LOUD IS THE NEW SOFT

"Are you a Wormerpunk or something?", Benno of local punk band Antidote asked me sometime around 1982. I knew "Wormerpunk" was a particular strand of music, but I didn't know it could also be a type of person. Maybe it was because I didn't have a leather jacket, the de rigueur punk item back then; it might also have been the Svatsox/ Ex/ Hangdogs/ GRRR badges I wore, not as a conscious stylistic statement but because those were the only badges I could get from the fledgling Konkurrent mailorder (whose complete catalog fit on half an A4 sheet back then!). Apart from the fact I liked the Wormer bands, they were pretty hard to avoid as they seemed to put out more records (and badges) than all the other Dutch bands combined. Maybe it had something to do with Wormer being part of the Zaan area, one of the world's oldest industrial areas and a long-time hotbed for socialist/anarchist activities. Or maybe they had lots of rich uncles and aunties that would lend them the money. After the Ex/Svatsox/De Groeten Villa Zuid flexi (which was distributed around every household in the Wormer village!) and the Oorwormer LP, it seemed like every band started releasing their own LP's. This wasn't always a good move; Zowiso turned into a great band later on but their first LP, 1982's At A Jogtrot To Death, was a mess. I liked GRRR's 2 tracks on Oorwormer but didn't buy their 1983 LP from over-saturation with the Wormer thing. Just recently, I got a chance to hear what I've been missing: it's a bunch of great, blaring industrial/punk/noise that doesn't sound like any other Wormer bands of the time. In fact, it sounds like The Ex would sound 4 or 5 years later, in their noisy "Aural Guerrilla" days. Any hardcore punker that called these bands "softies" would have run back to their mommy as fast as they could if they'd heard this. The Ex must have felt some kind of debt because in the early/mid 90's they played a song that featured the distinctive riff from GRRR's "Fools Talk". I did a quick scan on Soulseek, but couldn't find it on one of their LP's. Maybe they covered the whole song? If anyone knows, please drop me a line! The song is posted below (even though it's overlong). GRRR's bass player Jacco was later in the first lineup of Wormer "supergroup" De Kift (the one with Maarten ex-Pistache BV singing, on the IJverzucht LP).

He Soldier
Navo Strategie
Holland Gifland
No More Riots
Fools Talk