Johnito is a well known political blogger in The Netherlands, who also happens to be the former singer of the The Hague-based rockband Propeller. The band released four demo CD's, and played almost a hundred gigs, including several festivals, before they split up after 8 years in 2008. With Propeller he once played live in front of a 25000 people audience, during a political manifestation in Amsterdam.
Since July 2008 the band has stopped, leaving the members working on their own projects. This project by Johnito is one of them. Johnito tries to put some of his political engagement in his own, homemade songs. To a certain audience Johnito is internationally known as a political blogger.
He also has been a dj for about 25 years in the Dutch underground rock/alternative/dance scene, being a resident dj in Het Kasteel in Alphen aan den Rijn in the late 80's. During the 90's and the first 8 years of the 21st century he was a resident dj in Lokaal Vredebreuk in The Hague. Furthermore he hosted a talk-show in the same rockcafe, named "Johnito Draait Door".
Johnito also writes some poetry, but currently has no plans to publish them yet. Still one of his poems, "Mooi van Lelijkheid", actually appeared in a book with some collected poetry from different authors, titled "Poëzie Op Pootjes".
After the Propeller band split up Johnito temporarily joined a small group of special guest vocalists for the Instant Band, during some of their hugely succesful Instant Karaoke live shows.
By the end of 2008, while suffering a major depression after losing one of his best friends, (who also was the mother of his daughter) to cancer, he started to transform some of his own musical ideas, which never made it to the Propeller-set list, into a CD with 5 home recorded lo-fi songs. The lyrics contain both personal and political statements, and the process of creating the tracks actually had some positive therapeutic influence.
The CD is called Total Collapse: Earth 1.9, and has been released through Lulu.com.
Official Blog: http://johnitomusic.blogspot.com
new page: http://music.johnito.nl