TALES OF PIRATE JOHAN

When I was 16-17, I knew what pretty much every important hardcore punk record of the time sounded like; not because I bought all the records (at the time American imports cost twice as much as "regular" LPs - which meant four times as much as most Dutch punk records!), but because of that beautiful thing called Pirate Radio. The guys and gals spinning records on Amsterdam pirate stations like Got and Staatsradio were older than me, (probably) on the dole and squatting, so they were relatively rich and they'd scoop up every US release that hit the stores. I'd be standing by every week, listening through the static, quickly turning the tape on or off (of course always missing the first - and last - seconds of a song). The number of bands I first heard this way is uncountable - Angry Samoans, Scream, Code Of Honor, Poison Idea, Bad Brains, SS Decontrol, Flipper - well, you get the idea. DJ Toek, formerly from Limburg punk band the Spoilers, would mix all kinds of weird sounds and sped-up voices into the music; I remember buying the first Chaos UK LP and being very disappointed when those sounds weren't on the actual record! Another LP I bought after hearing it on Radio Got (well, I found it in the cut-out bins) was the great Tales Of Terror record. Not hardcore, but a unique mixture of Black Flag aggression, Replacements sloppyness ("Hound Dog" could've been a Stink! outtake) and dollops of rockabilly and gothic, this record always reminds me of Johan van Leeuwen, who loved it and on whose radio show I heard it. Johan wasn't on the dole; he was one of the few punks who had a full-time job (as a printer) apart from doing the radio show, running a mailorder and putting out his long-running Nieuwe Koekrand 'zine. He was the first Amsterdam Punk I got to know personally; when I put out my first tape I took some copies to his (and girlfriend Charlotte's) place for his Konkurrent mailorder. I was 15 and my parents wouldn't allow me to go to A'dam on my own, so there we were, my dad and me, sipping tea at Koekrand HQ! Johan was 23, which to me seemed impossibly old at the time. I got to know him pretty well the following years, as I'd started doing my own zine and going to gigs in Amsterdam (without my dad). Although Johan was in the middle of it all, he always seemed to stay the bemused outsider, level-headed and immune for silly fads (remember the handkerchiefs?); maybe that had something to do with him being from the east (Drenthe). His 'zine was pretty much the glue keeping the Dutch punk scene together until the late 80's, when the issues stopped coming and I lost track of him.
In 1997 I met Johan again at some outdoor festival where my band was playing; he was with his 5-year old son (I guess he wouldn't let him go on his own either...) . He'd started Nieuwe Koekrand up again (wanted to make it to issue 100!) and looked pretty happy although there was a big scar on his head, which he waved away saying "Oh, I had a brain tumor, but it's O.K. now!" Since then we wrote eachother a couple of times. When my son was born, I got a great letter from him about the joys and tribulations of parenthood. He'd also included a book he wrote on the 80's punk scene, apologizing about the errors; another couple of operations had left his brain scrambled. About half a year after this letter I received the news that Johan had died. I guess that's about 4 years ago now. As the obituary read: Nieuwe Koekrand will never see its 100th issue... This is for you, Johan:

Hound Dog
Possession
Death Ryder
Romance