Windy Corner

Windy Corner, a Dutch group, started playing together in the late sixties, knowing each other from secondary school in Amsterdam. The very first composition Windy Corner played was "Light and Darkness" (later released on the album Lost Garden), which inspired the group to focus on their own compositions instead of performing well known music. This main interest continued to be the leading drive for the next five years. It also made the group somewhat reclusive, with only very few public performances. Another trait was the inclination to make everything by themselves. The organ was self-made, the amplifiers and loudspeaker boxes were home-brew. The guitar pick-ups were self developed and in Windy Corner's opinion much better than those you could buy at the time; their pick-ups only had a few hundred wireloops around the magnets, yielding a very low output signal level but with a wide, flat and natural frequency response. Of course, all recordings ever made of the band were self made, with self developed acoustical setup and devices. Recordings were always live recordings where mixing down to a single stereo track was done in real time, during the performance. When serious errors were made the whole recording had to be redone.

The rehearsal cottage ("The House") in a huge garden in Amsterdam used by Windy Corner in the seventies.	Windy Corner after 1973; on the left Rob playing on his Levin N-26.

The making of “The House at Windy Corner”

In February 1973 Wim Vree should leave to work abroad for several years; Windy Corner should go on without him, but before that the group decided to make a kind of concluding recording and, if possible, to issue a vinyl album privately. The actual recordings started in January 1973 and were completed within a period of two weeks. Deroy Sound Services in Carnforth (Lancashire, UK) was found to be a suitable partner to make the desired quantity of one hundred records. Unfortunately the delivery was very much delayed (almost a year) by production difficulties in England (strikes, material shortage and the like). The first discs finally arrived in 1974. Subsequently, all hundred covers of The House of Windy Corner were screen printed by one of the group members (Hans Redel). The cover picture was also made by him.

The remains of the mixer Windy Corner used in 1973 to record several live performances from which both albums of the group were compiled. Photo taken in May 2000.	Hans Redel (left, sound engineering, photography and screen printing) and Wim Steevels (right) busy making the master tape of The House at Windy Corner in 1973. The three recorders used are Uher stereo recorders. Photo taken in May 2000.

	After a production delay of almost a year this letter from Deroy Sound Service finally announced delivery.
	Label of the box in which the records were delivered.

Covers and record labels were all screen printed by Hans Redel.

Personnel

Kees and Rob resting during one of the rare public performances of Windy Corner around 1975.	Wim Vree playing a Martin guitar at home around 1973.	Hans Redel engineering 1973.	Kees, Wim Steevels and Wim Vree around 1973.

The instruments The instruments used for the recordings of January 1973 were: Rob Braam playing a Levin LN 26 (Rob became later also known as Robby Morgen) Wim Steevels playing a Höfner 182 bass Wim Vree playing a 1939 Gibson L-50 (and his self made organ). Kees van Weegberg playing a Premier drum kit.

Windy Corner after 1973; in the front the Premier drum set played by Kees van Weegberg.

The 1939 Gibson L-50, played by Wim Vree. The self-made pick-up was removable. Photo taken in February 2014.	The Levin N-26 western guitar played by Rob Braam. The picture is from the original catalog page.	The Höfner 182 bass played by Wim Steevels. The self-made pickup is clearly visible. Photo taken in February 2014.

	The second album “Lost Garden” Only a small part of the recordings of January 1973 could fit on the present album. Fortunately the remainder of the tapes (and the original recorders) was still in an acceptable state when Windy Corner was requested in 1998 to compile a second album. This came to be "Lost Garden", a true sequel to, or companion of The House of Windy Corner.
Front cover

Sad Tiding

Nine years after the last meeting of all Windy Corner members on occasion of the appearance of Lost Garden, the sad tiding arrived in November 2007 that Rob had unexpectedly passed away in Yogyakarta (Indonesia), his second home town.