The first song on the single is 'Devils'. I play harmonium and later added a kettledrum Mowing Sean left in my workshop. Daniel Johnston is singing the refrain with me.
The song is about frustating devils in your head who are telling you that your're not good enough. Negative voices obstructing your ambition.The way to deal with these devils is to watch TV. They fall asleep because it's boring. When they're sleeping you got a chance to be real.
It was written after our first tour with Daniel Johnston. I guess that's where the devil symbol came from. Because of the movie and the stories about Daniel I was afraid he was gonna hit me with a baseball bat or something. He appeared to be a really nice guy. Later I visited him at his house in Texas to record him singing along with this song. (Dutch story here) It's a weird song he said. After drinking gallons of root beer I went to a hotel in Austin and listened to the song. It worked out great.

The songs are sent to the 7 inch vinyl single maker, and the 300 silk screens prints are ready.
You can order the single+silkscreen next week on this website for 30,00€ + shipping costs. There's only 300 of them, so don't wait too long.
I'm sure I won't make demon silk screens anymore.
This year, there will be 5 more single+silkscreens, instead of a new CD. Collect them all.
In the next couple of days I'll write about the 2 songs.

John Dear Mowing Club, Your Fans are Waiting!
Gee...are you?
A mail from MySpace with the subject above was send to me.
They want me to advertise on their Myspace site. 80 million potential fans. 5$ a day.
they don't mention the 80 million potential customers for MySpace.
Bands and their lust for fame and their fear to miss the boat. A good way to make some money.
John Dear Mowing Club fans are not waiting, they know they'll be informed with the newsletter when they join the club!
I think this was a meta-meta-meta advertisement.

Chainsaws are similar to lawnmowers.
They destroy growing things and look real cool.
Because of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, people don't like chainsaws.
I think it's time to rewrite the story of the chainsaw.

I dreamed I was talking to Obama in a bar.
I told him they pronounce his name wrong. It ain't o-BA-ma, but O-ba-ma, with the emphasis on the O.
Just like the city Omaha.
He said: yeah your're right,  but it's too late, I can't change it.
I said: Yes we can!
We hysterically laughed.

The silk-screen printing of a T-shirt requires a different approach. Maybe there are special techniques or machines. We soon found out a second layer was no option.
We tried it with some shirts from Billy. Compagnon Jeroen's daughter and owner of the original '11 happy demons dancing' drawing.
She wishes the demons goodnight before she goes to bed. 

The second layer of the silkscreen. The first prints are ready!
The whole project takes more skill, and is much more time-consuming than I thought. But the results are great. Far more interesting than prints out of your eh.. printer.
Each print has its own human touch, the paint respond different each time. Not one of the 3600 little devils are the same and I really like them. I should give them names.
So far so good.

On his 37th birthday Michael R. Solomon realized...

with thanks to Polke for the hair of Michael R. Solomon.

The doctor said: this will hurt.
He was right. It did hurt. I shouted JESUS!
Now the inside of my nose is free from plastic splints and stitches (splint = spalkje, spalkje? plastic schijven van het tussenbeen tot aan mijn oog)
I thanked the doctor, I should have punched him on the nose.
It's over now.  I'm thankful.
Here is the coffee book still Richard send me. From the movie 'the Happening'
I guess they hired the lawnmower for an hour and the stuntman found out he had an anxiety for lawnmowers.

I know I should not write about these things, but hey, i'm on my sickbed with the world om my lap.
Obama's salary is about 559.000 dollar a year (432.997 euro) including travel expenses etc. Source: here (Dutch)
Ok.
Queen of Holland Beatrix's salary is EUR 792.000. (1022.472 dollar) Source: here (Dutch)
About Twice as much as Obama.
Why? what does Beatrix do to earn more wages than Obama? Skiing. Walk through a village on Queensday. Some state visits.
Proberbly the numbers are incorrect or there is something essential I forgot, but hey, i'm on my sickbed with the world om my lap.
Tomorow the stitches will be removed and I'll write about lawnmowers again. I promise.

A coffee table book about lawnmowers. That's the plan.
With the subtitle: 'Lawnmowers in modern culture'
Off course lawnmowers ARE modern culture so the subtitle may change.
Lawnmowers in movies, literature and art. A big glossy book.
The lawnmower as a symbol for the bourgeois and small town narrow-mindedness, but also as a destroyer for everything that grows.
I'm gonna ask Jeroen S. who makes this website, to make a button 'Coffee Table Book' and that's where the archive is being stored.
So if you mowingblog readers, I know you're out there, know a movie or painting etc with a lawnmower in it tell me!
Here's an example.

A still from the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
situated on a atomic bomb test site

By the way. Here are some really beautiful pictures of these atomic bomb mannequins!

So please help me out here, your names will be mentioned as co-writers of this great lawnmower coffee table book.

ps. The movie 'Lawnmower man 1 & 2' and the TV serie 'Larry the Lawnmower' are known by the editor.

Right now I can't think of going anywhere further than the local supermarket but they're planning a new tour for us. Through Germany and Switserland in the end of februari. Today a show is arranged in Vevey, Switseland. I've heard that name before. Vevey. I started googling and found out two things. Vevey is where the Nestlé headquarters is located and it's where Charlie Chaplin lived.Did I really knew one of these things?
Well, I feel like they put a dough-roller under my nose and they're rolling it slowly upwards.

Because of the surgery we're a little behind scedule with the single/silkscreen but I still think we can release it in the first week of februari.
Here is a nice video with Daniel Johnston molesting my guitar in a comic book shop in Vienna. In the end I appear for a moment with strange hair and a camera. More about this event on 6 november 2008.

Strange days. I was so focussed on the narcosis that i forgot all about the surgery. I woke up in a hostpitalroom and the surgeon said it worked out well, he made more space in my nose. It didn't feel that way. My nose was filled with tampons. Girlfriend Ilse brought me to her home and slowly the pain came. After a night of horror and no sleep we drove back to the hospital. The surgeon took the tampons out. It felt like they came out of the back of my brain. A lot of blood. Now my nose is filled with dried blood. Still no space in my nose. With steaming and nosesprays it's getting better. The tiny splints (spalkjes) to keep my nose straight will be removed friday. By then i hope to feel the relief this was all about.

I was at a Leonard Cohen Cover band show and I hated it. There was a teacher from elementery school, clearly a fan because he wore a Leonard Cohen T-shirt. I talked to him and said I didn't like it. He agreed. He kept talking about this till a beautiful girl took me by the hand and dragged me through the venue from room to room. I liked it but then a man took my other hand. We went through a door and then they throwed me real hard against another man. At first I did not recognize him but he looked like my brother with fancy clothes and a fancy hairdo.
We drank some dranks at the bar. He told me he knew the Cohen Cover band guys and got his drinks for free.
The venue closed down and we were pushed into a bus. My fancy brother was gone and the bus drove to places I did not want to go. The ticket inspector came and looked real angry but when he came to me he told me he was writing a thesis about ticket inspectors and sat down next to me. I woke up.

Last night I dreamed that I went to the hospital for this sinistus thing. I laid in bed and nurses where putting hoses in me with the narcosis fluids. The fluids where doing their job and at the moment I felt asleep I woke up gasping for breath. I wish this thing was over. Well, here's another chainsaw.

My First Chainsaw.

First I wanted to write about the indolence of the Dutch music scene but my first chainsaw is way more fun.

Today in Billytown with help from Billytowners, "the Devils silkscreen" is beginning to take shape.

more photos: here

first screenprint movie: here

new song chorus:

Where the human torch is walking through the woods
He can't touch a thing.
But all the trees are sawed down.
They already lay on the ground.

They turned the graveyard into a school garden. They left the gravestones, the crosses and some stuatues for the kids as identifcation marks for their gardens. Off course they emptied the graves.
I saw a man talking to the supervisor. His kid in one hand and holding an urn like it was a baby in the other.
I heard them talking. The superviser said:
-No, you can't bury your mother in your kids garden, its not aloud. You sure can do it when I don't look but if I find out you did it your're not aloud to come here anymore.

Hey Look!

The webshop is starting to take shape. The foundation is build. Mowingclub T-shirts can be bought online now. You look good in a mowingshirt, spiderman has bought one too!

I read the exchange of letters between WF Hermans en Gerard Reve. Famous dead Dutch writers. I guess the readers outside Holland and Belgium never heard of them. Holland is good at exporting beer and cheese.
The greater part of the letters from Reve to Hermans are written in English because Reve was fed up with the Dutch literary scene. He decided to take his chances with the English language. The thing is, his English letters are strange to read, like the Dutch cheese is pouring out of them. Is this because I know he is Dutch or because his English is not that good?
I like writing songs in English, almost every movie, song and artist I like comes from America. I guess, unlike Gerard Reve my past is more filled with American culture than Dutch culture. Besides this, singing in English is briging me across the Dutch border. It remains a difficult issue.

Review Motel Magnolia (Dutch)

Melleville was silent, except....

A fine, fine 2009 to you all!
It's been quite a year for the Mowingclub. A lot of shows. Learned a lot.
Guitarist Mowing Dick left and we had to find another approach. I'd try to make the music more personal. We had some hard times finding the right moves, but among other things, the great Daniel Johnston tour helped us to find ourselves some routine and we became more secure about our identity. I'm kinda proud of the Mowingclub. We did manage. We'll use this year to explore this even further and I hope to see you somewhere along the road.

Its good to read on our local Dutch 3voor12 music website an interview with organizer Arthur Pronk:

What was according to you the best band in The Hague of the year 2008?
 "John Dear Mowing Club stands for me lonely on top. This band, with front man Melle, has a magic you do not have to try to catch in words."
Dutch:
Wat was volgens jou de beste Haagse band van het jaar 2008?
“John Dear Mowing Club staat voor mij eenzaam aan de top. Deze band, met frontman Melle, kent een magie die je niet in woorden moet proberen te vatten.”