A
personal favorite band of mine. I quote
Under The Surface, the official Bettie Serveert fan club(http://www.xs4all.nl/~vincentb/). To give the full record of such a great band.
Bettie Serveert named themselves after a tennis instruction book by the Dutch female tennis player Betty Stöve. This book is called "Bettie Serveert" which is Dutch for "Bettie Serves".
The history of Bettie Serveert starts back in 1986 when, with the same musicians except for the drummer, Bettie excisted for a short time. Band members Herman Bunskoeke (bass guitar) and Peter Visser (lead guitar) also play in another band named De Artsen. Carol van Dijk was the sound engineer for this band and Berend Dubbe a roadie. De Artsen decided to call it a day in 1991 after realeasing the album Conny waves with a shell.
After this Bettie Serveert reformed. They recorded a seven song demo in January 1992. One of the copies ended on the desks of Chris and Gerard at Matador. The two of them immediately flew to Holland to negotiate with the band (and ofcourse take a look at the lovely country as well).
Bettie Serveert signed with Matador for the USA and Canada, Brinkman Records for the Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands and [Luxemburg) and 4AD's Guernica for the UK and the rest of the world. Later Beggar's Banquet took over from Guernica. 4AD's boss, Ivo Watts, liked Bettie very much and according to Berend they could do whatever they wanted, but due to a lack of promotion Bettie Serveert decided to join with Beggar's Banquet.
In the summer of '92 Bettie Serveert was invited to play at the New York New Music Seminar. They did very well there.
November '92 the debut album Palomine was released. This album contains most of the songs that were featured on the demo-tape and a lot more. Together with bands like Buffalo Tom, Belly, Dinosaur Jr. and Come they did a North American and European tour. Bettie Serveert also played at some festivals like Pinkpop (NL), Lowlands (NL), Reading] (UK) and Roskilde (DK).
Berend said about the doggy on the cover of Palomine: "It's extremely sad, which often matches to our songs. They contain a certain kind of sadness and melancholy."
Lamprey was released in January 1995 after recording it in The Netherlands, the UK and the USA. This album has a greater diversity in songs and better sound. Nevertheless most of the fans prefer Palomine.
After releasing Lamprey Bettie Serveert started touring again. They even did Japan and Australia, and of course they again played at some of the summer festivals (Pinkpop, Lowlands and Popwerk (NL)).
In 1996 Bettie Serveert has written new songs. You could hear them play these songs at one of the gigs they played in Holland. At the Valkhof festival (NL) they even played a whole set of new songs for one hour! And it was great!
The new Bettie Serveert album titled "Dust Bunnies" was released on March 17, 1997 in Holland. And I can tell you it's great!!!
Bettie Serveert recorded this new album in the U.S.A. in August and September 1996. They recorded twenty songs, but they aren't all on the new album.
Bettie toured the world after releasing Dust Bunnies. After returning to the Netherlands they joined the Marlboro Flashback Tour '97 (NL only) in which they performed Velvet Underground songs. An album of the live concerts was released on June 22, 1998.
Actually, their newest album is Private Suit, look at neil's post for the up to date discography.