Hi there.
Can you believe that the first incarnation of what was eventually to become Galatasaray consisted of only three persons jamming together ? And now there’s eleven of us, and we’re hardly able to organize rehearsals and gigs. Where will this story end ?
It all started out in 2000, when Pol was asked by Limelight Kortrijk to make a new musical creation. He invited Tom and Kurt to play, they were jamming and creating all sorts of noises, but finally decided that this was not the way forward for this project. So in came Lieven and Rubee, on bass clarinet and saxophone, and Jesse on bass. Cedar Goddess was born and played the Happy New Ears Festival in Limelight. Jesse soon left the band, but the rest of the guys decided to pursue their efforts, invited Fré to play bass, and convinced Bertel (saxophone) and Sofie (clarinet) to join the forces. Galatasaray edition number 1 was born. Those eight people started rehearsing, re-arranging some of the Cedar Goddess songs, and came up with a blend of their own. We started playing live in May 2001, and pretty soon some sort of buzz was created around our band. We were invited to play pretty nice places such as De Kreun, the mighty Farmfest, Charlatan, 4AD , La Zone, Sinxen Vlas Vegas, and all of that without one single note on CD.
Limelight invited us to do something special again, and after a long brainstorm we decided it would be nice to just invite some extra people on stage. Galatasaray XL consisted of the band with guests PW (from Hawai) on percussion, Heikki on trumpet, Mich (from Hitch) on guitars, and Hans (from Hawai) on double bass. We played Limelight again, and more nice places such as Vooruit and Minardschouwburg. PW and Heikki were having a pretty nice time with us, and decided to stay in the band. Galatasaray edition number 2 consisted of ten people now, and went on creating new music and playing live. It became a little weird when we were asked to play our music with the Kortrijk Symphonic Orchestra. We were Pink Floyd and Metallica in one without having recorded one note of music.
We decided to get rid of this vacuum, camped for a week in Zulte at CCR Studios, and came out with “…now the evidence was destroyed, he smoked his eyeliner and moved in with Montana…”, but not one person has ever called the album like this, so hey, it’s ok if you just say “Montana”. We got assistance from many guests, and recorded one of the songs live at Limelight engineered by Hein, who in the meantime had become our permanent sound guy. We teamed up with Xavier from Delboy Records, who was so kind to put out the CD on his label and to book shows for us.
We played more gigs, and soon came up with more songs that seemed to be really different from earlier stuff, especially since Mich had become a permanent member of the band and PW was forced to play not only the percussions but also drums: Galatasaray edition number 3 has now two drummers, two guitar players, a bass player, a keyboard player and a five piece brass section. And then we even forget to mention Hein a.k.a. Clark C., whose work as a soundman has definitely contributed to the Galatasaray live sound. After a gig at the Dour festival we took a little break from playing live and started working on a lot of new songs.
We eventually also parted ways with Xavier from Delboy, who concentrated on booking tours for foreign bands. So, there we were, ready to rock a new album together, but having no label. In comes Vlas Vegas Records, or Hein and Stevie, two long time friends, who proposed to put out our new album on CD and vinyl. An easy decision to make, so we teamed up with Filip Tanghe, who earlier had recorded the magnificent Hawai album, and started recording, first at the old Radio 2 studios in Kortrijk, later at Filip’s place. The result of that work is called “Boxing Camp For Blues Oriented Snack Heads”, our new and second album released on CD and double LP, an album which is far more dark and rocking then the previous one, but still makes people dance in rather silly ways, and that, dear readers, has always been our main goal.
A little while ago, we did our first little “European tour”, and played in great places in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy. This was a totally new adventure for us and we have noticed that people that have never heard of us or our music seem to enjoy it. We also played an album presentation show at De Kreun, a place that we should thank big time since they have been the hosts for our rehearsals for quite some time now. There are so many people that we should thank for their support, and to make sure that we don’t forget anyone, we’ll simply mention no one here at all. After all, they know who they are.
So, we are ready for more. Are you ?
