FIRST ONE

Let's kick off with one of my all-time faves from Holland. Everything about the first 6 song EP from 1980 by De Straks (= The In A Whiles!) smacks of old-fashioned unashamed Righteousness, from the "NEVER MORE THAN F 2,50" (then about $1) stamp to the angry us-against-you lyrics to the hot-potato-in-throat singing. In 1980 I was 12 and not into punk yet. Thinking about 1980 slightly nauseating fragments of music pop into my head; "Bette Davis' Eyes" - the theme from Hill Street Blues - a particularly terrible Dutch disco outfit called Spargo... The weird thing is: that music seems like only a couple of years ago, like it's never gone away, while Dutch punk records from the same period sound like they could be a hundred years old, from some distant revolutionary year like 1917 or 1870 or something. Part of it's the production; most self-released punk records from the era just sound unbelievably primitive, which sorta gives it an aura of danger; as if you're listening to something you're not supposed to listen to, like a black box recording of a plane crash. Actually some of them, like the Noxious' 1980 "Sunday Fools", sound like a plane crash. Nowadays loads of lo-fi/garage bands try their best using today's equipment to sound as fucked up as those records, and don't succeed. Then there's the 100% irony-free anger which hasn't yet turned into the stylized anger of later hardcore/metal but sounds genuine, like someone is shouting at you in the street. (Someone with a pretty posh accent; as they were based in Delft, a student town, my guess is these guys were pretty well-to-do, which didn't stop them from singing about rich guys stealing their food!) This feeling of "we are right! you are wrong!" seems aeons removed from 2006, even though on a more practical level punk's "the world owes me everything, I owe the world nothing" motto has been adopted by the mainstream in a big way. In 1980, putting out a record would get you noticed all over the country; punks would buy your record (provided they could find it) just because it was punk. It wasn't like today when there's this massive outpouring of records/CD's that no one can keep track of and that will all end up in the drummer's attic. Back then, you pressed up 500 or 1000 copies and it would sell out in a couple of months. I believe De Straks pressed 500 copies, and yet - from what I've heard - they could play some faraway place and people would be singing along, knowing all the words! Talk about the old days... Musically, this EP is a combination of the 2 styles of Dutch punk then current: half staccato art-punk (Ex, Tandstickorshocks) and half blazing 4/4 punk rock (Lullabies, Nitwitz).

De Straks - Koningin
De Straks - Eet U Smakelijk