Supersister - Pudding en Gisteren (1972)

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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
I cannot get enough of Supersister lately. What's not to like? Unless you absolutely detest a little humor in your prog, Supersister has something for every prog fan. 'Pudding En Gisteren' is an excellent representation of the band, and along with 'Present From Nancy', 'To The Highest Bidder' and 'Iskander' is mandatory for fans of quirky, clever, ambitious prog.

"Radio" begins with a fairly light jazzrock bounce, the vocals sounding impossibly English (despite the fact the band is Dutch)…but things are disturbed in the song's final half, with some heavy-handed keyboard/bass interplay and sinister group-vocal onomatopoeia. An unexpected twist, something Supersister specialize in. S. Van Geest's narrative in this spot is humorous and draws attention to itself thanks to his sincere and believable dialogue (despite utterly silly lines like "…and filling her pants with the substance of a custard supplier…"). Masterful keyboard playing from R.J. Stips tops this off and you've just heard one of the band's best-ever songs. Things move swiftly from the very brief keyboard tweek of "Supersisterretsisrepus" to "Psychopath", which could've easily fit on the Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd debut.

The album takes a turn to the even-weirder with "Judy Goes On Holiday". A perplexing 12 minutes, this seems to be several songs lumped together under one title, as the various pieces don't even pretend to be musically related. We're taken through keyboard-driven Canterbury, doo-wop, busy symphonic noodling, minimal atmospherics and ambient cosmic trips. Oddball, and totally enjoyable. Final track "Pudding En Gisteren Music For Ballet" is 21 minutes of "serious" Supersister, thick jazzrock of an experimental and unpredictable nature: fuzzy keyboards, fuzzier bass, folky flute, groovy vibraphone…

At the risk of sounding incestuous, I totally love my