The Embassy of God
...where 'A Fallony to be Free' was recorded...
A ‘jimmie tent’ was a kind of rock ’n’ roll, nozem-style tent at Dutch funfairs where parents had their children run an exciting military obstacle course to atmospheric music. Strangely enough, nobody seems to remember that tent anymore.
A footnote on the second page of the Bratlit collection. Even the internet barely remembers the Jimmie tent. That is where we can locate the trauma. Speaking of forgotten marvels: thankfully there’s the LP I made as a 17-year-old in the notorious Cuckoo Clock Studio in Helmond, with the notorious Steve van Bokhoven at the mixing-desk knobs in the back room of “The Embassy of God.”
Steve van Bokhoven lives in Mierlo-Hout and is best known for the fact that, from the age of twenty-one onward, he finds/feels/thinks/experiences himself to be the son of God. On Slegersstraat he therefore built the “Embassy of God.” Around 2004 a serious interior fire raged there, but the damage was repaired.
From the Weblog of Helmond:
Since Stief (as he’s also called) “saw the light,” he hasn’t remained entirely uncontroversial. In 2010, on appeal, he was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term and 240 hours of community service for illegally operating a coffeeshop. A piquant detail was that both the municipality and the police knew about it.
It is dreadful that this wondrous place, the Embassy of God, just like the Jimmie tent, is threatened by oblivion.
It really was “The Black Ark of Helmond.” Here is the bar of the Embassy of God — courtesy of indebuurt.nl
The gate of the Embassy on Slegersstraat:
Sharp-eyed viewers still remember Steve from the film Hellmond by Dennis Grotenhuis, in which I also had a small role at the time:
So, thanks to Steve the album has now resurfaced:
Is it a masterpiece? I think so. At the time it caused quite a stir, and etched my name as a Helmond toaster deep into the national roots archives.
That I later turned more toward poetry was partly because, without the Embassy of God, I found it harder to make music. The Embassy had that unique acoustics of a linoleum heaven: everything instantly sounded as if Lee Scratch Perry had swiped a mop through the reverb. Steve turned knobs that officially did not exist. “This one here is Grace,” he said, and the hiss suddenly became holy. “And this is Wrath,” and my voice sprouted whiskers.
The Jimmie tent and the Embassy: two vanishing tricks from the Low Countries. The first taught children to crawl through camouflage nets to the beat of Cliff Richard, the second taught adults that a reverb chamber can also serve as a confessional. In both cases there was a man in a jacket with text, and in both cases the municipality said: folks, this really won’t do. And just as Perry’s Black Ark went up in flames, so too did Steve’s Embassy. Listen to that record!
Kind regards,
Martijn Benders, 02-09-2025