Songs About Amsterdam By Bands From Amsterdam, capice?


Solid Ground - Dorp

Solid Ground was formed in 1991 or 1992 by Jaro, Nils, Erik and Daniel who all played in other bands before. After a few gigs here and there we recorded a demo at the Stilteloos studio with Daan v/d Elsken. We kept playing gigs in Holland and I vaguely remember winning some sort of price that gave us the opportunity to record another demo. This was done at the A.M.P. studio's with again Daan in the drivers seat. Come to think of it, we also did 'Grote prijs van Nederland' (a Dutch battle of the bands), won the forerounds but got disqualified 'cause we didn't play 3 songs but did our own thing. 1 short and 1 long song. Fuck those idiots. What also bothers me is that we never have gotten a price for the band that has had the most broken bones. All of us were working in bars and well, sometimes you break a leg, an arm, a knee, a hand, an ankle, a foot, a finger, a rib or 2. Mind you, we never blamed the booze!! Anyways, Erik left the band and Marco took over bassduties and him being Italian, booked us a tour in Italy rightaway. Also played Switzerland I believe. Next thing to do was to record an album. We spent 3 days and nights at the Waterfront studio with Jacques de Haard, I now remember he remixed our second demo too, and then we went home to finish later (what we never did). Timeline is a little blurry here. We went to Scandanavia on tour. Might have very well been before the recordingsession too. We went a ridin' from town to town just to find gigs cancelled. Luckely, 1 outdoor festifal in Sweden (could also have been Norway) came through and paid for most of the damage. Rob Reiner should have been there! The moment we set foot on stage it started raining... So did we go back and finish the album? Of course not. Somebody broke something and by the time he was all healed up we went back on the road. First some shows in Italy, that went actually very well, were it not that we had the van from hell, then a rest (another way of saying gigs were cancelled) in Triest. Next stop Yugoslavia, don't remember the city, where we probably played our best show ever, I think that was also the time we got our Solid Ground t-shirts stolen 'cause some soldiers were wearing them to the front. Did we or did we not went to Switzerland after that? I don't remember. Coming home, Marco left the band. And in came Michael. We practised a lot, played some shows, recorded some new songs at the Arenasleepin studio, and focussed on making a great record. We went back to the Waterfrontstudio with Jacques, took our time, spend a lot of money, but recorded Ground Zero. After that we did some shows but then the practiseroom got really wet and now we are taking some sabbatical years. A lot of them. The album came out on Konkurent records I think and if you want it, we just found a few and we keep you updated. All the demo's and misc recordings will also be released. Nils, dec 2007 ..
