Crapjam has put out a third album called 'solo'. This is how it all happened:

In short, the band Crapjam has five members, which all live in a city in The Netherlands called Meppel. They started a group and in the past seven years they played in about every dutch hall, club and bar imaginable. Often the band was asked to be a support act, so Crapjam got to play with bands like The Lemonheads, All, Big Country aswell as a lot of Dutch bands that attract really large audiences.

Crapjam has been quite busy in the past years, playing about 250 gigs. Unfortunately however, not everyone has had the pleasure of seeing or hearing the band, nor has Crapjam REALLY hit the Big Time. Whatever the cause for that may be, the critics can't be blamed! This is what they thought about Crapjam's first album:

Holland's (=The Netherlands, where the Dutch live) no.1 music magazine Oor: 'Crapjam's Peter Dijkman is a talented composer whose songs can win the pepsi-test with the best songs the Sandy Coast ever made.'
The same magazine reviewed a gig: 'Four enthousiastic young guys play a great set of cleverly arranged rockpopsongs. Their original wonderful melodies are so catchy that they, even though you may have never heard them before, stay with you. Give them a record deal!'
A German critic was also very pleased to see the band: '...Dafur entschadigten die Hollander die zuhorer mit Musik, deren vorrangiges Ziel Spass und gute Laune war. Angelehnt and die erfolgreichen Popbands der 70er Jahre, tobten sich die Jungs auf der Buhne aus, boten frischen und mitreissenden Beat und Pop und liessen auch in Coverversionen wie 'I am a walrus' vond den 'Beatles' ihre lust an einfachen Strickmustern und Akkordschemen freien Lauf.' The article was titled: 'Was schon die Vater mochten'.

Many other papers and magazines shared Oor's opinion. All this led to a Duch agency (SOZ) signing the band and getting it a record deal with VIA Records. So at this time, Crapjam was in the opportunity to record the 2nd album in a more layed back fashion. The album was going to be called 'Recorder'. It was produced by Peer Rave, best known by his work with Henry Rollins. On this album Crapjam is joined on some songs by Jeroen de Jong, who did, and still does, wonderfull things with keyboards. On 'solo', the album which is out right now, Jeroen again is very much on a roll.

VIA Records puts out two singles of the album Recorder, Consolation and Rain. Consolation was re-recorded by a British producer, who had worked with many of the greats (Beatles, among others), but his version of the song wasn't quite what the band wanted at all. Both singles got played on national radio, but did not do as well as the band had hoped (like world domination). But again, the critics all agreed: this album is cool! Again Oor: 'Recorder is a great album. Let's all support Crapjam, as it's one of Holland's few quality popgroups....'
Mindview (Belgian): 'Crapjam clearly consist of good musicians that know how to make a great song. Plus the fact that they have a very good singer..'
Watt: 'Drummer Peter Dijkman writes great songs. Second plus is guitarist Diets Dijkstra that produces irresistable and high quality solo's...'
Stage: 'Buy It!'
This is, again, a small selection to illustrate how the album was received.

To promote the album, Crapjam went on tour with another Dutch band (The Prodigal Sons) that also had a new album out. This brought the band to all the great clubs in the country.

In the summer of '96 it was time to start the recordings for the new album, that eventually became 'solo'. The bass-player that played on 'Recorder' now sticked to writing the words for most of the songs. Alex en Diets therefore played the bass parts. A few are played by the latest Crapjam-member Mischa.
Some of the tracks that are recorded that summer were replaced by other songs, recorded in other studios, to make the album more balanced. Solo was released in the 2nd week of februari '98.
Crapjam likes it a lot and we hope you will too!