N°83 GORKI - MIA

Gorki with frontman Luc De Vos is a legendary Belgian rockband who released some of the best Belgian rocksongs in Dutch ever.  Amongst these songs Mia is one of the many often to be found in the top ten of all time music lists on different radio stations in Belgium. A few years Mia even beat Nirvana’s  Teen Spirit for the number one spot. Apart from this song there’s also Lieve Kleine Piranha (Sweet Little Piranha), Anja and Punk Is Dood (Punk Is Dead). This last one was chosen by the fans as best Gorki song ever.

Luc De Vos is the lead guitar player and lead singer. He’s got a huge no nonsense attitude with a meaning about everything when appearing on television. There’s also Luc Heynaerts, Bert Huysentruyt on drums, Thomas Vanelslander and Erik Van Biesen on bass. These guys perform on studio albums and at live gigs but Luc De Vos adapted the bands name in 1993 for his own after a split with the original founders.

Gorki in Russian means bitter and they exist since 1990 when they arrived third in the Humo’s Rockrally competition. A year later their first hit was released with the single Anja which can be found on their debut album ‘Gorky’. Mia can also be found on that same debut album but the funny thing is that Mia actually was a b-side record backing he single ‘Soms Vraagt Een Mens Zich Af’ (Sometime A Man Wonders). The original Gorky album was re-released in 2006.

Gorki, as a band, took a little time out in 2005 to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary nut they came back even stronger scoring a number 1 hit with the single Joeri. The videoclip, showing a stripper, for this song caused some controversy since they made two different versions. One showing more than the other. Gorki themselves call them either the day or night videclip. In almost 22 years time they produced ten studio albums and on the last one called Research And Development you’ll find a song with the title ‘Grote Stoute Orka’ (Big Bad Orka) referring to one of their debut singles, the earlier mentioned ‘Lieve Kleine Piranha’ (Sweet Little Piranha).

It’s obvious that Mia is the link with the previous performance. Now scroll back up and start listening!