Karen Damen, Kristel Verbeke and Josje Huisman
On Monday, the Boston-produced PRI show The World turned its attention to tiny Belgium. Here’s the podcast…
[audio:http://media.theworld.org/audio/092720109.mp3]… and this is the video that’s discussed in the podcast…
http://youtu.be/Ceg6NQKHd70
… but if you really want proof that Belgium isn’t boring, there’s this…
http://youtu.be/VgzFt5hsS7s
BTW… Prue Bury’s family is from Belgium, both of her sisters were born there, and if not for WWII Prue would be Belgian, too.
The Netherlands has made it to the World Cup final! And it’s July 6th — International Kissing Day. In Flanders, Belgium and the Netherlands it’s called KUSJESDAG! I wonder if there’s a song in Dutch-Flemish about it…. hmm?
[media id=189 width=640 height=384]
K3 — Kristel Verbeke, Kathleen Aerts, Karen Damen
Having just posted an ABBA video, I can’t resist saying something about K3. Karen Damen gave birth to a son, named Sky, on February 17, and she’s already returned to work. Former K3 member Kathleen Aerts is getting married in June, and her replacement, Josje, seems to be working out well.
It’s been almost two years since I first caught onto K3, and it’s been over a year since Kathleen quit. If anyone doubts these women have given everything to their craft, and if you think Kathleen’s departure from the group didn’t matter to them personally, take a look at these pictures of Kristel and Karen from Kathleen’s farewell performance last year — two uncommonly beautiful women, only 33 and 34 years old, respectively, at the time. Obviously, losing Kathleen meant everything to them.
Here’s the K3 original lineup, with one of the finest Pop songs I have ever heard, Hart Verloren (Lost Heart).
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I have a bunch of Google Alerts. One that I deleted was for the Beatles, because thanks to Beatles News there wasn’t a need for it. One of the active alerts is for my not-so-secret shame, K3, and in today’s catch I was expecting something like this…
… but instead I found this.
Dedicated eBook readers have, I feel, a rather limited number of potential customers. The extended battery life with e-paper when the transmitter is turned off is nice, however. I’m not very sanguine about large, backlit LCD touch panels, either, because the battery life will undoubtedly be poor. Which is why I’m intrigued by something that was pointed out to me by tech-savvy tastewar.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/the-pixel-qi-display/
Kathleen Aerts, formerly of K3, turns “Somethin’ Stupid” into a Christmas song, of sorts.
K3 fan Theo Hendriks, pictured here, wrote and said that Kathleen is his favorite. Kathleen’s replacement, Josje, is on the left. It’s good to see Kristel Verbeke and Karen Damen looking bright and happy again, because they were so miserable at Kathleen’s farewell performance.
For myself, I’m miffed that Kathleen left the group, but I feel that Kristel and Karen are so strong together they could have carried on just fine as K2. That doesn’t mean Kathleen was any less essential to the success of K3, but it seemed to me that she got tired of the ride. So when she quit the group I was disappointed, but not surprised.
Follow-up: Theo sent another picture of himself, with Kristel. It’s at this link.
I should take more time off from the blog. October has been the third busiest month this year for hits!
While I was away, to my utter amazement, lo and behold, those kooky ladies from Belgium, K3, finally went to #1 on the blog hit list! I suppose that must be due to the interest in the new girl, who was introduced at a live show in Holland a few weeks ago. Her name is Josje, which begs the question, how can they still call the group K3?
http://youtu.be/Rr96GO8ncvg
(BTW… Karen Damen is pregnant.)
