ARACHNOPHOBIA

Funny how it works... I saw the Flyin' Spiderz on TV once, when I was about 10 years old, and I remember it was a load of tuneless noise. It was on a very popular daytime show where little kids would compete playing xylophone, juggling, talking backwards, etc., interspersed with some real "grown-up" acts. At the time I didn't catch their name, but I did get the announcement that this was a Real Punk band. All I knew about punk was that it was disgusting and a bunch of noise; that's what I'd read anyway. So I guess that's why the Flyin' Spiderz sounded like a disgusting bunch of noise to me. Years later when I (a seasoned punk aficionado by then) found their 2 LPs secondhand, it sounded much too slick and poppy for my liking! Nowadays, another 20 years later, my taste has stalled somewhere inbetween those two extremes and I've ended up really liking them. Their second LP Let It Crawl (1978) is the only early Dutch punk record that's sorta semi-easy to find. It's even slicker than their debut LP, but it's still got a lot of energy. This LP is right from that ultra-short period when musicians had grown bored with yer standard punk rock, but weren't sure what to do next. After punk, but before postpunk, if you wish... This period gave us Alternative TV, the Saints' Prehistoric Sounds, the Damned featuring free-jazzer Lol Coxhill, loads more very interesting (but not always necessarily great) stuff. On Let It Crawl the Flying Spiderz are trying to stretch out as well, which sometimes works (the 60's-pop of "Paper Girl" - I'm sure the Rousers must have heard this song) and sometimes doesn't (plodding rock songs with brass sections). But at least they were trying! Singer Guus Boers mixed the usual lyrical fare with some more socially relevant stuff: "They are killin' the city" is a pretty prophetic song for 1978. (He also co-wrote Nasmaak's "Hondepoep" which tackled the problem of dogshit on the sidewalks!)
By 1979 the (shortened) Spiderz, like a lot of ex-punk rockers, had finally found their new style: robotic electro-wave. They released 2 more LPs (which you don't want to hear) before splitting.

Alive
Killin' The City
S.O.S.
Paper Girl