GOAT'S WOOL SOCK

If there's one band in the Netherlands that embodies Do It Yourself, it's gotta be The Ex. Like say, Black Flag in the US, they helped build the whole indie labels/venues/distro-network over here in the early/mid 80's. The funny thing is, throughout the years they've become so saturated with this DIY spirit it has seeped into every facet of their daily lives. I was once at the Konkurrent warehouse, browsing through their records (this was back when "browsing" was something you did with your hands instead of a mouse), when someone wanted to hear a certain record. Only problem was, there was no (working) record player in the room. Promptly Ex-singer-slash-Konkurrent-worker G.W. Sok proceeded to build a makeshift phonograph out of a pin and a rolled-up paper cone! (Sadly, it didn't work.) On a later occasion, when G.W. and I were both temporary members of a certain Dutch brass/punkband, there was an urgent need for coffee but no coffee filter holders. Amid great wailing and gnashing of teeth, Jos (which is his real name), unfazed, built a coffee filter out of a plastic cup by punching holes in it. I became an Ex fan (no, not an ex-fan) when someone taped their 2nd LP History Is What's Happening for me. I was 14 and had just graduated from the Beatles via the Jam to punk/new wave. I checked out some happening English bands (Sham, Rejects, Upstarts) right when they'd just put out their worst LP's ever (I mean, remember The Game? Power and the Glory?). I even tried to like that stuff for a while, to no avail; it wasn't before I got my first taste of Dutch punk like Nitwitz, Svatsox and (of course) The Ex, that the lightbulb above my head went on and I went "YES! This is it!" The Ex put out stacks of records in the past 25 years, but the first ones will always be my favorites. Not that I don't like their later stuff, it's just that I started seeing them live regularly from about 1985 on, and while I kept buying their records they paled in comparison to their blistering live act. One particular show they did around 1991, in a small hall/staircase of a local movie house, is in my top 3 of best gigs ever. It's also the early song lyrics that are the closest to Jos's unique in-person sense of humour: tracks like "Rock & Rollstoel" from their 1980 All Corpses Smell The Same debut EP (but that one's in Dutch), "The Sky Is Blue Again" and "Human Car". Here's some mp3's (not my own but from their own website! There's lots more, check it out).

The Ex - Human Car (Live-Skive EP, 1980)
The Ex - The Sky Is Blue Again (Disturbing Domestic Peace LP, 1980)