I STAND AND I'LL UNDO MY DRESS

A hundred years from now, when some mutant punk historian casts his three eyes on the Dutch hardcore punk scene of the 1980s, how many bands will have stood the test of time? Bands that, apart from making a bunch of great noise, also had passion and originality (and the records to prove it, of course)? I'll tell you which two bands: Pandemonium and Funeral Oration! Pandemonium is a story all by itself, and while I knew those guys vaguely on a "hi how ya doin" basis, I can proudly tell my grandchildren I was hanging around Funeral Oration when they made their masterpiece, one of the greatest Dutch punk records, Communion. I was in a band with their bass player and we practiced together in a squat called Het Kasteeltje (the Little Castle) in Amsterdam. The Little Castle was a stinking hellhole, well, at least the practice room was; a former bank vault in the basement that had fungi growing on its walls (the pics with the "prison door" on the back of the Mornington Crescent EP are taken there); when you got out you'd smell of fungi the rest of the day. (We'd try burning incense but the combined smell of incense and fungi was even worse.) FO's singer Peter Zirschky wrote all their songs at home on a Spanish guitar with one string missing; he was incredible prolific, churning out all 15 Communion songs in 3 or 4 months! But his guitar playing on their early stuff sounded kinda weird, like he was trying to strangle his instrument. When former Gospelfucker Tos Nieuwenhuizen took over guitar duties, he completely transformed their sound with his meaty power chords and Black Flag-meets-Gen X soloing. Apart from that, Tos was incredibly cool because he was from the first punk generation and had done cool stuff like travel with the Damned back in '77, and visit famous pen pals (Ian MacKaye! Poison Idea!) in the US. While we were using the cheapest impossible-to-tune firewood imaginable, Tos had a great old Gibson SG which he played through an old Marshall stack. This setup sounded great as long as there wasn't anything wrong with the amp, which was most of the time, in which case it sounded like shit. Unfortunately this was the case when they entered Dolf's Koeienverhuur studio in April 1985 to record Communion. FO drummer Ferry owned two drum kits; an old one which was in the practice space, and a new one which he never used because he was precious about it. When he installed those drums in the studio it appeared it was never ever used at all, the skins were still slack, so it kinda sounded like wet newspapers. The basic tracks sounded horrible; Tos re-did his guitar parts a couple of times and got a good sound in the end, but the ugly "guide" guitar is present in the mix (coming to the fore in the intro of "The heart of all"), giving it this typical murky sound, as if there's dust under the needle. When Peter recorded his vocals somehow it all fell into place, the noisy backing tracks perfectly complementing his singing; he pulled out all the stops, laying different melodies on top of eachother and screaming his heart out Bob Mould-style (Zen Arcade, then just out, was a big fave and obviously an influence). I'm still amazed at the way he did all that stuff off the top of his head, totally unrehearsed... The hardcore Brian Wilson!

FO put out Communion themselves; the Eddie Janney (Rites of Spring) photo credit on the sleeve is no joke, he was another famous friend of Tos and shot the picture while visiting in Amsterdam. Soon thereafter, things sadly imploded as my band broke up and Tos left Funeral Oration, to reappear some 2 years later in God. (I've heard he's currently in the live line-up of Sunn O)))) (that last bracket was the closing bracket, by the way)

Funeral Oration have been going on post-Tos for many years, putting out many pretty good records, but they'd never repeat the murky magic of Communion. But then again, who would?

(This is all of Side 1, maybe I'll post the other side some other time!)

For The Better
Go Free Go Home
Dayfall
Slipping Out
Down On Me
Anyone Can tell
Deep In Ground
The Heart Of All