Supersister - Present from Nancy (1970)

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Supersister was a band from The Hague, (the 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.

Their debut was the 1970 album "Present from Nancy," hitting the charts with numbers like "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 Charly Mariano (wind instruments) and Herman van Boeyen (drums) released the album "Iskander" in 1973, which is an even more jazz-rock oriented concept album based upon the life of Alexander the Great.

In 1974 Stips and van Geest release a final album "Spiral Staircase" as "Sweet Okay Supersister". This album marks 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 Sacha van Geest unexpectedly died 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 features several old and new documentaries, photographs and unreleased audio tracks.

review ~ http://www.progarchives.com
Maybe you didn't know yet, but the best Canterbury music in the (very) early seventies came from… The Hague, Holland. Though there are also influences of Frank ZAPPA, the best comparison of the music of SUPERSISTER, and especially of this unique debut album from 1970(!), is with early SOFT MACHINE, EGG and (sometimes) CARAVAN (though maybe a bit less accessible), and in the jazzy swinging parts with NATIONAL HEALTH on Of Queues and Cures. Robert Jan Stips, on keyboards, is the Dutch version of Dave Stewart, even with comparible humor. (Though the humor of SUPERSISTER is sometimes rather tending towards weirdness, irony or even sillyness than towards the tongue-in-cheek style of many early Canterbury bands.) Marco Vrolijk is an excellent, powerfull leading drummer; and even more melodical than his Canterbury collegues. But what really makes this band special, is that there is no lead guitar, and instead they have the amazing Sacha van Geest on flutes. As Jimmy Hastings gave early CARAVAN that extra thing with his flute intermezzos, here we have a band that uses this instrument constantly as a leading instrument (in combination with the fuzzed organ), and that gives them a unique, fresh and clear sound that makes them accessible even in their most complex melodies and rhythms: enchanting in the quiet parts, and still leading in the jazzy swinging parts. Even nowadays SUPERSISTER albums still stand strong as such. This amazing debut album was followed by two albums ('To The Highest Bidder' and 'Pudding en Gisteren') which are also too little known surprising highlights in progressive music, that should be in the collection of every lover of ever surprising, really progressive music. This excellent debut album is available in combination with their second album ('To The Highest Bidder'), which is also a masterpiece of really progressive music, as a two-on-one cd. That makes it two times five is ten stars for only one cd!