltoff is engineering, mixing and co-producing the album. (Fonckeltoff also did that on the Nik Nok single). Needless to say Bruno and Wouter are in charge of the production.If all goes well today (sunday august 12) the band will have their last recording session. We expect the mixing will go on for at least some weeks.There's no indication when the album will be ready. We agreed to take all the time we need to make this one perfect and we need time for the production and the artwork of the album, posters and flyers. And after that also for the more boring stuff like marketing plans and promotion. All in all it'll take at least a few more months but meanwhile Stoma will perform as much as possible playing the songs on the album live, so go catch them and be infectuated!

From this day on the Tocado webshop starts to sell art as well as music!The first artist featured in our webshop is Bruno Xavier Ferro da Silva. Bruno studied at the Rotterdam art school and started playing in bands while attending art classes.Many of you may know this guy as the bass player of Stoma, DooDoo's Coffee, Fetish, Dr. Schnitt, Bruno&Robin, WeGo and Ensemble Residu, and some of you may already have noticed Bruno made artwork for several of these bands. Some of the silk screen pictures you can find in our webshop are made from the original drawings of artwork for Stoma or DooDoo's Coffee.

The Suicidal Birds have made a video for Friendly Land; one of the songs on the Suicidal Birds versus Life album. The video was directed by Chris Baaten; an artist from Amsterdam. Watch the clip hereFriendly Land is also featured on "la Nouvelle Vague Hollandaise"; a compilation album released by the N.P.I. (the Dutch popinstitute). Apart from the Suicidal Birds the album features tracks by Alamo Race Track, ZZZ, Green Lizard, Voicst, Gem, Transmission, Textures, De Kift, Delain, Within Temptation, Room Eleven, Kraak&Smaak, Racoon, C-Mon&Kypski, About, Taxi To THe Ocean, Johan, Coparck, Pete Philly&PerQuisite and Zuco 103. The compilation album is mend to promote Dutch indie music in France and it came for free with some French music magazines. It's not for sale here!!Go to the nouvelle vague hollandaise myspace page

We added 7 new video's to the Tocado-records channel at you tube: (click on the titles to go to the songs on you tube)Fetish - dead souls Fetish - she lost control Fetish is a Joy Division project from Bruno (Stoma, The Must, Bruno&Robin, Dr. Schnitt) and Leen Steen. recorded at Exit - Rotterdam on june 16Lushus - hofhund und...Lushus - big fat manlive footage shot at the "wij zijn 17" festival in Woerden on friday june 15Elle Bandita - who's your dog now?Elle doing her new single live at the "wij zijn 17"festival.Stoma - geile kikkerStoma - nik nokBoth recorded live at Exit - Rotterdam on june 20 Low Point Drains - hell slow  (not a Tocado band YET!)                                                                                        The Stilettos - what's wrong with you baby?                                                                                                             Both recorded at Exit - Rotterdam on June 22 Suicidal Birds - versus life                                                                                                                                    Suicidal Birds - into the black                                                                                                                                both recorded at Bitterzoet on june 28 2007 See all our video's on the tocadorecords You Tube Channel

Much to our regret Leen Steen's punkrock radio show on VPRO's 3voor12 has been cancelled.Leen will present his very last show this Friday (June 22). The VPRO decided to cancel all webradio shows after the first half of this season. The 3voor12 site has seen a lot of changes which have obscured the radio shows. THere are on demand channels for most genres and most listeners have switched to those. Furthermore it seems to get harder to have the presenters of the shows choose songs for their playlists themselves due to the never ending demands of big record companies for airplay on a popular station. And since the VPRO is not willing to force any playlists upon their presenters so all these factors combined made them decide to pull the plug on the radio shows.The show has been running for four and a half years, so we shouldn't complain. Leen had a great time presenting the show and he's going to miss travelling to the studio in Hilversum, but after such a long time presenting a show that's limited to just one genre it's a challenge to move on. Leen has had a couple of offers from other internet radiostations so it shouldn't be a surprise if he starts working for another station after the summer. It all depends; Leen refuses to work with a playlist made by editors, he makes up hhis own lists. If that demand is met he'll probably say yes.At the moment Leen is thinking about stsarting up a radioshow for the local Rotterdam 3voor12, in order to promote gigs in the area better. But this show will not be his exclusively. More presenters are to be found and the organisation has to be set up. A huge task that can't be done without help.Mail us If you're interested in helping out setting up this show.

The Stinksisters are a real oldschool punkrock band from Rotterdam. Peter; our illustrious chairman is there frontman on guitar and vocals. The band has lingered for a while but they're back now with brand new recordings made in France. Tocado took them on and for now were helping the Stinks getting gigs so we can release their stuff a.s.a.p. read the Stinks bio:

Due to a stupid mistake by one of our providers we may have missed a lot of e-mails from you info@tocado.com is open again, but the tocado@planet.nl adress will be out for about two more weeks, so if you tried to contact us on the planet mail please do so again using info@tocado.com All orders will be send out as normal so don't worry... the Tocado-records crew

           Suicidal Birds NRC 11-5 -07 suicidal birds Oor april 2007 live XS april 2007 Stilettos Oor april 2007 Stilettos Live XS april 2007 Stoma Rotterdams Dagblad Stoma Metro 29-3 2007    

The Stilettos made an appearance at Club 3voor12 and it really rocks. Go watch and listen here!

A bit late since the album was released in february, but we organised a neat party  for the Suicidal Birds- vs life album in Drachten at a club called Iduna. Iduna is the local hangout for the not too numerous fans of alternative music in the north of the country. But I suppose they were all there since a good crowd showed at the party. Marie Celeste came over from Rotterdam to support the Suicidal Birds. The band was late for the soundcheck and suffered from bad monitor sound which affected their tightness at times but still Marie Celeste did a good show, disarming as they always are. But cute with a bite, you know. I heard a couple of new songs and since Marie Celeste will go into the studio later this month anticipation grew.        I never saw Mexican Holiday play before. I visited their myspace page and I liked their brand of surf punk. Live they were even better. They have this real funny small singer who is one explosive performer on stage. The music was not as tight as one expects from a band witrh a surf sound, but somehow that just added to their appeal. The sheer enthousiasm of the band and their great punk attitude totally worked for me. The Suicidal Birds played a bit of a hometown gig since Drachten is the town nearest to their rural home. A lot of people that showed were fans of the band since the early days so it wasn't too hard to get them going. The Suicidal Birds make for a great team on stage. Two girls and a drumcomputer; it just works real good. Jessie easily attracts most of the attention which makes you forget about a drummer. The emotions displayed by the band are very real and they make you feel it. That's one of the things that made for the appeal I felt for this band since the first time I heard their first album.After the gig the crew was talking about how funny it is to see Jessie going wild on stage and Chay being a bit more introverted while off stage that's exactly the opposite since J4essie tends to be a bit shy out of the limelights.     A big thanks to all the people at Iduna for the hospitality and the great food!    

Wouter from Stoma is the first Tocado-records artist to actually get an endorsement. Wouter just bought a new kit from Gretch and he has got a nice price deduction. The kit is from the "Renown Maple" series of Gretsch, and it's color is "Slate Silver Sparkle" which is pretty neat. The bass drum is really deep and sound awesome. The hardware is from Gibraltar and Wouter is especially pleased with the "Intruder 9611 dc db" pedals which are really fast. Thank you Sammy Defreitas at AB music; the importer of Gretch and Gibraltar.

Elle Bandita performed for the first time in 5 months at the Electric Ladyland festival in the Hague on Friday april 13 2007. 'Het Paard Van Troje' was where it all happened. Electric Lady Land was a festival organized by Frank and Tracey of the LaLaLand recordstore in the Hague. These nice people have exellent connections with o.a. Chicks on Speed. That 's how Elle Bandita wound up on the Girlmonster compilation album, out on Chicks On Speed records. 4 acts that were also on the Girl monster triple cd were present on the festival. Anat Ben David, Large Number, Elle Bandita and Nad Mika (in order of appearance). As you should know most of the acts on the Girlmonster album are all about electro and that ment this festival was about that too. Anat Ben David opened the festival with a very good performance that had great visuals. That woman has the moves and a voice that reminded me of Nina Hagen at times. Shes must be from Berlin. Pity the computer malfunctioned (never use a computer with windows for visuals!), which broke up the show halfway since the visuals had to be fixed first. But on the whole Anat Ben David's show was really strong. Large number played in a band setting of a bassplayer a keyboard player, a singer and a terrapin player as visual high point. This instrument is really someting else (a terrapin ais like a metal stick with an electric field around it which is played by disrupting that field by hand - hard to explain; look at wikipedia for more info). Large number reminded me of early eigthies electro a lot and that's the music I listened to before I got into punkrock (revelations, revelations) Regrettably the sound engineer turned up the drumcomputer on the right volume a bit late in the set. After that Large Numbers sound was much more as it was supposed to be. . Elle Bandita was the exception to the rule. We at Tocado-records are proud to say Elle has made another step towards a really perfect mix of Electro and raw  in your face rock.  The new songs Elle performed were all guitar based, except for her outrageous cover of Motorhead/ZZ Top's classic 'beer drinkers and hell raisers' which is of course a real rock song, but Elle turned that one into an awesome electro tune. The new songs were fucking fantastic. We already heard demo versions but live Elle gave that extra magic which really turned the crowd on. Damn, Elle gave even more energy to this show then we were used to seeing her give. Miss Bandita gave up smoking and sometimes I even suspect her of going to a gym or something since she starts to get muscular... I'm not kidding! Our favourite Rrrriotgirl also wore a new garb and hairdo that said one thing to everybody present; here stands a rockchick and if you don't like it you can piss off. Hooray! But although the Flying V loks really cool, Elle would have been better off using her other guitar since the Flying V is getting out of tune realkly fast. We must bring it to the guitar doctor quick. Nad Mika did a shock rock act which didn 't shock me; I'm getting a bit used to seeing dildos on stage I suppose. It is always fun to watch but nothing new. The crowd really appreciated the show though, some people even started kissing the feet of the singers!  I want more festivals like this. I'm amazed that while we had our eyes fixed on the east back in the days of the Neue Deutsche Welle (I'm not going to explain - user wikipedia if you're ignorant) it seems that at the moment everybody is only looking towards the UK for new music while the German (Berlin!) scene is miles ahead of the now oh so trendy British bands. In a year or two all the Brits will take on to the German sound and then it starts getting trendy here also.. Yawn! go buy the electric ladyland EP at our webshop  read another review on 3voor12 den haag (dutch only)  

The latest addition to our familly is a band we had our eye on for quite some time: Lushus. After the Stilettos it's the second band from Utrecht we have signed; yes Utrecht is furtile soil for music... The first time we spotted Lushus was at the Elle Bandita releaseparty of the love juice album in december 2005 when Lushus was one of the special guests handpicked by Elle to play at her party. The unconventional line up of two female bassplayers and a drummer who were all also great singers (listen to drummer Jorg's falsetto; it's awesome!). Their german lyrics (they also sing in english) made me think of the (now old) neue deutsche welle groups back in the eighties, but Lushus goes far beyond that. Here's another group that doesn't bother about being categorised in any 'genre'they 're much too illusive for that. One can hear punk, new wave, pop, disco and even jazz pop up in their sound. Besides that they have a very powerful stage presence and they will turn on any kind of audience how ever 'into'any of the genres listed above. You can dance your heart out at Lushus'music but  you can also enjoy it just listening to their amazing tunes. We have taken the two most recent Lushus releases into our webshop: the Red Blushes album and the Big Fat Man 7". Both were originally released by Dying Giraffe. Tocado will try to get even more out of these releases.  Buy the Red Blushes album in our webshop Buy the Big Fat Man single in our webshop New work will appear early next year. If you want to see Lushus play live you can see them until September. After that time bassplayer Merel will head of to Japan for her study and the band will only play on holidays. They will keep on playing and composing. Tocado will release the songs made in this period as legal downloads first and maybe as an album later on.  

Benoit; a French friend of Harry Merry has made a videoclip for 'villagelife in 1905'. It's so nice that Harry's fans do all these great things for Harry, just because they like his music. Watch the clip here!

We've got a new Harry Merry album containing real old songs for sale in our webshop. The album is called first contact and is released on Olé records. The songs on the album were recorded by Harry himself back in the days he was experimenting with his music on this attic. This was far before Harry ever stood on a  tage. Nevertheless these songs already contain the briljant songwriting madness Harry later became renowned for. These are diamonds in the rough; these 14 songs give an inside into the development Harry has gone through before he got to writing the beautifully structured songs he writes today. If you are a realk Harry Merry fan you'll want to hear these songs and be amazed. You can download the album at the "Download albums" section or as seperate songs at the "Harry Merry mp3" section. We also have the album available as 12 inch vinyl LP, but in very limited quantities, so be quick about it.

Harry Merry's fans are really into spreading the merry gospel! Someone started a harry merry myspace fanprofile a week ago and now we received a message of a fan who started a real Harry Merry message board!! I can't begin to tell you how much this appreciation for Harry Merry's music means to us!! Here's the link to the harry merry message board This one is for the myspace Harry Merry fan profile:

Famous portrait photographer Wild Don Lewis from Los Angeles took the oppurtunity to drag Harry Merry into his studio for a photoshoot while Harry was on his U.S. tour. watch the complete shoot here visit Don Lewis' website  

Tocado-records loves to trade with bands and labels. For you it may be a good way to get your records available here in Holland. We love obscure punkrock from any country. The best way to get us interested is by sending us a copy of the album(s) you'd like to trade. Our general idiot Leen Steen has a radioshow which is quite big here in Holland and he'll play your record on his show if it's any good. go to Leen Steen radio show. After that we'll trade about 5 copies for starters. But sometimes just getting in touch wityh us will suffice for a trade deal. It just depends if we heard from your band before or heard other people talk about it, read about it etc. You can also consider sending us anMP'3 of one of your songs.