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(Supersister - One of the most influential bands of the 70s most people never heard of)

One of the great upshots of the Progressive era in rock music was that few years where bands were influencing each other, freely borrowing and nobody from the mainstream paid any attention. Supersister were a Dutch Prog band most every fan of Progrock knew about, but didn't reach chart success. We liked that fine. I'm sure the band wasn't too crazy about it, purely from a financial point of view - but they were legends among people who knew and followed them. At their peak in 1972 I was writing about them for several magazines, none of whom had the slightest idea what they were all about and greeted the music as weird and crazy. But Supersister were part of a larger picture - a picture that included Can, Caravan, Van der Graaf Generator, a whole host of bands whose music quietly shaped and later influenced bands even today.

It's interesting to realize a lot of people now are being turned on to these groups because they seem so fresh, even after 40 years. Probably because they were so uncommercial at the time they barely ever got airplay, except the odd FM station, usually run by college kids. If you've never heard it before it's new to you.

Sadly, Supersister never got to tour the U.S. in the 70s, only in 2000 did they make it to L.A. for a reunion gig. But any hopes of continuing and building on that were dashed with the sudden death of co-founder and flautist Sacha van Geest. Supersister now remains a legend and a memory. Robert Jan Stips, keyboards and co-founder has gotten the rights back to all the Supersister catalogue (formerly on Polydor Holland) and has reissued them in addition to some live and unissued material which are well worth looking into and adding to your library.

So this installment of the Backstage Weekend goes to two festivals, one in Baarn Holland on February 5, 1971 and the other (last two songs, Judy Goes On Holiday and Radio) from the Midsummer-pop Festival in Meerlo in July 8, 1972.

A legendary band performing at their prime. And music never looked back.

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(Supersister - Owed much to Caravan and Frank Zappa, though not in any particular order)

Had they decided to break up when their original lead singer left in 1969, we probably never would have had much of the Progressive Rock movement as we knew it in the 1970's. Supersister were a Dutch band (a country probably known more for Golden Earring and The Tee Set here in the States) who put Europe on the map as far as the Prog-rock movement was concerned.

Influenced a lot by the Canterbury scene in the UK in the mid-late 1960's with the likes of Caravan and Soft Machine, they were also very much influenced by early Mothers of Invention and the free Jazz and electronic music scene that was happening all over Europe from the 1950's onwards.

By today's standards, the band wasn't together all that long. Three albums worth before going separate ways in 1974, until a brief reunion in 2001 which sadly didn't become permanent owing to the loss of Sacha van Geest, one of the founding members to Cancer that year.

Still, Supersister have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity over the years because, like many of their counterparts from the period, it was never picked up by the mainstream and was deemed comfortably weird enough to remain timeless to those who never heard them in the first place.

Thank God for that.

Here is a cut off their second album "To The Highest Bidder", which was issued in the UK on Dandelion Records and came out in the U.S. for about a minute and a half. "A Girl Named You" starts off the original Side two.