Beat the Dutch came together in the summer of 1979 after Mark got out of high school. We’d get together on weekends to jam and get high, mostly at the clubhouse. At the end of the year it was decided we might be able to gig in Minneapolis if we were like a punk band and less metal / glam. That’s when we decided on the name. Mark came up with it and then we needed a professional demo tape. I booked time at BlackBerry Way with Steve Felstadt but I was more interested in sounding like a Brian Eno album than any of the punk rock albums I hadn’t really warmed to yet.
We were also able to sneak into the experimental 4-track facilities at Augsburg College where Mark was a student. I could have happily continued in this vein recording sound experiments and outrageous rock n roll but the band had broader ideas.
We gigged a lot but weren’t making enough to cover expenses. Our 2ed demo tape, produced by Colin Mansfield was a more mundane affair mostly because I was too girlfriend distracted to care.
Tony and I shopped our tape around New York and partied with Robert who was living there at the time. No one was interested. The band folded when Mark left for a real college.
We got together and recorded whenever Mark was in town, roughly 1982, 1991 & 1994.
Tony and I briefly formed a duo we called Flooding Opera augmented by Robert on keyboard for the handful of gigs. Again no one was interested, Tony kept the keyboard while I sold my guitar. Eventually, some ten years later Tony and I did a bit more recording, the last in 2011 at his latest townhouse in Fridley.
