Supersister was a Dutch band from The Hague, Netherlands, playing progressive rock ranging from jazz to pop. The most predominant band members were Robert Jan Stips (keyboards, vocals), Sacha van Geest (flute), Marco Vrolijk (drums) and Ron van Eck (bass).
The band started as Sweet OK Sister in 1968 as a school band with singer and songwriter Rob Douw, who soon thereafter left. The remaining members continued as a more serious musical quartet under the name Supersister. Their style was progressive rock (in Canterbury Scene style) in which Stips' keyboard play played a dominant role.
Supersister’s progressive sound sticks out among the beat and rock music and the band spearheads the local hippie scene.
Their debut was the 1970 album, Present from Nancy, with charting singles such as "She Was Naked", "A Girl Named You", and "Radio". After three albums (Present from Nancy (1970), To the Highest Bidder (1971), and Pudding en Gisteren (1972)) van Geest and Vrolijk quit. The remaining crew, together with new members Charlie Mariano (wind instruments) and Herman van Boeyen (drums) released the album Iskander in 1973, which is a jazz-rock oriented concept album based upon the life of Alexander the Great.
In 1974, Stips and van Geest released a final album, Sweet Okay Supersister, which marked the end of the band.
The band reunited in 2000, after a request by the Progfest festival for a performance in Los Angeles. The four 1970-1973 period band members decided to accept and the result was the requested performance, as well as a short tour through the Netherlands in late 2000 and early 2001. To mark the occasion a rarities album was released, called M.A.N. featuring live and studio recordings from 1969-1973. The reunion abruptly came to an end when van Geest unexpectedly died of heart failure in the summer of 2001. The reunion concert at the Paradiso in Amsterdam was recorded and later released on CD (Supersisterious, 2001) and DVD (Sweet OK Supersister, 2006), which also featured several old and new documentaries, photographs and unreleased audio tracks.
The band reunited once more, as a three piece, in 2010 for two songs in a televised celebration concert for 50 years of Dutch pop music. After this the band was scheduled to play at Nearfest 2011. Rehearsals were started, but the appearance at the festival had to be cancelled when Ron van Eck became seriously ill (he was already battling leukemia for a while) and eventually died in July 2011.
She was Naked: https://youtu.be/gDs-MDSZbks
Spiral Staircase (1/3) : https://youtu.be/5q6z65Uo7zo
Spiral Staircase (2/3) : https://youtu.be/N15syTw5yTw
Members:
Robert Jan Stips keyboards, vocals
Marco Vrolijk drums
Sacha van Geest flute
Ron van Eck bass guitar
Former members:
Charley Mariano flute, clarinet, saxophone
Rob Kruisman flute, saxophone
John Schuursma guitar
Elton Dean saxophone
Herman van Boeyen drums
Rob Douw lyricist, vocals
Gerhard Smid guitar, vocals
Daniel Denis drums
Discography:
Albums:
Present from Nancy 1970
To the Highest Bidder 1971
Pudding en Gisteren 1972
Present from Nancy 1972
Superstarshine Vol. 3 1973
Iskander 1973
Startrack Vol. 1 1973
Spiral Staircase 1974
Memories Are New - M.A.N. 2000
Supersisterious 2000
The Universal Masters Collection 2002
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