I am one of the many Southside fans who discovered him via Bruce Springsteen. I first saw the Jukes on a German TV-concert around 1980. When they came to the Netherlands to play the famous Paradiso-venue (my favourite) on October 12th in 1986,  I was so excited to be seeing them live for the first time. My expectations were high but still, the show blew me away. The power of the music was amazing. Since 1986, I bought all the albums and went to see the band every time they came back to the Netherlands. It was always a fantastic and very emotional experience.

In 1989 and in 1992 they came back several times, with a lot of Radio and TV coverage. I remember I was going upstairs in the Paradiso during one of the shows in 1992 and saw EVERYBODY dancing, the roof was almost going off the building. By then, I decided I needed more and went to several gigs in Paris, France and England.

In 1993, they did not come to Europe, so my girlfriend and I headed to Red Bank to see the New Years Eve 1993-1994 show in the Count Basie Theatre. After the show, we went backstage and Johnny could not believe that there were people coming over from Europe to see his show. He took the group (there were also people from England) and Bobby and Garry with him to Cheers in Long Branch. There were only a few cars available but we squeezed everybody in (Johnny said the Jukes could never complain anymore about the space in the Van after seeing it was possible to get about 15 people in). At Cheers, Johnny, Bobby and even Garry jumped "onstage" and played some songs with the Sonny Kenn-band. It took until 1995 before we were able to see Johnny perform again in the Netherlands (solo with Bobby and also with a small ensemble). I wound up having to wait 5 years before seeing Johnny again.

I was in New York (alone) at the end of June 2000 and found out that Johnny was playing in Tradewinds on July 3rd, the day after my scheduled flight back to Amsterdam. It was not difficult to decide to change the flight and it was the first time in 6 years I had seen Johnny perform with the complete Jukes. The recording I received after a few months was constantly in my CD-player for weeks (and still very often).

It was obvious that I HAD TO GO to Jukestock (with a friend), and we indeed were two of the lucky ones! What can I say, that has not been said!

This month I finally can see SSJ & the Asbury Jukes perform in the Netherlands again together with my girlfriend (who is a big Southside fan as well). If it works out, we can also see them again in September, at our annual fanmeeting !!

In 1981, I started to combine two of my hobbies (photography and going to concerts) by taking my camera to the shows. This way I not only have the images of how great of a performer Johnny is in my head, and hear it on CD's and tapes, but also the image on paper (or nowadays digital). A small selection can be seen on my own website which I started a few months ago.
http://www.springsteen.nl/southsidephotos.html

René

René has also helped contribute to our website by donating numerous photos to our gallery.