Son Of Eet U Smakelijk

RIGHT SIDE OF THE GOTHIC FENCE

2011-04-17T14:19:00.004+02:00

Though I knew and liked some punk back in 1981-82, the doors really opened around summer '82 when I heard three Dutch punk records that totally changed my ideas of what music should be like: The 20-song, 30-minute History's What's Happening by The Ex, the ramshackle Jam-on-78 of Schliessbaum (Trockener Kecks) and last but not least, the brilliant live-split-mini-LP (complicated huh?) Wielingen Walgt! by the Nitwitz and Gotterfliez. I played those records (or the tapes that they were on) relentlessly that summer, and when on a bike trip passing through Amsterdam I'd fantasize about those amazing people that were making this music right here, right now! What I didn't know was that in punk things were moving so fast, all of these bands had already either split up or were being thoroughly revised by then. Nitwitz and Kecks had lost their original singers and went their respective hardcore and pop ways; The Ex got a new drummer and became slower and more experimental. Gotterfliez' half-record - a strange off-kilter take on early Siouxsie - I probably played most of all; hearing it back some of it doesn't hold up that well, though I still love the long melodica-flavoured Change. When I later found out their singer Astrid had started a new band called Dance Macabre, I was already too deep into the louderfaster stuff to be bothered. I did hear their 1983 LP but didn't think much of it, so it was a nice surprise when I found it at some flea market last week, put it on and actually liked it. It's all pretty Gothic (as their name and the LP's cover already give away), but just raw, fuzzy and jumpy enough to be on the right side of the fence (also reminds me of the Svatsox' great Ruins LP in that way). Here's three stand-out tracks:

Scars

What About Me

Hell

(Dedicated to Vincent, ex-Dance Macabre and Squelettes bassist, who passed away February this year)

NEDERAFTERBEAT

2011-03-26T11:03:00.003+01:00

While you won't find any "real" mid-60s Nederbeat at flea markets anymore, compilations from the turn of the 70s are still plentiful; I always like to check them out for the lesser-known tracks. The bands on the 1970 LP pictured above aren't "Nederbeat" anymore (no "Nederteat" jokes, please), but have split into pop and rock camps just like their colleagues abroad. It's funny to hear just what bands were all the rage that year; at least three bands (the post-Robbie van Leeuwen Motions among them) go for an all-out Blood, Sweat and Tears sound, not my cup of tea(t). Eddy Owens, who later turned into Danny Mirror of "I Remember Elvis Presley" infamy, does a Cats-type ballad. Ginger Ale do a pretty horrible faux-classic piece. Tee-Set and George Baker cover the teeny-bop area. There are three real finds: the reformed Q65's great heavy pop thumper Don't Let Me Fall; After Tea's beautiful desert-fried Sun (Calexico could have done this one), and Penny Wise (forerunners of glam rockers Amsterdam) whose Lily Come Near Me is actually "proper" Nederbeat as it's from 1968.

NO LEATHER, BRISTLES, STUDS, BUT ACME

2011-02-26T19:21:00.004+01:00

Saw this one at a charity shop today and just knew I couldn't miss; handmade black/white cover: check; 1980 vintage: check; reference to legendary punk shop: check. Only point of concern was the back cover mentioned a sax, but at 25 cents this was a risk I could take. And I'm glad I took it; this is a very nice slab of powerpop/punk. Too bad someone cut a piece off of the top, but hey, you can't have it all. And it's nice to be able to put a new record at the front of my A-C records box; grew a little tired of that Action Pact cover.

Just as much fun as finding a record like this is fantasizing how it could have ended up where I found it; the not too exciting town of Heerhugowaard. Maybe this once belonged to a member of local punk band Blitzkrieg?

Anyway

Never Again

DRIELANDENPUNK

2011-02-12T22:36:00.004+01:00

You won't find anything about this band on the 'net; guess that's what you get with an un-Googleable/ unSoulseekable name like If. (I had a similar problem years ago when I was doing a post about the band London. Now Gerogerigegege, Splodgenessabounds or Ziffels, that's more like it!) I guess you can file this under Wormerpunk even though they weren't even Dutch. My band Gepopel once gigged with them + the Sox Pistels (Svatsox doing old punk covers!) around december '84, I vaguely recall they were a three-piece of mixed genders, and each one was from a different country; New Zealand, Switzerland and ?? I guess the Ex/ Villa folks put them up and helped them put out this EP, on which they sound like a slightly folkier version of the Ex, with great vocals (David Thomas meets PiL?) by a certain Flak who I believe was the New Zealand part of the band. The stamp design looks like it's made by Peter Pontiac (I don't think it's in any of his Pontiac Review books), the 33/45 rpm is a nice touch (I wonder if they knew about the Tandstickorshocks EP?), and oh yeah, they also had a song (called Eat Yourself Under The Table or something) on the Emma 2LP comp. That's it. Anyone who knows more: drop in!

Soldiers Sing

Grit

Left Hand Path (1985)

P.S.: Jos dropped in to give us the following ifno (thanks, Jos!):

Hey Niels, some more InFo on IF: they were Mark and Dieneke, and they came from New Zealand to live in holland for a while, since Dieneke originally stemmed from Rotterdam. In NZ they used to have a band called Flak. First IF drummer was Rob who used to play in the amazing Dutch group (V/H) De Straks), and when he quit he was replaced by Flavia from Switzerland.
After this 7" they also released a 9-song 12" called Terminal. After that they returned to NZ.
(Actually, both pieces of vinyl are still available through me, if anybody's interested... (> mailorder@theex.nl).

FIRST FIX OF THE YEAR AT DROPSTYLE, PT. 1

2011-02-06T16:06:00.003+01:00

I saw fellow vinyl junkies around these parts get paler and shakier as the month of January dragged along, but at last on February 5 Dropstyle opened its doors again... A quick browse throught the punk/wave (I hated it when - around '82? - the moniker "new wave" gave way to "wave"... Makes me think of heavily flanged guitars and Flock of Seagulls hair) bins yielded this nice 80's DIY single.

The Ziffels (named after a pig in the Green Acres TV series!) were from Groningen, a town with a disproportionate amount of great sleeve/poster designers as well as silkscreen printers; anyone who's ever been to the Vera club will know that. In the old Groningen tradition (starting with what I believe was the first Grunn-punk EP, Stad & Plat by Roeg Toeg in 1981) the Ziffels' sleeve is beautifully silkscreened in no less than 4 colours (five if you count the green). The music is pretty slickly-produced REM-type indie rock, which may put some of you readers off but just remember that over here in 1986 sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-Cure "wave" was what 90% of bands were playing so this sounded just great back then. Plus the songwriting is really strong.

Don't know anything about the Ziffels except a few stray mentions I found on the 'net. I saw them on TV back in '87, on the Jonge Helden show that showed lots of cool bands but had the irritating habit of making every band jump around and pull faces. The Ziffels acted relatively cool, although according to some internet source their drummer got an epileptic seizure during filming, which they kept in the video much to his dismay!

Cold Day In Bermuda

Penny Black

ACK JOB

2011-01-04T23:05:00.003+01:00

In rock music, words and music belong together; separating one from the other makes no sense (exhibit A: Bob Dylan lyrics books). With punk, you could go one step further and say you can't separate the music from its package. A punk song is just a pop song, only louder and cheaper sounding. A punk record, now that's something else! Its crude homemade graphics, funny catalog numbers, self-ridiculing sleeve notes ("recorded at home in their spare time"), even its smell are just as important as the actual tunes engraved in its vinyl. The best punk blogs out there recognize this fact and obsessively post scans of not only the records' front and back covers but also labels, lyric sheets, stickers, coffee stains, etc. etc.
Seen in this light, putting together a punk compilation CD is a bit of a challenge. It's not just a case of "you had to be there", but also of "you had to hold, feel and sniff the actual 45s".
Black Hole, last year's compilation of early Californian punk put together by the great Jon Savage, got reviewed in a regional newspaper last week; it got only two stars. Now the guy who reviewed it had Zucchero in his top ten year list, so I guess it's no big deal. But it got me thinking. If the aim of a punk compilation is to introduce outsiders to its greatness, then you have to separate the music from its package (and historical context) and treat punk songs like pop songs. Looking at Black Hole's track listing, I can see it's expertly put together but relying too much on historical importance and too little on killer tunes. Here's the changes I've made while compiling my own modified Black Hole (now called Ack Ack Ack Ack; easy to Photoshop!):
- Forming (Germs): the historic first LA punk record, and a mess. Changed it to Lexicondevil, their second record.
- I Hate The Rich (Dils): brilliant but an acquired taste; I went for Mr. Big, their Pop Song.
- Peer Pressure (Screamers): changed it to Vertigo for no particular reason.
- Murder By Guitar (Crime): swapped it for Hot Wire My Heart so the listener can say: hey, I know that song!
- Wimp (Zeros): replaced it with its A-side, Don't Push Me Around.
- We Are The One (Avengers): kept it of course, and used it as the CD's opening track.
- Anti Anti Anti (Consumers): great to include this little-known band (that were from Arizona, but never mind), but I went for Concerned Citizen, one of their songs later exhumed by 45 Grave.
- ABCD (Randoms): first release on the great Dangerhouse label, but you need the B-side, Let's Get Rid Of New York.
- Trouble At The Cup (Black Randy): hmmm, the Awful Noise aficionado in me says "Yes!", while the Punk Evangelist says: let's swap it for the Deadbeats' Kill The Hippies, skewed but also catchy.
- Nothing Means Nothing Anymore (Alley Cats): Classic. Stays on of course.
- Solitary Confinement (Weirdos): prefer A-side We Got The Neutron Bomb, slightly slower and with a Dolls-ish swagger.
- Beat Your Heart Out (Zeros): traded in one Zeros track for a track by those other great Mexican punkers the Plugz: Achin'.
- We're Desperate (X): Great, but changed it to Los Angeles nevertheless.
- 624803 (Offs): I'd swap this punky reggae ditty for the Nuns' classic Decadent Jew.
- Seventh World (Sleepers): We're treading sensitive terrain here, I've been a huge Sleepers fan ever since I found their first EP, and for years it seemed the only other person in the world who shared my admiration was Mr. Savage, who did all he could to revive interest in the band. So, from one Sleepers fan to another: Seventh World... great! She's Fun... ever better! Psychedelic Punk with backward guitars, how can you go wrong?
- Situations (Middle Class): Another Savage favourite and half post-punky, half ultra-fast hardcore-before-hardcore, I'd go for the hardcore bit: Out Of Vogue.
- Survive (Bags): A no-brainer, one of the greatest songs in the history of mankind.
- Media Blitz (Germs): traded it in for the equally short but catchier What We Do Is Secret.
- Love Is Just A Tool (Middle Class): We've already had Out Of Vogue, so why not give another brilliant Tooth And Nail track a chance, and add another female voice to the proceedings: UXA by UXA.
- Pony Dress (Flesh Eaters): great choice (Jay Reatard should have covered this one).
- Black Hole (Urinals): talk about Jay Reatard, but, great as this is, I'd change it for Ack Ack Ack Ack for short sharp shock value.
- Victims of Terrorism (Aurora Pushups): if we're going to do obscure one-offs, why not the Eyes' Take A Quaalude Now (aka TAQN)?
- The American In Me (Avengers): stays of course, but be sure to use the more in-yer-face version off their 12".
- California Uber Alles (Dead Kennedys): well, with Jerry Brown back, how can you go wrong? Single version, of course (slower and less smurfy).
- Sound Of The Rain (Dils): two Dils tracks and no Black Flag?? The sound of the rain gives way to the sound of a Nervous Breakdown.
- Los Gatos (Sleepers): yes, I know they're brilliant but let's just include their pals Negative Trend and the slow, haunting Black and Red (you can hear Flipper lurking around the corner).
There, that's it; I've changed 20 of the 26 tracks but I hoped I stayed true to Jon Savage's vision (I could have added some suburban pop punk like Red Cross or the Crowd but didn't).
Hope it gets 3 stars this time around.

Ack Ack Ack Ack - The Podcast!

Changed the running order around a bit and you get this:

1 avengers - we are the one
2 germs - lexicondevil
3 dils - mr. big
4 randoms - let's get rid of new york
5 crime - hot wire my heart
6 x - los angeles
7 weirdos - we got the neutron bomb
8 nuns - decadent jew
9 alley cats - nothing means nothing anymore
10 sleepers - she's fun
11 zeros - don't push me around
12 deadbeats - kill the hippies
13 plugz - achin'
14 screamers - vertigo
15 bags - survive
16 consumers - concerned citizen
17 uxa - uxa
18 middle class - out of vogue
19 eyes - taqn
20 germs - what we do is secret
21 avengers - the american in me
22 flesheaters - pony dress
23 urinals - ack ack ack ack
24 black flag - nervous breakdown
25 negative trend - black and red
26 dead kennedys - california uber alles

FROM THE ENGLISH PISSPOT

2010-12-16T22:44:00.006+01:00

Not much to say, except this is effing brilliant. The Nightingales used to be the Prefects, Birmingham Ur-punks that had a legendary 10 second song (VD) as well as a legendary 10 minute song (the wilfully dull and repetitive Going Through The Motions). Whereas the Prefects's complete recorded legacy amounts to one Peel Session, the Nightingales put out lots of records throughout the 80's. At a time when most post-punk bands were going for a smooth, overproduced sound, the Nightingales kept on banging and scratching away; they're sort of the missing link between early Rough Trade ramalama (Swell Maps et al) and later 80's noise like Big Flame and Dog Faced Hermans. Singer Robert Lloyd also ran the Vindaloo label of We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It fame (who probably sold 50 times as many records as the Nightingales). Oh yeah, here's a nice picture of the guys standing in front of a pub called In The English Pisspot, can somebody tell me where this was taken?

Urban Ospreys

Cakehole (both 1983)

FALL-OUT BOYS

2010-11-25T21:36:00.002+01:00

Way back in the wilderness years of 1991-92, as grunge was sweeping the nation(s), I discovered a different kind of noise. VPRO Radio had a weekly show called Stompin' that was a grab-bag of primal r&b, soul, powerpop, punk and garage, and while I never cared much for the 80's garage revival, this new garage stuff had a freshness and excitement about it that elevated it above mere "neo-60s". Thee Headcoats, New Bomb Turks, Oblivians, Gories, all legendary (even, what's the word - "seminal") bands these days. One band seems to be all but forgotten though, and back then it was my favourite of the bunch: The Fall-Outs!

1992 single Don't Want The Sun was their 1 minute 58 of fame, a brilliant combination of 1965 vintage Kinks infused with the spirit of quirky 80's hardcore (Angst, Rebel Truth). After that, the records came few and far between, the band seemed to split up every other year, and tours were non-existent, so the Fall-Outs slowly slipped into oblivion.

Looking back, the Fall-Outs seem like a forgotten Evil Twin brother of that other Northwestern band, Nirvana; it's almost eerie how much they had in common: both bands were from rural Washington, were three-pieces, had blond singers with raspy voices, recorded cover versions of Dutch 60's songs (hear the Fall-Outs' 1993 Cuby + Blizzards cover Your Body Not Your Soul), had members of Mudhoney helping out in their rhythm sections, and combined 60's pop with 80's punk. Guess Nirvana just combined the "right" 60's pop with the "right" 80's punk. Plus Kurt was cuter.

One advantage they have over Nirvana though is that their singer, Dave Holmes, is still alive. Better still, in 2004 they (once again) reformed and put out a great LP called Summertime, which disappeared without a trace. It's much poppier than their early stuff, but still has the trademark spare scratchy sound; check out Flowers For Hours.

YOU SHOULD HEAR THE SINGLE VERSION, PT. 1

2010-11-12T21:20:00.002+01:00

Someone puts out a single, then it becomes a hit - or doesn't; in any case, when it's time to do an LP, they re-do the song that was on the single, because they think the original sounds too primitive (Rezillos), there's a sax on the original that they decided was not punk (Suburban Studs) or simply because the single was recorded in Mono (Beatles, Otis Redding, lots of other 60s stuff). But then, years later, when the music gets reissued, comped and put on radio playlists, you'll always get the LP versions instead of the original - often superior - ones!

I first heard the Boys' I Don't Care on their LP, and didn't care; too rushed, too crass, trying too hard to be punk it seemed. When I got the actual single, I was surprised to find out it was much slower, poppier and er... nicer! Basically this is the earliest pop punk record, predating the (Shelley) Buzzcocks and Generation X by about 6 months (it was released March 1977 I think). So can somebody explain to me why they put the LP version on their "Punk Singles Collection" CD???

PHANTASTIC PHRONT COVERS PT. 2

2010-10-13T20:34:00.002+02:00

You can find loads of old Rob Hoeke records, but most of them will be by his boogie-woogie combo. His R&B Group records - the ones you need - are a bit scarcer but still not too hard to find; at least I come across this one, 1967's Save Our Souls, every now and then. You probably know their brilliant Sonics-style piano stomper Margio, which has been comped countless times; this LP is right from that era and mixes similar garage stuff (like the great Let's Get Out Of Here, clocking in at 1:26!) with cool attempts at Blonde On Blonde-style Dylan (Lights Have Been Changed), melodic folk rock (Drinking On My Bed, another hit) and oh, also some boogie. Singer on most R&B Group cuts wasn't actually Rob Hoeke himself but bass player Willem Schoone, a tall blonde guy who looked like a Dutch Brian Jones (and is now known around these parts for having been in loads of "famous" local cover bands like Shoreline).

OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY

2010-10-09T11:46:00.002+02:00

There's this great little internet record store that I stumbled across some time ago; it only carries 7 inch records, mostly of the Dutch/ German "Schlager" sort, but every time I check it out I find a great treasure hidden inbetween; the Tits, Blitzz, Fallouts (Dutch 60s version), Yardbirds, and last week this gem by the Subterraneans, all at 1 or 2 Euros each.

The Subterraneans were 2 ex-members of legendary (and sadly unrecorded) 60's proto-punks the Kick; they were one of the first Dutch bands to move away from electric Beat to acoustic pre-war blues inspired sounds. Flipside Explain All This Stuff To Me is my pick of the two tracks.

O.K., as I'm in an altruistic mood today I'm going to give you the name of the record store... It's http://www.-----svinyl.nl/ (insert the first name of the drummer for Dutch punk legends The Vernon Walters)!

NOT THE SIMPLE MINDS SONG

2010-10-03T13:15:00.002+02:00

I have a sneaking suspicion all the DC/Dischord-related records I've been scooping up at the local 2ndhand record store lately (Deadline, Dain Bramage, Rain etc.) are actually the very same copies I offloaded at that place some 15 years ago... But then who can explain this find? I've never owned a copy of the Alive and Kicking comp. EP, and god knows I've been looking for it back in my DC-obsessed days. It's worth it's weight in gold alone for the presence of the greatest Gray Matter track ever, Walk The Line; an earlier version than the one on their own record, more primitive and with Jeff Turner doing some great almost Darby-like screaming.
The rest ain't no great shakes, although I'll post Marginal Man's re-recording of er, Marginal Man, because it sounds better than the one on their first LP. Oh yeah, and Mission Impossible's I Can Only Try, for being the world's first recording featuring Dave Grohl!

P.S.: I'm proud to say I once got this very Gray Matter song on Dutch national radio, when a band I was in in the 90's was invited to play some favourites on air. Of course, the other guys forgot to take CD's with them, so it was my party. (Since you asked: this track is also on the Gray Matter CD) (Since you asked pt. 2: the other stuff played was Johnny Burnette's Train Kept a-Rollin', some old K-era Beck song and the Louvin Brothers' When I Stop Dreaming - during which our very hip record plugger started laughing, thought it was a great joke)

DEAD LETTER BLUES

2010-09-17T23:08:00.004+02:00

I often hear people remark how this whole internet business should have been around 25 years ago, in the "punk days", when everybody was writing loads of letters and sending eachother records, tapes, etc. Another remark that gets thrown around a lot is how "blogs are the fanzines of today". Here I beg to differ: when as a wee 16-year-old I started my own 'zine, I filled it up with whatever bullshit (bios, lyrics, doodles) I had lying around; it didn't really matter that much as it wasn't about content, it was about communication, walking up to people at gigs pestering them to buy my little rag. With this blog it's the opposite: I only post when I think I really have something to say, and then, sitting at home, sipping my Tullamore Dew and clicking my mouse, it disappears into cyberspace. All content and no communication.
This letter-writing stuff we used to do 100 years ago actually held a lot of advantages over today's emailtwitspacebook. For instance, you could wait two or three months before replying, and blame the postal service! Try waiting 2 months before replying to an email (which I do, in most cases); they'll think you're dead, or an asshole (or both). Also, the tapes/ flyers/ zines/ records that would arrive through Ye Olde Snail Mail were real artefacts that you could hold, look at and smell. Try smelling an mp3.
One of my most treasured cassettes ever was taped for me in 1986 by a certain mr. Ian MacKaye. Thinking about it now it amazes me how someone like him would even take time to reply to my stupid letters, let alone send me a tape of unreleased music! (Sure beats a myspace page.) I was totally crazy about the tape, must have played it 3 months on repeat, Embrace and Dag Nasty were my new favourite bands. Oh yeah, and then there was this old demo from 1982 tagged onto the end of side B by Deadline, a short-lived band that I knew from Flex Your Head. Back then I thought this was "just" pretty good old hardcore punq.
Funny how nowadays I find it hard to recall the chimey sub-U2 sounds of Embrace, but the Deadline tape has grown and grown to be an absolute classic! Much more powerful than their Flex Your Head tracks (although I liked those as well), but still sorta primitive, this is a perfect example of more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts hardcore. No overdubs, sloppy drumming, out of tune guitar, and yet it's so powerful and slightly sinister to boot, in a Mecht Mensch/ Tar Babies kind of way.
This tape was eventually released as a one-sided LP in 1989; I had a copy but sold it long ago; luckily I found another copy in the Dropstyle bargain bin last week! The mastering on the LP is incredible, the low-end jumps out of your speakers. Dischord have recently reissued it on CD, if that's your cup of tea. Anyway, here's some highlights... No, let me rephrase that: here's some randomly chosen tracks, as all 11 tracks are equally great:
I.C.A.
Closed Door
Outside The Law
M.A.D.

THIS IS ROTTERDAM, NOT THE MISSISSIPPI

2010-09-05T14:28:00.003+02:00

OK, so tell me which town the following bands are from: 10CC, Barclay James Harvest, Sad Cafe. Any idea? Now tell me which town these bands are from: Joy Division, Buzzcocks, Fall. Got it in a micro-second?
In the immediate pre-punk era, there was no way of telling where a certain band was from; all local peculiarities were wiped out in favour of a generic Trans-Atlantic style and accent; no local references were used except for generic mythic Rock & Roll places like Mississippi, New Orleans, etc, places where the band in question probably had never ever set foot. This was one of the things that Punk "fixed": bands would sing about their own lives, in their own accents, again. Well, some of them. For a while.
Over here, Rotterdam bands like Rondos and Tandstickorshocks had a very identifiable sound of their own, as far removed from "Rock" (and most of their Amsterdam "rivals") as they could get: staccato, clean, primitive. I've posted the incredible 12-song Tandstickorshocks EP before; what I didn't know at the time is that their singer/leader Ronnie Roteb (nicknamed after his employer, the Rotterdam Waste Disposal Company) also sang for Railbirds, a band from 1 or 2 years earlier. They were on the 1979 Rondos debut/split EP, and couldn't be further removed from the "Rotterdam style"! This is meat and potatoes punk Rock with guitar solos (!) and ruff singing, in fact it's hard to believe this is actually the Tandstickor... guy. So much for local peculiarities.

Lonely (from split EP with Rondos, 1979)
Dancing With God And Pogo With The Devil
Go To Hell (from King Kong Records double EP, 1979)

BIG ANGLOPHILE WILL NAVIGATE US THROUGH A CHANGE OF STYLE

2010-08-31T21:18:00.004+02:00

In 1965, while on a U.S. tour, Ray Davies of the Kinks smacked a Musicians' Union official in the face; as a result the Kinks were banned from playing the USA for 5 years. This turned them from British Invasion hitmakers into an obscure, exotic acquired taste. The Kinks' American record company shrewdly turned their inability to come over and promote their records into an asset, cultivating their faraway English quaintness and printing up Union Jack badges with the band's name on them. This pretty much started a whole subculture of American Anglophiles who, sick of Woodstock pompousness and L.A. cowboy fashion, turned to Old Blighty for their musical heroes.

California especially seemed to be fertile ground for this Anglophile cult, despite - or probably because - it was the epicentre of laid-back country-rock. Almost all future key players in the L.A. punk scene started out rabid Limey fanatics: The proto-Germs bonded over a love for Queen and Yes; Alice Bag was crazy about Elton John (and sported similar glasses!); future Frontier label boss Lisa Fanchier was a card-carrying Mott the Hoople fan club member; Rodney Bingenheimer's club was even called the English Disco! To top it off, L.A. band Sparks liked England so much they moved there (a move 180 degrees contrary to the more common westward trek of UK musicians at the time). No wonder the Los Angeles punk scene would stylistically become the most extreme one in the States, avoiding any boogie or blues inflections, instead focusing on fast, staccato rhythms and cheap transistor distortion.
Dangerhouse records pretty much epitomized all that was cool, new and extreme about L.A. punk; their legendary catalog of a little more than a dozen 7 inchers (Bags, Dils, Weirdos, Avengers etc. etc.) contains nary a clunker. Then there's Howard Werth's "Obsolete". The least favourite and collectable Dangerhouse release by about 1000 miles, everybody seemed to wonder what moved them to put out a record by an old English hippie who used to sing for prog rockers Audience. Well, now you know.
Obsolete

Mangoman

P.S.: The cover scans don't really do justice to its beautiful day-glo colours. I scanned both front and back because they fit together so nicely, just like those old Roger Dean gatefolds!

PHANTASTIC PHRONT COVERS PT. 1

2010-08-29T14:21:00.003+02:00

This beautiful French 10 inch declares Lionel Hampton to be squarely in the "R 'n R" (R et R?) camp, a reminder that back in the Fifties mr. Heybabareba was universally slagged off by Serious Jazz Critics. Also note that, while mr. Hampton is holding his cymbal in the air, there seems to be a piece of the cymbal stand still attached to it!

TAKE THE STICK FIGURES CRAYOLA BOWLING

2010-08-25T20:42:00.002+02:00

It took a while, but I've finally played the whole pile of 1-buck-each records I obtained a couple of weeks ago. So OK, there's loads of stuff I'll never play again (anyone looking for that elusive Red Beat, Weird Strings or Family Fodder 45, get in touch!), then there's loads of New Wave Hits I couldn't pass up (c'mon, Party Fears Two is a classic). Also a pile of Dutch stuff like Catapult and Long Tall Ernie & Shakers, some of which I won't play a lot but I feel it's my Patriotic duty to have them. That leaves about a dozen of true jewels, my current favourite being the Stick Figures 1981 EP. Never heard of them, but the sleeve looked cool, even though there's no info on it apart from the members' first names. A quick Google search taught me they were from Florida and put out this EP in 5 different covers, each designed by a different band member. One blog compared this EP to late-70s NY No Wave, but while there's scratchy guitars, weird noises and lopsided rhythms galore, there's also some nice melodies to be found, especially in Rachel (Nolastname)'s singing.

Whereas I usually and lazily get my mp3s from Soulseek, I had to do some old-fashioned vinyl ripping myself this time, as these tracks were nowhere to be found!

BE A VENGER! (SUMMER SALE PT. 4)

2010-08-23T18:20:00.005+02:00

(Wot, Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zit without the yellow? No, it's the Avengers!)

Two more Dropstyle finds. There have probably been more Avengers than Antidotes; this is the Dutch mid-80s version. They put out three pretty good 7 inches but were either 5 years too late or 5 years too early to earn the appreciation they deserved. First EP Escape In Time was recorded without a bass player and sounds like a mid-90s Crypt record, raw and primitive. The All I Ever Wanted 45 from a couple of years later is a slicker affair, with typical late-80s production, but still great songs. Singer Jeroen Vedder and drummer Jerry Goossens would later write Dutch punk history Het Gejuich Was Massaal, as well as compile the I'm Sure We're Gonna Make It CD. I used to see those Avengers EPs in record stores everywhere, for years. By 1986 the novelty of self-released records had worn off; before, people would buy anything that looked interesting, now they would only check out the stuff that was part of their particular clique. Which to today's collectors is good news, 'cuz you should be able to find these EPs at a reasonable price!

Piggies

Rubber Doll (from Escape In Time EP, 1986)

All I Ever Wanted

Standing On The Outside (All I Ever Wanted 7", 1988?)

RADIOHEADLESS CHICKENS

2010-08-13T18:57:00.002+02:00

In the midst of Dropstyle's one-buck-each feeding frenzy, I bumped into this one. Feeling a little guilty already about scooping up so many beauties at next-to-nothing, I told Benno: you should keep this one, it's worth a few bob! The next day, as I resumed my vinyl hunt, Benno said: guess what, I've found two more copies of that EP, want one?

Hometown Atrocities is a fairly typical late 80's UK punk sampler. It's also the holy grail for Radiohead collectors, as Headless Chickens feature one Thom (then still plain "Tom") Yorke on guitar and backing vocals. I Don't Want To Go To Woodstock is a nice piece of slightly glammy pop punk, a bit out of step with the other 3 bands that are more U.S./Dischord-y, as a lot of UK bands were at the time. Like Mad At The Sun, whose track This Could Be... rises above most of their UK "Emo" peers thanks to some nice staccato guitar and its raw, basic production.

SUMMER SALE PT. 2

2010-08-11T17:46:00.003+02:00

Even though I never heard Modern English, and always had a vague suspicion they were a sub-Joy D. doomy kind of band, I had to scoop this one up. Big surprise! Their Swans On Glass/ Incident 45 from 1980 is actually a slab of great, catchy, scratchy and slightly unhinged post-punk, sort of like the Scars circa "Horrorshow".

SUMMER SALE PT. 1

2010-08-09T21:13:00.002+02:00

One of 86 seven inch records I bought at the great Dropstyle (Hoorn, NL) record store last week; they held an insane summer clearance sale with all 7 inches going for 1 Euro each!

Never heard of XXOO, but a peek at the back cover of their 1982 EP revealed this is actually Half Japanese. Apparently, they used the name XXOO ("kisses and hugs") to highlight their sensitive side, playing 3 love songs that sound like a blueprint for Daniel Johnston's career. How Will I Know? is the only original; That's What They Say (Buddy Holly) and Tracks Of My Tears (Miracles) are covers.

KBD SOUL

2010-08-01T19:56:00.002+02:00

A Mekons fan once wrote: "Rock is the only kind of music that sounds better when performed by people who can't play". This doesn't hold true for every type of rock though: nobody wants to hear badly played funk, jazzrock or metal. But badly played punk, garage and soul: can't get enough of it! Personally, I'd like to rephrase above saying as "rock (punk/garage/soul) sounds just as good when performed by people who can't play", as I like slickly-produced, well-played punk (Rezillos, Generation X) as much as I like the Mekons. Likewise with soul, I love slick stuff like Etta James + strings just as much as yer ultra-primitivo Fortune records stuff.
One of my favourite soul singers, Joe Tex, put out loads and loads of singles in a bewildering variety of recording quality and slickness. In his case, I prefer his more primitive stuff, which for some reason can mostly be found on the "big" Checker label (I guess some smalltime producer leased them the recordings). 1963's "You Keep Her" was an answer record to James Brown's "I Found Someone"; I love the flubbed trumpet note in the first chorus. "Baby You're Right" is more or less the same song (or vice versa as an earlier recording predates "You Keep Her"). Both songs sound like they're recorded in some barn using one microphone. Joe Tex would achieve superstardom only months later with the great "Never Been In A Riot"... er, "Hold What You've Got".
You Keep Her
Baby You're Right

THE MAJORETTE, THE MAJORETTE

2010-07-31T21:09:00.002+02:00

Tonight were a bunch of early Powerpoppers, Drummer Man (1978) was their first single; it was a sizable hit in England at the time, big enough to land them on Top of the Pops. I like the song, especially the "Lazy Sunday"-Cockney rasp of their singer, reminds me a bit of a pop band called the Look (that had a 1980 hit with "Tonight"!) (I'm sorry, I've just finished reading Nick Tosches' Where Dead Voices Gather, and as a result I'm seeing occult musical connections everywhere.)

Funny thing is, there are 38.000 Powerpop compilations out but Drummer Man - or any song by Tonight, who're supposed to have done 4 singles - isn't on any of them. Guess they should have put it out in a hand-crayoned pressing of 148 copies, with half of the press run melted by an irate ex-girlfriend, in order to warrant Powerpop credibility.

Drummer Man

FLAMIN' BINTANGS

2010-07-23T21:20:00.002+02:00

The Bintangs were the closest thing the Netherlands had to the Flamin' Groovies. Starting out in the 60's as a typical bluesy Nederbeat group, by the turn of the 70's they excelled both at meaner-than-the-Stones bluesrock and fun uptempo rock & roll, the latter under the guise of Kraaijeveld (an offshoot that gradually came to include all original Bintangs members!). They had a couple of pretty big hits and made some critically-acclaimed LPs, although their 1969 debut LP Blues on the Ceiling is relatively overlooked. Like the title says, here they turn the blues upside down, changing chestnuts like Smokestack Lightning around until they're barely recognizable. This "freaky" approach lasted only one record.

Fast forward six years: Kraaijeveld's 1975 swansong Johnny Do It Faster is a great piece of glammy proto-punk that wouldn't have seemed out of place on Clap Your Hands & Stamp Your Feet. After this, they'd continue as a reconstituted Bintangs, releasing the classic Genuine Bull LP (recorded at Rockfield studios, to continue our Groovies analogy!).

Smokestack Lightning

Johnny Do It Faster

LOST SOUNDS FROM A LOST YEAR

2010-07-21T09:23:00.006+02:00

Infexion, Castricum, 1979
1979 seems to be the Lost Year of Dutch punk. The first bunch of bands faded away, the second bunch were just starting out. There were maybe only one or two records released in that year, but as a gestation period for punk's second wave ("punks that started making music" as opposed to "musicians that started playing punk") it was a hotbed of activity. Activity that slowly switched from the "big" clubs like Paradiso to small, squatted, self-organized places like NoName and Kaasee, where loads of legendary bands like Bugs, Gospelfuckers, Infexion, 123, the Duds, Ketchup, (Amsterdam) Scabs, Motorboat etc. would play, bands that never got around to making records to assure their place in "KBD" annals.
Early 1979 I spent a lot of time in Amsterdam. My parents and I went to the Scientology church every week; this wasn't as bad as it sounds, the people working there were mostly nice (if misguided), underpaid hippies, and the boredom of their "communication course" was relieved by the thrill of walking around Am'dam during the coldest winter ever. (Ironically, that very Scientology church was briefly squatted and used to put on punk gigs in the early '80's.) It's funny how, a stone's throw from much of this punk activity, the 11-year old me never, ever encountered punks or saw other evidence of punk (flyers, grafitti). I guess that goes to show how much of history is dictated by the artifacts future generations can hold, look at and listen to. In other words: records!
Infexion from Amsterdam were one of the "biggest" punk bands of the period; they played at the legendary 1979 Punk Festival that had the village of Castricum invaded by crazy punk hordes (and was called off after one day!). On these two demo tracks you hear a band that's already moving towards the ultra-fast 4/4 style of the Nitwitz and Pistache BV.

P.L.O.
Dumb Dumb Cop

THE FIRST PSYCHEDELIC RECORD EVER

2010-07-19T12:50:00.002+02:00

"Nobody Knows What's Going On (In My Mind But Me)" by the Chiffons, 1965. Written by Brute Force, later of "King of Fuh" fame.

SOB STORY

2010-07-15T21:31:00.002+02:00

Punk was over by 1986. That doesn't mean there weren't any great punk records made after that, but that particular dynamic that fueled all the changes and mutations up 'til then had gone static. Howard Devoto called it Negative Drive, I call it WHATEVER'S POPULAR OR COOL, DO THE OPPOSITE! To some, punk mutations like Grunge, Straight Edge, Cowpunk or even Twee Indie Pop might seem silly in retrospect, but the whole point about them was, they came about because people would go: EVERYBODY HATES COUNTRY; LET'S PLAY COUNTRY*! (*Insert Disco or Metal at will.) Or: EVERYBODY'S PLAYING AS FAST AS THEY CAN, LET'S PLAY AS SLOW AS WE CAN! Or: EVERYBODY'S INTO TAKING DRUGS AND LIVING UNHEALTHILY; LET'S, LIKE, DO THE OPPOSITE! By the mid-80's, all these twists and turns had become rigid institutions themselves. The last spasm of this Punk Dynamic might have been that often misunderstood thing called Emo. So, what was Emo all about? It was Hardcore kids going: EVERYBODY'S RUNNING AROUND WITH SHAVED HEADS, ACTING TOUGH AND SINGING ABOUT RONALD REAGAN; LET'S WEAR GLASSES, READ POETRY, THROW FLOWERS AROUND AND SING ABOUT OUR DEEPEST EMOTIONS! Makes sense now, doesn't it?
Even though the bands involved hated the tag - which means something entirely different today anyway - the greatest Emo bands in my book were Rites of Spring and Gray Matter, who both put out brilliant LPs in 1985 before promptly disbanding in true Dischord Records fashion. Another fine example of the original spirit of Emo was the 1988 EP by Moss Icon. Greta Garbo on the cover, that's brilliant! Someone at MaximumRocknRoll must have gone: "What's this? Why don't they use pictures of El Salvador torture victims?" Even better is singer Jon Vance's dedication on the lyric sheet: "and lastly, thanks to the beautiful Greta Garbo for... well, you know what I thank you for Greta, rest well dear, sweet girl, Rest." (Picture bald HC dude going "HUH??") I bought the EP off the band after hearing it on John Peel, it came packed in a piece of recycled cardboard. I love the primitive, almost clumsy sound, it reminds me a little of early Funeral Oration. Oh yeah, check out the sob at the end of What They Lack!
P.S.: I sold my copy a couple of years ago to someone who was desperate for it, which is why i asked a ridiculously low price. Just last month I found another copy, at a ridiculously low price. Whoo, karma!

Hate In Me
What They Lack
I'm Back Sleeping Or Fucking Or Something
Kiss The Girls And Make Them Die

ROOTS OF PALINGPUNK

2010-07-13T21:30:00.002+02:00

1 Euro at Kringloop KaKee, Zwaag (one of my faves). BZN, of course, are the biggest-selling Dutch pop group in history. They're also from Volendam, the village where I grew up. That they actually played some pretty heavy rock before they switched to middle-of-the-road schlagers is sorta semi-well known. I never cared much for the StatusQuochuggachugga of their 1973 hit Sweet Silver Anny (which can be found on the otherwise brilliant Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet comp), but when I first put on The Bastard, my mouth fell open. This sounds exactly like the Sex Pistols! In 1971! Well, o.k., a cross between the Move and the Sex Pistols (but then again, the Sex Pistols themselves sounded like a cross between the Move and the Sex Pistols on their best tracks). The lyrics are pretty sick, too, about a rapist or something (do I really hear "while I rape you, I let you die"??). Even the long laid-back part at the end is kinda cool (in a Love/Forever Changes way). Volendam punk history needs a thorough rewriting.

The Bastard

VERNONBAL COMMUNICATION

2010-07-12T19:03:00.004+02:00

(A while ago I wrote the following piece for Christoph Lampert's photobook We Call it Punk, to accompany some pictures he shot of the Vernon Walters)
"The Vernon Walters were a little band I played guitar in, around the mid/late eighties. It wasn't my first band, nor my last one, nor the best or most successful one. But somehow it's the band I have the fondest memories of. The combination of endless, alcohol-fueled fun and zero responsibilities that came with crossing the continent in a smelly old van at that particular age is something that will never come back. Me and (fellow ex-VW) Joost's current band Sack-o'-Woes still occasionally try to live it up, but there's all kinds of stuff that gets in the way; like for instance having a driver's license. Why on earth did I ever take driving lessons? In the old days we just jumped into the van, started having fart contests or Rubberen Robbie singalongs, and rolled out when we'd arrived at our destination. Now I have to do all this boring stuff like drive, find the place, park the van, sip Coke all night, etc. etc.
Well, it's just one of those things that will never be the same now our Tour Mother Hans Engel has gone (he died in 2003). Apart from being the Vernon Walters' frontman, main lyricist and singer, he was also the one arranging the shows, putting out the records, contacting the people and getting us anywhere we had to be. He did pretty much everything short of wiping our bottoms, giving us free rein to behave like a bunch of idiots. It was great. The tours of Germany were the best; I think we did about five of them. Loads and loads of fun places to play; cool non-stuck up audiences that would go crazy even if they'd never heard of us; all the beer we could drink; nice places to crash. Two or three weeks of that and our mental age would be lowered to about half our actual age. I recall Joost walking around in Hamburg pretending to be a retard, jumping in puddles when unsuspecting citizens were passing by. Or me drawing penises on every person depicted in every magazine and newspaper I could find in this bar. Or the time when our drummer Danny started the drum intro to one of our songs at half the proper speed. This went on for about five minutes without any speeding up, us scratching our heads and leaving him to it. He then quit, to bemused looks of audience and band members. Upon which he started again, at the exact same speed. After another two minutes we grudgingly started to play along, snail-like; after that, the tempo picked up ever so slightly, to reach just about the right amount of bpm by the time we reached the end of the last chorus.
A big factor in this process of losing our minds was the sheer scale of the punk/squatting scene in Germany at the time. I mean, in Holland we had a couple of cool squats here and there, but Hamburg's Hafenstrasse, that was something else! It felt like the squatters had taken over the whole of St. Pauli, especially when we first glanced upon the famed Stortebeker building, painted from top to bottom in loud designs and slogans. About halfway through the first time we played inside the building, the electricity broke down. While doing some a capella improvising we saw several cop cars outside, lights flashing. In a matter of seconds there was a riot going on between a bunch of squatters and the riot squad, all done up in helmets, shields, the works. We stood looking through the window fearing for the windows of our van, but as suddenly as it started, it stopped. So we played the rest of our set. The day after, the newspapers wrote about how the squatters had started (huh?) a "terrible riot" landing "several policemen in hospital". The police were apparently looking for a "car thief" who, in the next column, mysteriously morphed into an "ex-RAF-member". Wow! This piece of villainous Bild-style gutter press put the icing of the cake of our first Hafenstrasse experience.
We'd play the Hafenstrasse another 3 or 4 times later on, always great. No more riots though."
Here's 3 tracks from the VW's first record, the Hoodoo-Do Da Coruba EP. This was before I joined them and it's my favourite. Hans had sorta dropped out of punk a couple of years before, so when they started the VW it sounded more like 1981 than 1986, without any of the post-Hardcore cliches then rampant.
Proclamation
The Truth About You
Y Va A Caer

SON OF EETUSMAKELIJK, PART 1

2010-07-11T10:21:00.003+02:00

Just got this at the great marktplaats.nl. Les Baroques were famed for using a bassoon, which sounds a bit like a flock of geese on this particular track, one of their earliest ones (1966). Great goofy vocals, too (I'd swear he sings "mongol" instead of "mine, girl"!). Their biggest hit was Such A Cad Am I, prompting the misheard answer record Sure He's A Cat by the Cats (who used an oboe instead of a bassoon).

I Know

HI THERE

2009-03-11T22:16:00.004+01:00

For all you good people who just stumbled upon this here blog while a-Googling: I wrote these posts between 2006 and early 2008, when I quit because I didn't have the time anymore. The links to the mp3s don't work anymore, as there's been some IP address shuffling going on and I don't feel like changing a couple hundred links. Fancy hearing a particular tune: I'm sure you know where to look. Although I didn't come close to the great KBD Records, Good Bad Music or Last Days Of Man in terms of quantity (and sound quality), I hoped my "personal touch" made up for that, and I was glad to see a bunch of people did enjoy my infrequent postings, among them some of the actual musicians the posts were about!
Although I haven't posted in over a year, I still check the comments from time to time (why? cuz I don't have a life, that's why); nice to see they're still coming. I don't think I'll post any more mp3s, but I think I'll put up links to stuff that I like and that might interest you. We'll see.

JUBILEE EDITION

2008-03-09T13:18:00.009+01:00

As astute Eetusmakelijk readers will have noticed, postings became scarcer over the last few months, culminating in a record-breaking 7-week gap between the penultimate post and this one. Well, I'll just come clean about it: after 86 posts I've felt I've said about all I had to say within the narrow confines of this blog, plus posting mp3s is getting more and more useless since just about everything has already been posted/ is available on CD/ can be found at p2p programs like soulseek, etc. Add to that the fact that I've switched from a part-time job with access to a computer and lots of time on my hands, to a full-time job without access to a computer... But the last straw for me was when, inspired by Erich's posting of the first Bad Religion EP, I decided to post the first Offspring 45; after a bit of Googling it turned out that not only had KBDrecords already posted it 2 years ago, but I had commented on the post and totally forgotten about it! So, I'm sorry to say, Eetusmakelijk will be on er, eternal hiatus from now on. I'm thinking of starting another blog but it won't be (strictly) about punk (or even music), i.e. it won't automatically attract a niche of interested people like this blog did, in which case I wonder if it's any use... Anyway, thanks for checking me out, listening to the music and commenting!

I've posted something by my own (first) band, Gepopel, before, and am glad to announce there will be an LP out very soon of all of our old recordings (check it out here). But that LP won't feature the earliest (1982-83) recordings I did under that name. Those were tracks I recorded by myself in the attic, using old broken-down and borrowed equipment and "ping-ponging" onto a 2 track tapedeck. March 1983, exactly 25 years ago today, I released my very first tape called No One Can Stop Advance. It sold 30 copies; I still remember seeing the row of finished tapes and thinking: "Wow, I've just mass-produced something!"

Musically, it was a grab-bag of punk, proto-HC and more post-punky stuff, reflecting the records I'd been listening to just before it got all Hardcore. To me, it's part fun, part embarrassing hearing it back and thinking: "Oh, I copped this from a Siouxsie record...Stole that from The Ex..." Tracks 1 to 11 were on the actual tape; the other 11 are from the same time but were never released. I feel a little weird about posting this, sorta like showing someone baby pictures of yourself, but I hope there's sort of an early-80s charm to it (a writer's block-free era, as you could always write about The Bomb! Wish it was still as easy nowadays). I've also put up the booklet showing my first attempts at being John Heartfield.

Only one or two songs (like Eenheidsworst) made it to the later "actual band" Gepopel, although we recycled the chord structure of The Day After (sped up about 8 times!) for Two Days After. Not every song tackles nuclear war; the curiously-titled I Will Put Him is about much-reviled Dutch TV personality Henk van der Meyden and his bad English, while Cock Is Dead was about our (me & Henk Gepopel & Ruud Indirekt) Latin teacher, Mr. Cock (Nomen Est Omen). Come to think of it, I wonder why I never wrote a song about our German teacher, Mr. Goebbels?

Gepopel - No One Can Stop Advance (1983)

The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan
The Day After
Eenheidsworst
NATO
Dallas
Toy Town
Smashed Up Slums
VWO
OSL
Mushrooms
Recession

Booklet cover
Booklet 1
Booklet 2
Booklet 3
Booklet 4
Booklet 5
Booklet 6

Bonus tracks

Why Spoiling Your Youth
Annual Ceremony
Cock Is Dead
Dull
I Will Put Him
Pride
Autarky
Living Death
The Govern Tower
God
Two Stamps

THEY WHO CANNOT BE NAMED

2008-01-23T16:40:00.000+01:00

A pre-skin Skrewdriver in front of Blackpool Tower, 1977.

By now, everybody knows the Skrewdriver story: early punk band with no political inclinations adopt skinhead look, as a result attract violent skinhead following, are dropped from label and can't get gigs; band implodes. Years later, singer starts new band using old name, adding ultra-right wing "White Power" agenda, thereby forever tarnishing their name. If this was just any run-of-the-mill band it would be merely pathetic; what makes it sad is the fact that first-incarnation Skrewdriver were one of the best bands around. One of the very first punk records (spring '77) from the north of England, debut platter You're So Dumb is a sizzling scorcher with vocals that make your hairs stand on end. All Skrewed Up (the first 45 RPM LP ever?) from later that year was very good too, and shows they could do more than just bash it out; on the mostly acoustic "Where's It Gonna End" the singing is more melodic, in fact it reminds me of Scream's Peter Stahl (!) every time I hear it. For a while, Skrewdriver were loved and respected by music press and fellow musicians alike, rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Damned, the Jam (whose notoriously fussy Paul Weller even lent them some of his gear after their van got stolen) and Motorhead. In fact, their equal parts 60's R&B/ heavy rock sound occupied a sort of middle ground between both aforementioned (and soon to become huge) bands. For a band always branded as godfathers of Oi!, the music has actually very little to do with it; there's no football-chant type chorus in sight, the playing is tight rather than sloppy (in that light, the Faces are far more proto-Oi) and Ian Stuart sounds more Transatlantic than Cockney. Alas, one ill-judged style change and it all went down the drain.

Those great early Skrewdriver sides were never reissued by Chiswick/Ace, who understandably didn't want anything to do with what they had become. Try to find an original copy on eBay and you won't find a thing: the very word "Skrewdriver" is forbidden on that oh-so humanitarian auction site! So you try Soulseek; next thing you know you get a deluge of Skrewdriver mp3s, both "old" and "new", thousands of them, from users with scary names like i-kill-commies and skullsplitter. Well, I guess that unavailibility really worked! It's like Mein Kampf: why not just make it freely available, so everyone can find out for themselves it's a load of crap? I remember in the 80's there were quite a few PC-baiting fanzine types who thought it was really smart to insist those later Skrewdriver records were really great, all in the spirit of "it's like Celine, ya know, judge it by art, not politics!" Well, I've listened to some of it, and I can tell you it sucks. But don't take my word for it, go find it out for yourselves. I guess that's one of the good things to come out of the mystique-busting mp3/P2P-era...

Anyway, I'll leave you with three blazing tracks from their 1977 Peel Session, so you can reminisce about what could have been.

Anti-Social
The Only One
Unbeliever

BELATED CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

2007-12-28T22:47:00.000+01:00

No, you're not going to get any punk Christmas songs from me. But, just a couple of days after Christmas, I thought of something Christmassy to post anyway. It's a recording of the legendary Rock Against Religion festival held at punk club Kaasee, Rotterdam, on Boxing Day 1979, featuring the cream of Dutch punk like the Squats, Tandstickorshocks, Ketchup (of the prophetic song "Herman Brood Val Dood") and Jezus and the Gospelfuckers. Live recordings as well as on-the-spot interviews were broadcast by VPRO radio the week after; I was too young to hear it first-hand but luckily someone recorded this from his/her radio so we can plunge into the hissy depths of history now... (If someone has better recordings of this, please get in touch!)
The broadcast starts off with a sort of VPRO Theme Tune which I'm pretty sure is played by Dorpsstraat, the ramshackle neo-60s-without-knowing-it outfit whose "Lepeltje" was the second best track (after Ivy Green's "Pak 'm Beet") on the Uitholling Overdwars comp. Then it's over to VPRO's resident punk Marjoke Roorda, whose chewing-gum-in-mouth delivery sounds a bit studied to these ears now. She announces first act Jules Deelder; now this guy became very famous over here later on, and it's my guess that the TV showing of this very appearance, that showed him getting soaked in phlegm, might just have helped a tiny bit...! Now you can hear for yourself what it was all about; legend had it he never flinched under the Green Rain that poured down, but aural evidence shows he did lose his cool towards the end.
More than the music (great though it is, although I'm still looking for recordings by Tandstickorshocks; I have the part by Neh but didn't post it cuz it's boring), the interview bits are fascinating; some hippie VPRO guy walking around asking some random bystanders smart stuff like "Are you here for the music or for the anti-religion message?" What strikes me most is that back then, everyone still had their own regional accent; you can hear if someone's from Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Nijmegen (home of the Squats, who apparently took a bunch of fans with them). These days it seems like everyone in Holland has adopted the posh Gooi accent with the flat "R"...
When interviewing Jezus of the Gospelfuckers Himself (well, it was his birthday after all), the VPRO guy starts talking how some Youth for Christ guy he knew "felt just like his mother was raped" after reading their band name... It's the clash of the "We're sooo permissive (as long as...)" 70s and the "Fuck shit up!" 80s.
I've cut the broadcast (or the part that I've got) up in 4 parts; I haven't separated the music from the talking; a big apology goes out to my non-Dutch readers!

Theme Tune/ Jules Deelder
Ketchup/ Interviews
Squats/ Interviews
Gospelfuckers/ Interview

P.S.: These recordings were done by the RAR organisation themselves, straight from the mixing desk, and lent to the VPRO, who apparently were so slow in returning the tapes that a planned compilation LP never materialized! Too bad, as this would have been the first Dutch DIY punk comp.

D-A-M-P-S-Q-I-B!

2007-12-16T18:37:00.000+01:00

Now what really kickstarted punk into being? The masses of untutored teenage hordes taking to the streets armed with guitars, or a bunch of journalists, pissed-off because the subjects of their writings were getting too rich and famous to hang around and do drugs with anymore? Fact is, the writing was there (on the wall, if you wish) before the music. As early as 1971-72, critics like Greg Shaw and Lester Bangs had a notion something new and exciting had to come along, dragging forgotten bands like the Sonics and Count Five from their graves as examples of how it should be done. Bangs' 1971 piece on the Count Five was set in a fictional distant future, in which he's telling his grandchildren:

"I recollect another mighty sad downer stretch long about the beginning of the seventies... 'xcept that one lasted so long we damn near dried up an' boycotted records entirely till Barky Dildo and the Bozo Huns showed up to save our souls..."

Barky Dildo and the Bozo Huns! Now if that ain't Punk Rock prophesized, I don't know what is! The truth is, of course, those Barky Dildos weren't illiterates; most early punk rockers grew up spelling every inch of their favourite music mags, so to many a teenage Creem reader this article might have been just as (subconsciously) influential as, say, a Stooges LP.

Some punk rockers actually were writers having a go at doing it themselves: some of them, like Lenny Kaye, Metal Mike Saunders and Jeffrey Lee Pierce did a pretty good job of it. For others like Charles Shaar Murray (Blast Furnace & the Heatwaves), it was just a lark. I'm not sure which category Giovanni Dadomo and his one-record-only Snivelling Shits belong to; fact is, their sole 45 is a stone cold classic.

Giovanni Dadomo's career as a rock journo goes back at least as far as 1971, when he did this interview with none other than Syd Barrett. (Just a side track: upon reading the interview I was surprised at how lucid Barrett sounds... Until I realized he's contradicting himself all the time; first he says he "learnt to work hard at art school", then later on he mentions his "art school laziness"...!) I don't know how much of a Harbinger of the Future Mr. Dadomo was in writing, but I know both Snivelling Shits tracks are right on the mark; he's razor sharp, wordy and incredibly funny at the same time, like a Cockney Cooper Clarke or Devoto. The music's as sharp as the singing, with weird effects thrown in (courtesy a young Steve Lillywhite, rumored to have been a temporary Snivelling Shit himself on bass guitar), and B-side I Can't Come goes on (without ever getting boring) for 6 minutes; must have taken balls in 1977!

Post-Shits, Dadomo co-wrote a couple of Damned tunes like I Just Can't Be Happy Today (typing this, I imagine hearing the classic lines "They're closing the schools/ They're burning the books/ The church is in ruins/ The priests hang on hooks" in his voice). Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago.

Terminal Stupid
I Can't Come

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD

2007-12-06T16:47:00.000+01:00

I was talking to 433rpm about tapes I put out back in the Stone Age, when it turned out he owns a copy of the most "famous" of them all, the Alle 55 Kort sampler. Given the incredible quantity of music he manages to post I won't be surprised to see the entire tape up there soon; in the meantime I'll give you some hand picked tracks...

Around 1984 I'd make Hardcore mix tapes for friends that would sometimes contain 80-100 tracks (learnt to write really small back then!), and I figured it would be fun to put out a tape comp with as many Dutch/Belgian bands on it as humanly possible. As it turned out - because of some bands contributing 2- or even 3-minute (god forbid!) tracks - 55 bands filled up a C90 tape, still no mean feat. While hunting down bands I got a pretty good overview of the Dutch "scene", prompting me to write a Dutch scene report for MRR which you can find here and, in hindsight, is about as captivating as a page out of a phone directory.

I sold about 350 copies of Alle 55 Kort; I never dared say this in public, but I actually made a small profit from it. Shock! Horror! I'd found a small electronics store at the Sarphatistraat that sold C90 tapes of just-about-passable quality at 2,50 Guilders ($1,25) each. The tapes (including booklets) sold at 7,50 Guilders, retail; a nice addition to my scant pocket money! Of course, if I'd told this to anyone back then I would have been keelhauled or something; it wasn't merely unthinkable to make any profit, it was actually suspect if you were breaking even. People would specify in detail how many Guilders they'd lost on their latest zine/ record/ whatever, to show how punk they were. Of course, at the same time they were on the dole, ha ha; well, let's call it state money well spent...

Most of the tracks on Alle 55 Kort were pretty lo-fi; due to no quality control from my part, there were quite a few one-off/ spoof tracks, sometimes played by one person in their bedroom, which gives it a Bullshit Detector sort of vibe. Lots of "famous" bands like BGK, Pandemonium and Funeral Oration submitted tracks, but I'll give you some tracks by lesser-known bands.

Oigasm - Brutal Bugger: first track on the tape; I had a soft spot for this half-skin/ half-punk band that were living in a small village in the middle of the Bible Belt; heard they were getting shot at in the street, stuff like that...

Dasbreetels - Cowboy Henk: just a fun song by a little-known band from near Rotterdam.

Larm - Don't Want To Pay Their Debts: great lo-fi practice recording.

Black Vampire - Punker Parents Plan: from Limburg, like Pandemonium, but not as well-known. Drummer Han was later in Swampsurfers. I think this band is still around in some mutated form or another...

Chlorix - Suicide: these guys were from Hengelo in the east, played some rough but still melodic punk; I think one of the members was later in indie rock band Cords (or that's some other bloke called Marcel Morsink).

Kotsbrokken - Growing Older: band from the same area, same kind of sound, know nothing about them.

Sesamzaad - Ave Vis: these guys, also from the East, had some nice melodic HC songs on Holland HC 2, but I liked this slower track even more (even if it took up the space of 3 or 4 "regular" HC tracks!).

M.O.G. - Do, Bo and Al: didn't really realize it at the time because of the muddy sound, but these guys were already progressing away from their early HC sound towards the brilliant stuff on their classic Radio Rock EP.

Keine Fax - Masked Fascism: closes the tape. These guys handed me their tape in person at some gig, they were about 10 years old! Shit-Fi-aficionados, prick up your ears...!

A nice moment of glory came a few years ago when, while sleeping at this guy Clint's place in London (he runs Short Fuse records and is crazy about old HC), we were talking about obscure records; he'd show us one insanely rare record after another, then he opened some drawer in order to show us the piece de resistance, the Family Jewel...and out came a copy of Alle 55 Kort!

SOLID BARROOM SKRONK

2007-11-23T12:16:00.000+01:00

As a little kid I already wondered why the music I liked most - be it wild 50s rock 'n roll or mid-60s Kinks/Who-type stuff - seemed to have bloomed for a very short period, to be quickly discarded and replaced by more boring stuff. In contrast, the boring stuff (disco, barroom boogie rock) never ever seemed to go away. Later I found out this holds true for just about any musical genre I like: ska, psych, garage, rockabilly, bebop, even early New Orleans jazz: all disappeared after 1 or 2 years in the limelight. Why? Maybe these were all particularly combustible musical forms that appeared at moments of big social change so the music had to change with it.

But invariably, after some 15-20 years, these styles would all get "revived". Is that good, or bad? You can blame the revivalists for living in the past, but does that mean any boogie rock band playing music that never went away is better? The problem is, of course, that you can imitate what's on the surface but you can never duplicate the feelings and times that caused the music to sound like it did.

Somehow with Punk Rock there's a little twist in the tale. It never disappeared because it was never mainstream in the first place. Instead, it kept on mutating and branching off, all these little branches spawning their own little revivals every couple of years. One piece of bark off the punk tree didn't lend itself to reviving, though: those weird, squeaky, Beefheartian pieces of noise that labels like Rough Trade released around 1978-80. In New York they called it No Wave, though some critics preferred the word Skronk which I like too as it sounds like a blast from James Chance or Ted (Blurt) Milton's sax. These records, by bands like Essential Logic, Lemon Kittens, Slits, Blurt and many more, sounded like a bunch of kids were let loose in a toy shop; that's because these bands were kids let loose in a toy shop; DIY was in its infancy and for a while there were no rules. I guess that's why, after the little kids themselves grew up and learned to play properly, nobody could ever "revive" this kind of music.

The catchy named PragVEC, though very much part of that Rough Trade/Post Punk scene, were odd ducks in a way because on their EP you can hear they already knew how to play properly; the guitar squeaks and skronks with the best of them, but there's always this foundation of bluesy fluidity underneath. Susan Gogan's great vocals veer in all directions, from soft to loud to distorted, but always in control; guess that's why she got compared to Pauline Murray of Penetration a lot (Virgin passed them up using that as an excuse). Then there's the mock-French in "Existential", showing they knew their Beatnik roots. I don't know much more about PragVEC, except that their second 7 inch is pretty good too, though a bit more "poppy". Oh yeah, and the famous Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell played bass for them later on. An old NME piece on PragVEC says they rose from the ashes of "Trotskyite R&B combo the Derelicts". Trotskyite R&B? Now that explains it all!

Existential
Bits
Wolf
Cigarettes (1978)

(Actually, come to think of it, there actually was a revival of sorts of this type of music in the late 80s, with UK bands like Dog Faced Hermans, Badgewearer and Stretchheads, bands that I thought were much more exciting than their recycled-USHC peers of the time.)

ZILVERENBAGAGEDRAGER

2007-11-07T17:01:00.000+01:00

In my earliest days as a punk rocker I had a pretty broad taste; I enjoyed bands like the Jam, Au Pairs, Comsat Angels as much as the more "hardknor" stuff. But then, around 1981 there wasn't a strict dividing line yet; in fact, some "new-wavey" records, like for instance the Jam's great Funeral Pyre, packed more punch than some of the standard-issue punk of the day. One year later, this had changed irreparably; while American Hardcore took over the fasterlouder camp, most of the cool bands on the other side either broke up (Jam), went disco (Gang of Four) or went Top 40 without really changing but were of course verboten from then on anyway (U2). The watershed moment for me was when I read about a new band some ex-Au Pairs members had formed, called Apple on the Drum. Apple on the Drum! You think I'm going to scribble that on my jacket? To make things worse, they said their music was "really funky". Really funky, eh? Well, have a nice life! It was this New Wimpiness that made my subsequent immersion into hardcore that more rewarding.

That said, in the middle of those hardcore days there were two bands around that I thought were brilliant even though they had nothing to do with HC: Morzelpronk and Zowiso. Morzelpronk was Dolf (of the famous Koeienverhuur studio) Planteydt's band, a strange mix of surf, exotica, Les Paul and Robert Fripp that couldn't have been more out of step with the times. I'll post their first EP as soon as I get that spare copy Mathijs (ex-Morzelpronk, now De Kift) promised me...!

Zowiso's 2 tracks on the Oorwormer LP showed a band that had great ideas, but not yet the chops to put them into practice. Two years later, they'd evolved into the thumping, throbbing, wailing monster you hear on the great Beat Per Minute EP. Singer John Hollander was one of the best around, throaty and soulful in that typical "right-on English socialist" way.

My band once played at some blockade in front of a judicial building; it was us, Frites Modern, Zowiso and Morzelpronk on top of a truck. It was a pretty grim situation; the riot squad was fending off the building while a bunch of local right-wing hooligans were rampaging left and right (excuse the pun). In the middle of this grimness and violence Morzelpronk started playing their first song, "Koeienwals" (Cow Waltz), the most beautiful melodic piece of twin-guitar exotica Calexico never made. Surely one of the most surrealistic moments in my life (on a par with the day I saw Steve Ignorant walking while holding 8 beer bottles between his fingers and one between his teeth!). I'd love to post that one, but it was only ever released on the super-obscure Support the Miners' Strike comp LP which I don't have (also featuring the Ex and some great tracks by Zowiso, by the way). Zowiso's drummer Aad lives in Zurich and is still playing in a rootsy band called Trio From Hell; John's an insurance agent these days.

Army
Nuclear Power Train (both from Oorwormer comp. LP, 1982)
Blacks Prison
Mailbox (both from Beats Per Minute EP, 1983)

QUITE INDEFATIGABLE

2007-10-18T15:03:00.000+02:00

In punk mythology, Virgin Records are often described as clueless hippies who could only get the Sex Pistols after all the other labels pulled out. Well, they sure were hippies, but clueless? Apart from big names like X Ray Spex and Magazine, some of the most out-there punk singles of 1977-78 were released by Richard Branson's bunch; the brilliantly named Avant Gardener come to mind (that one's been blogged here and there), and of course The Table! Formerly called Can I Have This Table, Virgin asked them to saw off a piece of their name and released the classic "Do The Standing Still" single in early '77, making it one of the first eight or ten punk singles ever (months before Virgin became involved with the Pistols). It's a great piece of jittery pre-rulebook punk, and you've probably heard it/ own it. But the second leg of the Table saga, "Sex Cells", is not as well-known. Chiswick released it after Virgin dumped them (clueless hippies!), and it didn't do much; in fact, the Table kinda fizzled out after that. Too bad, because "Sex Cells" is even more frantic than their first one, a catchy pop-punk tune hidden behind weird dissonants, irregular rhythms and super-fast Rat Scabies-style drumming. Kinda reminds me of the Suicide Commandos a little. Maybe those two A-sides were really the pick of the bunch; both B-sides don't do much for me; "Standing Still"'s flip "The Magical Melon of the Tropics" goes on for too long, and second B-side "The Road of Lyfe" even starts off with a snippet of "Magical Melon"'s intro, as if to say they knew it was no great shakes either...? Still, I hope someone can prove me wrong and point me to some great lost Table cuts!

Do The Standing Still (Classics Illustrated) (1977)
Sex Cells (1978)

ONE AND A HALF DOZEN OF THE OTHER

2007-09-30T20:27:00.000+02:00

Why post something by The Ex? All of their stuff is still available, and the chances of anyone reading this blog not having heard (of) them are pretty slim, what with dozens of records out and almost as many tours under their belt. Well, I think their second LP History is What's Happening has sorta fallen between the cracks of their imposing oeuvre. Primitive-but-catchy 1980 debut Disturbing Domestic Peace will always hold a special place in the hearts of old punks, as it was basically the only Dutch D.I.Y. LP available for a long while. At the time of third LP Tumult (1983) their trademark experimental/eclectic style was more or less into place, and they started getting noticed abroad. History... sounds nothing like those two, in fact back then a lot people thought it was a disappointment. But hey, to me it was one part of the Holy Trinity that got me into Dutch punk (for the other two parts look here and here), and being fourteen and having about 5 or 6 punk records altogether I had no choice but to play it a thousand times and loving it! That said, it did take me some time to get into it; in contrast to the trebly in-your-face sound of their debut, History... sounds kinda muffled, almost as if they're playing in the next room. The words are hard to make out and the guitar is nearly inaudible, pushing (ex-Rondo) Wim's imaginative drum patterns and Rene's barbed-wire bass lines to the forefront. An Ex-member once told me he thought the LP was too rushed, but it's the unfinishedness that appeals to me. Some of the 20 tracks last only 40-50 seconds, and there's hardly any repeating verse-chorus-verse stuff going on in any of the songs. In hindsight, it's the closest thing to Wire's Pink Flag I've ever heard, not as an imitation, but as a similar "cut out the fat and get to the point" statement. Anyway, here's what this 14-year old was grooving to in the summer of '82 (not exactly "Someone Loves You Honey")...

Six of One and Half a Dozen of The Other
Barricades
Life Live
E.M. Why
Who Pays
Equals Only

(Occasional bleeps courtesy of my MiniDisc player)

VILE CHERUBIC UNREST

2007-09-19T10:38:00.000+02:00

Maybe the worst thing about the musically dire mid/late 80's isn't so much the stuff that sucked (which was about 99% of what was going on), but the stuff that was good back then but led to stuff that sucked. Let's, just for the heck of it, look at some DC area bands I was into at the time... I loved Fugazi when they started out, but what did their type of angular-punk-meets-singalong-rock lead to? To the plodding PC pomposity of Pearl Jam (the worst band of the 90's), and in particular their monster hit "Alive" (the worst song of the 90's, and basically Fugazi's "Suggestion" with the chords reversed). When it came out in '86, the Bad Brains' I Against I was a great comeback record fusing their early HC style with metal and funk; the next decade, 50,000 dreary "crossover" clowns doing the same thing, only badly. Rites Of Spring: brilliant, but unintentionally causing, gulp, Emo to happen.

It's the more obscure DC bands that seem the most untainted by the passing of time. Unrest put out their first LP in 1987; according to zine ads of the time it was called Tink Of SE, but my copy has "KILL 23 SHEEP" stenciled on its cover. Apparently, every record cover was a hand-made piece of art; I think 20 DC artists did 50 covers each (could be the other way 'round). I bought the LP because of the DC/Dischord connection, but it turned out to be a wholly different, and very tasty, kettle of fish. While Unrest also presaged a lot of stuff that was to happen, in their case it's actually all cool stuff. Their whole lo-fi anything-goes approach clearly influenced the likes of Pavement, and the muddy catchiness of "Die Grunen" has Guided By Voices written all over it. There's even a prophetic White Stripes-type of feel to it; just listen to the (almost) bass-less one-two beat and mock-upper-class English singing in "91st Century Schizoid Man"! "Laughter" sounds relatively dated, but I'll still include it because it was a mix-tape-for-girls-I-fancied staple of mine back then (along with the Descendents - carefully avoiding "Pervert" though!).

Another "different" DC band were the Vile Cherubs, who I knew nothing about until I picked up their posthumous LP, recorded in 1988. Post-Humorous Relief is actually one of the last of the illustrious Dischord-joint releases that were given half or even quarter catalogue numbers; this one's no. 33-and-a-third! I guess it's another limited edition; it's on coloured silkscreened vinyl and the sleeve is also silkscreened (printed over a stock sleeve design a la the original Flex Your Heads; Must be Jeff Nelson at work here...). I remembered this being sort of 60's/garagey, but on hearing it back I think it sounds a lot like Boston bands of the era, that typical neo-Burma sound. I also found out my copy is badly scratched; must be because at one point I had it hanging on my wall. Not the sleeve, the actual record! Well, it did get me cool points when around '91 Nation of Ulysses crashed at our place, and their guitar player Tim Green shouted "hey, that's my old band!" For your aural pleasure, I've obtained some scratch-free mp3s from soulseek (thanks, you know who you are!).

Unrest - Can't Sit Still
Unrest - Die Grunen
Unrest - 91st Century Schizoid Man
Unrest - Laughter
Vile Cherubs - The Man with the Photograph
Vile Cherubs - Broke My Heart In Three

POISON THIRTEEN

2007-09-12T17:16:00.000+02:00

When I started out a-bloggin' I decided to avoid posting US Hardcore, for the simple reason almost all blogs around back then already did a good job of it. But I have to post this one, because 1: it's one of my all-time faves, and 2: the currently available version (be it CD or mp3) has some songs cut off at the wrong places. Not that it's easy to determine when a particular song ends and a new one starts; from start to finish Poison Idea's Pick Your King debut EP consists of one big screech (o.k., two big screeches: side 1 and 2) without a microsecond of letting up. I guess they edited the tracks as close together as possible in order to have as much music on a 7 inch as they could. (The opposite of the Circle Jerks, who were so embarrassed by the brevity of their Group Sex LP they put extra long pauses inbetween the tracks!) The result is almost something like a hardcore opera; I can't imagine hearing the songs in any other order, or hearing one particular song isolated from the rest. "Last One"-screeee-"Pure Hate"-screeee-"Castration", etc. etc. Even though the songs are ultra-short, they're so fast-moving there's actually lots of stuff happening, lots of words, chords and breaks; it's the most condensed, fat-free record I've ever heard (insert obligatory fat joke here). The sound is also great; primitive 4-track, no overdubs, Ramones stereo (guitar to the right, bass to the left), almost nothing but mid-range (the opposite of what hardcore records sound like today). The drums sound like a toy drum set, the guitar sounds as if it's played through a transistor radio, and yet this is one of the heaviest HC records ever! How did they do that?

This was one of the HC records I held on to long enough to sell it for a "reasonable" price not too long ago. I thought my copy was a second pressing though, and said so, as a result getting not as much as I'd expected out of it. Later someone told me this pressing (black vinyl, red labels) was actually the first one pressed up, but as the pressing plant screwed up (the band wanted transparent vinyl) it was sold after the "correct" second pressing!

Seemed like pressing plants did a lot of screwing up with HC EP's, especially the ultra-short-songs variety. When Swedish band Protes Bengt wanted their 32-track EP pressed up, the plant thought "Oh, that's the one with all the short songs", and accidentally pressed up a second edition of the Mob 47 EP (which is why there's 2 versions of that, with different sleeve designs)! Over here, Larm's No One Can Be That Dumb EP was shoddily cut and pressed off-center (well, at least the copies I saw/ heard). There's Neos EP's in existence with Rudimentary Peni labels on them (or the other way around?). That just goes to show how weird and unusual it was for a band to put that many songs on a small slab o' vinyl. DRI even chickened out and made the repress of their classic 22-song Dirty Rotten EP an LP! For a while, a micro-niche of bands kept themselves busy breaking the world record over and over, putting out EP's with more than a thousand sub-one-second "songs" on them; after that came to a dead end it seemed like nobody's been interested in putting out great 13-, 22- or even 32-track EPs anymore. Anyway, here's to one of the best, in honour of Tom ("Pig Champion") Roberts:

Cult Band
Last One
Pure Hate
Castration
Reggae (I Hate)
Give It Up
Think Fast
Think Twice
It's An Action
This Thing Called Progress
In My Headache
Underage
Self Abuse
(Recorded January 1983)
I put side 2 before side 1; in my head(ache) that always seemed the right order; what better way to kick off than Jerry A. screaming "CULT!! BAND!!"

TODAY'S SOUND TODAY

2007-09-06T19:43:00.000+02:00

(No, there's nothing wrong with your browser, this is The Tommies CD cover) (with the golden ribbon untied as I didn't want to flatten it)

After 74 posts of old stuff, I figured it was time to post something new. A long time ago I wrote about (semi-)local legends The Tommies, 3 girls in their early twenties who, through some weird alchemy, stumbled upon the same great girl-post-punk-sound that bands like Kleenex and Mo-dettes (who roamed the earth years before the Tommies were born) were famous for. They're not "retro" in any way, but just have the same "fuck technique, let's have fun"-attitude. Joost has even compared them to Wormerpunk, which they're never heard of (they think the word sounds disgusting). I had the honour of recording them with my er... mobile recording studio, and here's some of it.

You Want It All
Hip
Electronique
Desert
(All tracks recorded 07-07-07)

BAND INDEX - OLD LINKS

2007-08-28T14:13:00.000+02:00

Just wanted to let you know I've made links to every Dutch band featured on this blog (what can I say, I was a bit bored at my job): just scroll down and look in the column on the right. All MP3s from about November '06 on all still posted, but some of the links are outdated; in such a case, just replace the wrong IP address with the right one: http://212.127.186.65/public/Blog/ (etc.).

NOISE IN THE ATTIC

2007-08-25T20:38:00.000+02:00

I've been thinking about posting Indirekt's Nacht und Nebel EP for a while; 1000 Aspirines mentioned it recently and I think this one's been overlooked in favour of their earlier work (which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact I played drums on it, by the way!). But there's one small problem: the revered Grand Theft Audio are about to release a 2CD(!) Indirekt retrospective, featuring all their records and then some. Now Brian GTA is a cool guy, but he's also very protective of the stuff he (re-)releases. So I'm not going to post the EP. Instead, I'll post some practice tapes we made 5 months before entering the studio, which I recently digitized from an old reel-to-reel tape lying in the attic. The recording quality is a bit rougher than the EP, the vocals especially sound a bit tinny, so... for research purposes only!
In the beginning of '86 I was sitting at home, bored, without a band, fed up with punk and listening to the Smiths, when old chums Indirekt called me up to ask if I could play drums for 3 weeks. Stijn, their second drummer, had quit; something with his girlfriend not allowing him to play in 2 bands anymore (he was also with World War Rockers). Well, those 3 weeks turned into 8 months, lots of gigs and lots of nice memories. Like the time we played with Disorder in Belgium and it turned out they didn't bring anything with them: with guitars, drumsticks, drums and distortion pedals borrowed from us they ripped through their classic More Than Fights and tore up the place (but not our stuff, fortunately). Or the gig in Antwerpen where a toothless Sid Vicious clone wearing a leather jacket inscribed with the words "BORN TO LUL" fell head first into the bass drum while pogoing. Well, you get the picture, grandpaw will get on with the music now...
May '86 we recorded early versions of 3 songs that would appear on Nacht und Nebel; the title track was already pretty much finished, although the EP version also has some sound effects and a great moody guitar solo by Martin Cramer (ex-(late line-up) Panic, also engineer at the great De Domme Lul studio). Prose in C, a very angry song inspired by the girlfriend mentioned before (that's "personal politics" for you!), sounds finished as well. The thing that amazes me is how fast and busy my drumming was back then; fortunately with the EP we had Martin Cramer around to tell me to play slower and more to the point...
Third track Niemandsland, still called Bermtoerisme(?) at that point, has different vocals/lyrics from the released version. Ik Wilde Leven, the EP's closing track, actually was a song I'd written for Gepopel that we never got to play because we broke up; I taught it to Indirekt some time after we did these recordings, so I have no choice but to post the EP version. Go ahead, break my arm, I fuckin' wrote the damn thing. The "funny stuff" at the end is our idea of playing disco; Rick Blom does a pretty good slappin' bass, while Indirekt's "fifth member" Ko plays keyboards (I remember doing the cheesy synth-drum break on the keyboard simultaneously!).
Comparing these "live" practice tapes with the EP tracks, you can hear Indirekt put a lot of work into their records, doing lots and lots of takes until it sounded flawless. But I still like that rough stuff too, in a way...

Nacht und Nebel
Prose in C
Bermtoerisme (early version of Niemandsland)
(Practice, May '86)

Ik Wilde Leven
(EP version, Oct. '86)

PROG PUNKS P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-PART 2

2007-08-15T11:38:00.000+02:00

I have this weird urge to dig into the history of any type of music I happen to like. Whether it's punk, rockabilly or jazz, at one point I'm going to ask myself: "Well, what did the very first *** (fill in the genre) records sound like? And what did the forerunners sound like, the Almost-***-records?" (This process of digging deeper and deeper once got me briefly obsessed with 20's jazz/blues... "Actually, we're not into music - we're into chaos": Steve Jones? No, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band said that in 1917!) It's like, whoever did it first, probably did it best. Although that theory doesn't exactly hold up in practice (the Vibrators' "We vibrate", anyone?), there's always something touching about "the ones that came first", a certain quaintness/ undefinedness coupled with the excitement of treading unknown territory.

The Doctors of Madness were one of these mysterious bands that get namechecked in early punk histories in such a way that you're aching to know more about them. You know, they minutely describe every day in the life of the Sex Pistols, and then they go: "Oh yeah, this band called Doctors of Madness were also around." What do you mean, also around? When they were around in early '76 I want to know more about them! Just exactly how "punk" were they, and why aren't they up in the Year Zero punk pantheon of Buzzcocks/Clash/Subway Sect/etc.? Back in the 80's/90's questions like these remained unanswered; these days, you ask the almighty Google or find that elusive record on eBay for 2 Pounds. Actually, by some strange cosmic blip I found their Sons of Survival LP at a flea market the same week I'd ordered their "Bulletin" single, so there's still hope outside of the internet I guess...

Both records are pretty good: fast, urgent rock with hints of both punk and prog, and Urban Blitz' electric violin has to be heard to be believed. Not "punk" in the John Cale/ Raincoats way, but more musicianly ("Waiting" even has traces of hillbilly fiddle!). Singer Kid Strange sounds like a cross between TV Smith (urgent) and Hugh Cornwell (thuggish), he's a good singer but you get the feeling he's straining to get this "punk voice". (But what the heck, so did Lee Ving.)

Needless to say, Doctors of Madness were regarded "punk fakes" by the music press; the fact they were actually around before the Pistols, briefly had Dave Vanian on (shared) vocals, and co-wrote Adverts B-side "Back from the dead" with TV Smith didn't help. But their records belong to that rare species of first-timers, music being made while it was still being invented, and all the more intriguing because of that. Like, say, in early rock 'n roll you had weird stuff like the Three Chuckles, who used an accordion; I guess Doctors of Madness were the Three Chuckles of punk.

Bulletin
Waiting (single, 1977)
Back From The Dead (Doctors of Madness, from Sons of Survival LP, 1978)
Back From The Dead (Adverts, B-side of Television's Over, 1978)

TWO ONE OFFS

2007-07-28T13:58:00.000+02:00

I'm going away on holiday, here's two U.K. one-offs to keep you entertained. The Rings featured legendary (Pink Fairies, Pretty Things, Tomorrow, Syd Barrett) 60's-70's drummer Twink on vocals (so who's drumming? Rod Latter, later of the Adverts, that's who). A great rocking slab of early UK punk; as the Pink Fairies were often called the English MC5, I guess that makes the Rings the English Sonic's Rendezvous Band!

The Subs, from Scotland, even had "1 Off" as their catalogue number so I guess Stiff records had no high hopes for this bunch. Too bad, as this is great melodic singalongapunk that even copies the intro of Stiff ur-punk record "New Rose".

See ya later!

The Rings - I Wanna Be Free
The Rings - Automobile (Chiswick Records, 1977)
The Subs - Gimme Your Heart
The Subs - Party Clothes (Stiff Records, 1978)

PUNX WIN AT SCRABBLE

2007-07-17T07:55:00.000+02:00

"Why don't you rip off your badges, you look like a christmas tree!", The Ex sang in '82. I guess they weren't too crazy about the identikit "leather, bristles, studs and acne" punk hordes. But for a 15-year-old living in the sticks like me, wearing badges (and writing band names) on your jacket was another means of communicating with kindred spirits. It's hard to believe nowadays, but back then if you saw someone looking slightly "punk", you'd automatically start talking, even if you'd never met. In determining this "punkness", the coolness of the band names on the subject's badges/jacket was of far bigger importance than, say, hairstyles. (A friend of mine who had "NV Le Anderen" written on his jacket was once being followed by a couple of skinheads; after a wild chase it turned out they were actually the band in question, and wanted to thank him!)
Most Dutch punk bands had perfect names for printing on badges: Nitwitz, Svatsox, Zmiv, Bizkidz, Kotx, Ex (!): short and with as many angular characters that would give you lots of points at Scrabble as possible. But the coolest-looking band name of all was Rakketax. For a while, everybody seemed to be wearing Rakketax badges, and I have a sneaking suspicion it was more because of the great name and design than the music. Not that there was anything wrong with the music; both Rakketax incarnations turned out some great stuff.
First there was the female-fronted Utreg Punx line-up; their "Van Agt" was one of the very first mp3s I posted here. With singer Fretje they also recorded a single ("Rats"/ "What's for Dinner?") but that was never released. Fretje left to sing for the Pin-Offs (one song, "Rats" - yes, the same one - , on a comp LP), then became a journalist. While Rakketax' second line-up featured almost all new members, they still played the same kind of intelligent, catchy but still noisy punk. Their 6-song EP from 1981 is also one of the best-sounding records of the period (most studio stuff, for instance the Lullabies EP's, sounded too dry and separated). I love the trebly (Fender?) guitar that alternates between punk thrashing and chimey, almost new-wavey riffs. If you like this, also check out their tracks on Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zit from the following year.

Occasion
Unifil
Status
Harpoon
Labour
Decadence Floor

SLEEPY SOUNDS

2007-07-05T14:47:00.000+02:00

Here's a record I've never seen posted in any blog, so I guess I have to do it. Back when I started digging for early punk sounds there was very little information at hand; I'd look for band names I'd seen mentioned in MaximumRocknRoll, which happened to be mostly Bay Area bands: Crime, Avengers, Mutants, etcetera. I couldn't believe my luck when I came across a Mutants record called "Boss Man", only to find out these Mutants were from England and played disappointing pub-rock. (Ironically, nowadays this record is regarded a KBD punk classic - on eBay...) I was luckier when, around 1985, Cas B. (brother of Antidote's singer Benno) of the Hoorn Dropstyle record store put a box in front of me and said: "This just came in; you can have the whole box at 25 cents each." I checked out its contents and came up with two Frisco punk gems: the first Nuns EP and the Sleepers 5-song EP. I declined his offer to buy the whole box (god knows what else was in there that I didn't know at the time!), and went home with just these two slabs. While the Nuns - which Americana-fanatic Cas B. would be tickled to hear contained a young Alejandro Escovedo - delivered one great song ("Decadent Jew", one of the wildest punk tracks ever to feature piano) and two so-so cuts, the Sleepers just floored me. Trashy, grungy and druggy in that typical San Francisco "beatnik punk" way, but with a dark power that goes deeper than the usual punque roque, at times even psychedelic-sounding (the middle eight of "Linda" sounds exactly like the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"!). The weird thing was: while I was crazy about them (even made my own "Sleepers" T-shirt) they seemed to be beyond obscure. The only info I could gather about them was that one or two members later formed Flipper. Even later, with the revival of old punk nuggets (like, for instance, "Decadent Jew") courtesy of the Killed By Death-bootleg series, the Sleepers' more er... sleepy sounds fell between the cracks, not punk enough for KBD, not arty enough for the Residents/Tuxedomoon crowd. It took a one man crusade by rock journo Jon Savage to wake some people up to the magic of the Sleepers; I even think there's been a CD reissue. This is from my own scratchy vinyl:

She's Fun
Linda
Seventh World
No Time
Flying
(Win records, 1978)

DE GROOT, GRINDPADGELUIDEN!

2007-06-22T17:21:00.000+02:00

The phenomenon called Grindcore completely passed me by. I saw Heresy in 1986 and I didn't like it. When Napalm Death arrived on the scene I thought they were just a joke. In hindsight I think I never gave it a chance, I simply didn't want to like it. Maybe it was because this particular bastard son of Hardcore caught on at a time I was getting away from HC, into 70's and 60's music. Or maybe I was already too familiar with Grindcore's two main ingredients: ultra-fast "steak-cutting" style drumming and The Grunt. As early as 1982, local heroes Blitzkrieg played at grindcore speed. I sorta looked up to them, quite literally as they were all big, tall (and big-haired) guys. They were "Crass punks" who thought they had some pretty serious stuff to get off their chest (but hey, so was I, back then). Their Complete Disarmament LP from 1983 doesn't hold up that well after two dozen years; the ultra-fast tempos often send them flying off the rails, and the tone-deaf singing gets tiresome after a while. But it still establishes them as pioneers in the steak-cutting er... steaks.

One of the first singers to introduce the Neanderthal "undecipherable at any speed" grunt was Hans of Amsterdam's Mornington Crescent. I remember people seriously didn't know if "Possession", their EP's opening track, should be played at 33 or 45 rpm! Mornington Crescent didn't play a lot, and I vaguely recall they were deemed "politically incorrect" by some of the scene's more left-wing elements. But apart from the fact Hans was nicknamed Heinrich, I never noticed anything "wrong" about him when he tried out as a singer for my band Gepopel back in '85. I wanted to concentrate on my guitar playing (as the saying goes...) and he wanted to give it a try. The first song we practiced was In Our Hands; we did the instrumental intro, and then instead of my "baby-voice" (courtesy Tony Nitwit) this earthshaking roar comes in! I remember falling about laughing, unable to continue playing the rest of the song. It sounded great (I wish we'd recorded it), alas, 6 weeks later we'd imploded and it all came to nothing.

Anyway, behold the true roots of Grindcore:

Mornington Crescent - Possession
Mornington Crescent - Dying In The Street
Mornington Crescent - In Bed
Blitzkrieg - System Needs War
Blitzkrieg - Dankbaar
Blitzkrieg - Wat Ben Je Dom
Blitzkrieg - Val

(All songs 1983)

CAN'T STAND MY PRODUCER

2007-06-10T20:22:00.000+02:00

One of those funny ironies in Dutch punk history is that Arjan of Frites Modern - first called Duphar, after Philips' chemical division - later worked for Polygram, Philips' music division. Someone told me he once got to meet Jon Bon Jovi, who in the course of the conversation turned out to be a big fan of punk rock, especially of the early English variety! My guess is his older cousin turned him onto it; Mr. Tony Bongiovi was a successful record producer who, in the 2 weeks that punk seemed to be the "next big thing", produced a couple of Ramones records, as well as the Rezillos' classic Can't Stand The Rezillos LP. How in hell a Scottish punk group got inside a slick American studio is something other internet resources (like punk77.co.uk) can explain in great detail; fact is, the Rezillos were so disappointed with the results it was one of the reasons they broke up soon after. "Our producer thought punk was all about playing as fast as possible, so he made us play every song way too fast", was one of their complaints. Well, the speed coupled with the slick production is one of the reasons Can't Stand... still sounds ahead of its time. But compare the LP version of "I Can't Stand My Baby" with the original self-produced version on their debut 45, and it's clear they originally had a much more garagey style. I like both versions, but I can see their point...
The Rezillos' swan song (not counting spin-offs the Revillos, who formed about 3 seconds after the Rezillos split up), the brilliant 1978 "Destination Venus"/"Mystery Action" single, managed to strike the perfect balance between tight, speedy and garagey. It was produced by Martin Rushent, who would 3 years later work with (ex-Rezillos, then Human League) guitarist Jo Callis again when producing the League's zillion-selling Dare! album. Now what would I come across searching Soulseek for "Destination Venus" but an off-the-cuff live cover version by none other than Phil Oakey & cohorts (in the process inventing the Sigue Sigue Sputnik sound 4 years early!).

MATCHBOX BLUES

2007-06-01T12:20:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it seems like nobody ever gets it right over here. 99% of Dutch music is a potpourri of all the worst bits of the worst bands (of five years ago). Every drummer does the lame, lumpy Red Hot Chili Peppers surrogate-funk rhythm; every singer still has their mouth full of marbles Pearl Jam-style; bass players look to Mark King for guidance and inspiration (I mean, that was already uncool 25 years ago!)... well, you get the picture. Living in the middle of this cultural wasteland, it often boggles my mind how we could get it so right at least twice: first, with the Beat Boom of the 60's; then, on a smaller scale, the DIY punk boom circa '80. How come suddenly, from out of nowhere, thousands of bands popped up in Holland with the right sound and the right attitude? It must have been some sort of primal instinct, just like all over the world everybody laughs and cries in the same way...

But while in the 60's they "had the numbers", the punks of the 70's were fighting a hopeless battle against the demographic curve. Which made it all the more amazing that, out of a micro-scene of no more than a couple of thousand scattered punks, so many remarkable records were released. Records that in a way were actually "more punk" than those made in England: our punk bands really couldn't play, really recorded in their garage and really had no musical ties to anything pre-1977. In the case of one of the most remarkable records of all, the 1980 Tandstickorshocks 12 song EP, it's hard to even find post-'77 influences. They were part of the Rondos/Red Rock scene, but while their "big brother band" often played pretty catchy, fast songs, Tandstickorshocks's music is totally hook- and chorus-free. Though they sound like they're just starting to learn to play, the playing is precise and to-the-point. It's not "energetic" or even aggressive in the usual punk way. In places, the music reminds me of stuff like early Minutemen, Teenage Jesus, Red Krayola and early Scritti Politti, but the difference is those bands (and the Rondos, too) came from an art background, while Tandstickorshocks were genuinely young working class kids. Well, in the TV-film about former Tand... member Pinkel (shown on Dutch TV in 1982) he worked as a wallpaperer, and the great footage of his band playing the Kaasee club shows him and the other singer teasing their hair in the bathroom mirror (one of them had a half-shaven "7 Seconds" 'do), saying deep stuff like "isn't it great, all the stuff you can do with your hair!", so I guess these guys were no hifalutin' intellectuals. I'm not saying intellectuals aren't allowed to play with their hair, but ... you get the idea. Tandstickorshocks were the 70's Socialist wet dream of common workers turning out great, totally original art. Too bad they only lasted about 2 years; they broke up around the same time as the Rondos (about whom I did a post last October) and, apart from 1 or 2 tracks on comps, these 12 songs are all that's left. I wonder if that TV doc will ever turn up again?

To Hell With Shell
Religion Pt. I
Kill For Peace
Tradition
Religion Pt. II
School Army Working Dying
Crisis
Vi Taenkar Anderledes
T Rights
Song For A Guy
It Stinks
The Wall

P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-PROG PUNKS!

2007-05-19T21:05:00.000+02:00

The mid-to-late 80's were something of a double-pronged treasure hunt; while I was discovering all types of cool 70's (post-)punk, I also pulled many a 60's/70's Prog Rock platter by the likes of King Crimson and (early) Yes out of the cut-out bins. Some of my favourite discoveries fell somewhere inbetween: Spizz' Do A Runner LP, Magazine of course, and last but not least, the great Laughing Academy LP by Punishment Of Luxury (Punilux in short). Weird chord changes and rhythm signatures, intelligent lyrics combining politics, sci-fi and surrealism, and the same guitar sound as (fellow United Artists artists) Buzzcocks' Love Bites. It even had a cool-looking gatefold cover that you could hang on your wall, not exactly Roger Dean, but still... I remember at one point my friend Joost and I had amassed so many secondhand copies of this LP we were considering opening up a used record store selling nothing but Laughing Academy's! The funny thing is, whenever the subject of Punilux came up while talking to some older punk, they would either love them or really hate them. "A waste of a good name", was the nicest thing punk photographer Ray Stevenson could say about them in his book. Famous rock critic Paul Morley once wrote an amusing "where are they now"-type piece about them, calling them "a politically correct version of the Stranglers" and recalling some festival where the audience were throwing stuff at eachother; Punilux' singer said something like "we shouldn't fight amongst ourselves!", whereupon the punters took a look at them (already a bit older and losing hair in places), obviously thought "ourselves?", and started throwing the assorted garbage at the band instead. Still, there's the records, and while not every song still stands up, there's a couple of classics that should win over even the staunchest punk. Like their debut single on Small Wonder, Puppet Life. And the great avant-geek-punk of Jellyfish. And if that don't work, the thumping proto-hardcore of Brainbomb should do the trick.

Puppet Life (single version)
The Demon (both 1978)
Jellyfish
Brainbomb (both B-sides, 1979)

NOGWATT (WITHOUT VANALLES)

2007-05-08T15:49:00.000+02:00

Early 1984 I interviewed Marcel of BGK/Vogelspin for a zine I'd just started; he told me they were going to put out a third volume of the (then already legendary) Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zit comp LP. Of course I immediately sent him a tape of my band, asking if we could be on it. It turned out BGK/Vogelspin didn't get involved; they were too busy touring America, so it fell to Maarten of No Pigs to get the LP together. Of course we couldn't call it Als Je Haar Maar... # 3, so for a couple of minutes it was going to be called Noises For Heroes, until they decided on the pretty heavy-handed Beware Of The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing.
Instead of the Koeienverhuurbedrijf, we went up to the Oktopus studio to record 3 songs, each band using 6 hours. If you've read my piece on Larm you know what I think of Oktopus, and its "cardboard box" sound is one of the things that turned Beware... into a disappointment. But it's the bands as well; Fokkie Outlaw was one of the greatest punk screamers around, but his new band SCA couldn't hold a candle to the Outlawz. No Pigs and Deadlock played good, solid HC, but without the playfulness of forerunners Null-A and Last Few. Hiroshima Nooduitgang seemed hopelessly out of place (and style) with their PiL-ish sound. Our friends Indirekt, who normally took their time getting things right, sounded horrible. And my band, well, we recorded some brand-new songs which we thought were our best yet but two weeks later we realized they sucked. That leaves just one band that makes this LP worth checking out: Nogwatt. They were a couple of girls that had already been involved with Vogelspin records for some years, but had just started their own band. Contrary to a lot of girl bands at the time who'd go "hey, look, we're girls!", Nogwatt didn't want to be judged by their sex, and quite rightly so, because they rocked as hard as any band. Their singer Joanna had a great stage presence and delivery, I remember being slightly intimidated at the time by their sheer Right-On-ness. Drummer Ingrid also played for No Pigs (but I'd swear her drumming with Nogwatt was tighter!). Here's their 3 tracks from Beware Of The Wolf..., so you don't have to hunt the whole LP down. A year later they put out the great Fear EP, which has been posted (and bootlegged) here and there already I think.

Media Control
Feel Like Killing Someone
Constitutional Lies

(recorded around Oct. 1984)

I'M NOT A FOOL, I'M AN UPSTART

2007-04-26T20:52:00.000+02:00

For all the influence the Sex Pistols had, there were very few other punk bands that actually sounded like them. The lean, proletarian early Clash - whose first LP, in true Socialist fashion, was produced by the guy who did their live sound - seemed to have been the sonic template for most '77 bands instead. Not that those bands had much of a choice; the Pistols' Big Sound was the result of hiring top producer Chris Thomas, who'd worked with Roxy Music and the Beatles (!) among others. Apart from that, they played a little slower than most bands, giving all 22 overdubbed guitars room to roar. During their lifetime this trademark sound, combined with their Public Enemy no. 1-status, would have had any soundalike band slagged off as copyists right away; but as soon as the Pistols quit one band took their sonic cloak, adorned it with football-chant choruses and ran with it: I'm talking about Sham 69, of course. I really like their hit singles (apart from Hurry Up Harry), but I still feel slightly embarrassed every time old clips of them appear on TV programs like TOTP2. I mean, Jimmy Pursey looks like the Fast Show's Paul Whitehouse impersonating a punk singer. Still, he must have been much smarter than he appeared to be; on the height of Sham's fame he took up record producing and turned out a couple of the greatest-sounding punk productions of the era. The Cockney Rejects and the Angelic Upstarts both played a stripped-down, workingman's version of punk, and both bands had Mr. Pursey weave his magic on their sophomore singles.

The Rejects' "I'm Not A Fool" has one of the all-time greatest intros in rock music. Building slowly from muted guitar to melodic bass-line and then suddenly exploding, the instruments all sound as if you're inside them, an incredibly powerful (almost violent) sound, all the more so because they take it at a pretty slow speed. Jimmy Pursey is trying to make them sound like Sham, who were trying to sound like the Pistols, but something entirely new emerges: a sound soon to be known as Oi!

The Angelic Upstarts were sort of a punk version of Brassed Off; their self-produced "Liddle Towers" single was their ticket out of the coal mines, but their greatest moment came with their Pursey-fied second single "I'm An Upstart", another Oi landmark. The Upstarts sometimes got dangerously close to 70's metal, but "Upstart" (as well as the ever so slightly Motown-ish B-side "Leave Me Alone") had just the right amount of primitivity, anger and loudness-bordering-on-violence to've become their defining record.

As far as I know, Jimmy Pursey's career as a producer ended as abruptly as it started; Sham had split and he was going through a confused period (check out Henry Rollins's recollections on Black Flag meeting up with him in his "Get In The Van" book); too bad, he might have turned into the Punk Phil Spector. Come to think of it, maybe it's a good thing he didn't...

Cockney Rejects - I'm Not A Fool
Cockney Rejects - East End
Angelic Upstarts - I'm An Upstart
Angelic Upstarts - Leave Me Alone

(All tracks 1979)

GIMMIE GIMMIE THE OTHER THING

2007-04-20T17:25:00.001+02:00

The Germs' Pat Smear, 1977. Picture by... oh, you already know?

The recent news of former Germs drummer Don Bolles' incarceration for possession of soap (a punk crime if ever there was one) added another bizarre chapter to the already highly surrealistic Germs saga. A bunch of Queen fans team up to form California's most primitive, peanut-butter-smearing punk band; two years later - with the help of Joan Jett - they turn out the tightest and fastest record of its era. Singer has a Charlie Manson-style following, seems barely able to talk most of the time, but produces some of the greatest, most poetic (or incomprehensible?) lyrics ever heard in punk. In his quest to become a legend he kills himself... a day before John Lennon gets killed (in Holland they call this "doing a Gerrie Knetemann"). I'm looking forward to seeing the movie!

Although the Hardcore years seemed like one big NOW, with new bands and records popping up almost weekly, there was one old band always lurking in the background, the band that had already been there years before...you guessed it. Hell, there were even pictures of Darby Crash holding a "Germs"-emblazoned skateboard! I first heard the Germs on the Tooth And Nail comp which I bought secondhand around this time; I still remember how s-l-o-w the Controllers tracks sounded to my HC-brainwashed 16-year old ears. (Hmm, brainwashed ears?) But the Germs (as well as the Flesh Eaters and Middle Class, also on the LP) more than made up for it. Apart from playing fast they had a wild jumpin-at-ya sound, with Pat Smear's trebly Hagstrom guitar and Darby's "caged panther" growl way high in the mix. Although tracks like Strange Notes were pretty intricate, the band constantly sounded as if they were almost descending into chaos. A little later I scooped up their posthumous What We Do Is Secret mini-LP, which was even better! Their 1977 cover of Chuck Berry's Round and Round (recorded with future X drummer D.J. Bonebrake) has the longest false start ever, the tracks off their Lexicondevil EP are pure genius, and the live stuff's great and very funny, too. I think I prefer this shambolic version of the Germs to the tightened-up warhorse Germs you hear on the famous (GI) LP. I won't deny (GI)'s greatness, but it kinda sounds too good, too tight and streamlined; it sounds like a very well-produced mid-80's HC record instead of a 1979 punk record. Well, check it out for yourself:

Round And Round (1977, What Records session)
Lexicondevil
Circle One (1978, from What We Do Is Secret)
Manimal
Strange Notes (1978, from Tooth And Nail)

P.S.: These Lexicondevil and Circle One mixes sound very different to the versions I've heard on any reissues; I prefer these mixes, but that might be out of familiarity. The CD (and 7 inch?)-versions have some very irritating clean guitar overdubs. Also, I think on all reissues they've left off Round and Round's false start.

RADIO ROCK

2007-04-13T22:16:00.000+02:00

(BVD, picture scanned out of "Het Gejuich Was Massaal")

So what will we do when every single early Dutch punk record has been posted on blogs like these? Look for old radio broadcasts! There must be lots of live-in-the-studio stuff out there on rusty, dusty tapes; VPRO, the Netherlands' most progressive broadcasting corporation, took to punk in a big way in those years. Ketchup, Mollesters, the Christmas '79 Rock Against Religion festival featuring the Squats, Tandstickorshocks, Gospelfuckers, etc. etc., all slowly oxydating on shitty BASF cassettes at this very moment. As a relative latecomer, I could catch up by finding those old records, but I missed out on those early radio programmes. Here's a live session by The Hague's great BVD about which I have no info at all; it's from around 1979/80. The woman introducing them sounds like Marjoke Roorda, which means this was probably the Oorkussen radio show. I was once being interviewed by her (years later); she was from Delft (like De Straks!) near The Hague; I wonder if that's why so many bands from The Hague got on the radio...?
You've probably heard BVD's great Country Of Liberty EP; this is just as good, but a little more trebly-sounding. They were one of the few bands at the time who rocked as well as punked; some of their best songs are really slow and still packing a punk punch (sorry, I couldn't put it any other way!). I guessed some of the titles to the "unknown" tracks, but I'm open to other suggestions!
O.K. guys and gals, I wanna hear more Radio Rock like this! If anybody likes to help me out (I'd especially like to post some of the Rock Against Religion stuff, of which I only have a very bad quality rip), I'd be eternally grateful.

White Power
Fong Leng
Take It By Force
We Ain't Sophisticated
?
?
Mongoloids

DIFFERENT DEVENTER KOEK

2007-04-02T10:37:00.000+02:00

These days all towns look the same wherever you go; same houses, same shops, same bunker-like concert halls (that want the live music to end as early as possible so they can let another paying crowd in for the night disco). Guess you can't blame today's bands for sounding the same. About 20-25 years ago this was still very different; most of today's clubs started out as squats back then, run by people who actually liked music. Small record shops would often have their own "flavour", reflecting the tastes of the people running them. Likewise, bands from different towns would sound different. For instance, Venlo in the south had a distinctive sound of its own. (O.K., that was because the same people played in every band!) And Wormer of course. Alerta were from Deventer, a town in the east famed for its Deventer Koek, and though they forged a friendship with such "Wormer" bands as The Ex and Zowiso, they were pretty much on an island stylistically. I didn't know a lot about them, though I remember reading a Koekrand interview where they named their main influences; "The Damned and Zowiso". At a time when it was de rigueur to name about 300 ultra-obscure Latvian bands as your influences, this sounded pretty refreshing. It took a couple of years before I scooped up their 1983 In A Land Of A Thousand Pretty Dreams LP; guess the hippy dippy cover (and title) put me off. There was no need to fear; from the first booming bass notes of "Jill, Jack and John" you get immersed in that great typical early 80's Koeienverhuur sound; loud, metallic, grating and reverby (it's funny to think all these "doomy" Svatsox/ Ex/ GRRR/ Funeral Oration LPs were recorded in the middle of the countryside, overlooking green fields of grass, grazing cows, etc.). The songs are great too, definitely on the "softie", post-punk side of the fence but with just the right amount of anger and punk sneer. At times they even remind me of Funeral Oration, maybe it's the singer's diction...

Despite also putting out a split-EP with The Ex, Alerta remained pretty obscure, this being the time of the great Hardcore/Softie schism; they broke up pretty soon after releasing their one-and-a-half record. I had no idea if any former members had done anything music-wise since, but Steve of Low Down Kids (also from Deventer) informed me that guitarist Harry Otten later played in the Nightblooms, who were pretty famous (outside of the Netherlands) during the "shoegazer" days. Actually the Nightblooms' way of combining noise and melody wasn't that far removed to what Alerta were doing; I guess Alerta did so in less receptive times.

Jill, Jack and John
Jester
An Accidental Man
Masks
Living Circus

DAMNED IF THEY CARE

2007-03-25T15:32:00.000+02:00

People who like to pretend they're into jazz - but don't have the time to, like, listen to any of it - will invariably namecheck Billie Holiday or Chet Baker. Similarly, with Country & Western Hank Williams will always pop up. Mention say, George Jones, and big question marks will fly in the air (although the person in question might be familiar with the "lawnmower incident", which is fast becoming more famous than the man's music). In punk, of course, the most name-checked band by people eager to score cool points and unhindered by any knowledge, is the Clash. Rock critics, too, have adopted them as the "good guys" they could hang their Rock-&-Roll-will-save-your-soul theories on. The one big punk band however, that many actual music lovers (and musicians) will mention as their favourite, is the Damned. They were around from the start and put out the first punk record, but the lack of any revolutionary manifesto or brooding good looks rendered them useless to the music press. (I think it was Greil Marcus who even branded them "punk frauds"!) In fact the Damned's careless, even silly, attitude was way more "punk" than the self-conscious image building of their rivals. Also, they rocked! "New Rose" still sends shivers down my spine every time the cymbals get LOUD towards the end. They even split up, got back together and managed to be better than before, branching out into pop and psychedelia without losing their edge. The first Damned song I heard was their version of Grace Slick's "White Rabbit", on the (Dutch-only? Can you help me out, Jeroen?) Buy Chiswick Records comp. Brilliant and nothing like I'd imagined a punk band to sound like. Why, it's got - gasp - guitar solos! The liner notes exclaimed: "Is Captain Sensible the first guitar hero of the 80's?" Well, as we know history turned out a little different: Captain Sensible became the first punk novelty artist of the 80's. When he was riding high on the success of "Happy Talk", the Capt. paid my hometown a visit, appearing in the dreadful popular radio show Los Vast that was being broadcast from the local youth center. I was heavily into the Damned's Black Album at the time (the album everybody should be talking about instead of London Calling), so I had to check it out. I remember DJ Jan Rietman (fellow Dutchmen will now go YECHHH! in unison) announcing him in his typical "I'm interested in shouting alright, I think shouting is wonderful" way, and mentioning he actually knew the Captain from way back. Not being familiar with Mr. Rietman's musical past (Long Tall Ernie & the Shakers!), this news totally mystified me. (Now, with the benefits of Google, I've found out he produced the Captain Sensible/ Softies "Jet Boy Jet Girl" record back in 1978!) Anyway, the Captain did his old hit, his new hit ("Wot!"), and was out of there. I cycled through the surrounding streets for a while to catch a glimpse of him, but to no avail. As to his guitar hero aspirations, well, that can best be summed up by an exchange he had with Damned producer Roger Armstrong:

Captain: "Roger, why doesn't everybody recognize me for the guitar hero that I am?"

Roger: "Well, maybe it's because you're playing in your underwear most of the time."

It's a miracle the Damned have managed to be one of the most successful and long-lasting punk bands with this built-in self-sabotage mechanism. For instance, they could have had the great Shel Talmy to produce their second LP; he did the "Stretcher Case" limited edition giveaway single, but then who did they get to produce the LP? Pink Floyd's Nick Mason! Motorhead's Lemmy very briefly filled the Damned's bass guitar seat, just long enough to play bass on "Ballroom Blitz", but in the end he bet his money on his own band. "Looking For Another", one of the best - and rockingest - songs from the early second Damned incarnation, only ever saw the light of day on the obscure Moonlight Tapes comp LP (under the pseudonym of School Bullies, although the band is easily recognizable on the Sgt. Pepper-style cover). The Damned got more er... sensible later on, forging a goth-pop-lite style that provided them with a steady career from the mid-80's on, but it's the 1976-1982 years that people will remember them for. Well, if they have the time to listen to it.

P.S.: For our Dutch readers; while Googling I found a pretty cool picture of Long Tall Ernie & Shakers-era Jan Rietman standing in front of the 100 Club (!) around 1973:

TALES OF PIRATE JOHAN

2007-03-18T16:26:00.001+01:00

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

BULLSTHETICS

2007-03-07T12:42:00.001+01:00

For a short while, I went to school by bike instead of by bus; I could keep the money I saved, which went directly into punk vinyl of course. This short while actually lasted exactly one month: April 1983. As of yet, scientists all over the world have been unable to come up with an explanation why this month has been the wettest month by far in the whole 20th century. Every day, I'd enter the class room soaking wet. On the first of May I bought another month ticket for the bus. But the cycling had paid off; the great Bullshit Detector compilation was among the records I got. Compiled in 1980 from tapes sent to Crass by budding hopefuls, one might expect this to be some sort of Anarcho Punk Parade. Well, o.k., there are a couple of Crass wannabees; Sinyx have the Penny Rimbaud marching band rhythm down pat, while Counter Attack seem to have put more hours into designing their intricate logo than actually practicing. But there's also a lot of stuff on here that's more in the Messthetics/ Fuck Off records vein, and since that particular subgenre is undergoing some sort of revival I thought it might be fun to check this out again. Opening track "Jazz on a summer's day" features punk poet Andy T alternately blowing into a flute and shouting stuff like "do it!", backed by a jazz record played at varying speeds (very beatnik...). Then there's some tracks with people drumming on chairs, playing beat-up acoustic guitars or a harmonica, reciting lyrics that sound like they're written by a 4-year-old... It's the complete lack of any kind of quality control that made this LP sound so fresh, especially since these tracks are sandwiched in between "regular" (albeit lo-fi) punk stuff. It's as if they just grabbed whatever tapes were lying on top of the stack. Although about 80% of the songs are about war (of course), there's also a number of tracks in the Desperate Bicycles "we are you" anti-rock star vein, most notably Clockwork Criminals' er... "We are you", which I remember was a great song to cycle really fast to (hearing it inside my head, as the walkman wasn't invented yet). Bullshit Detector's motto seemed to be "dare to be bad", and some of it is really bad. Back then, playing it gave me a great feeling of freedom, of anything goes; I thought it would be easy to pick a bunch of tracks to post, but on hearing it back 20+ years later I found most tracks to be merely... irritating! That's how it goes, I guess. Well, whatever, here's some of the least irritating tracks:

Clockwork Criminals - We Are You
Sinyx - Mark Of The Beast
Reputations In Jeopardy - Girls Love Popstars
Amebix - University Challenged
Icon - Cancer
Frenzy Battalion - Thalidomide
The Sucks - 3

O.K., HERE'S SIDE 2!

2007-03-01T20:03:00.000+01:00

Without Name
Motherlode
Like Dying
Nothing Is Sacred
Emptiness
I Don't Need It
Communion

My post (see last week) on the Communion LP had me thinking about the media attention it got when it was released back in '85. Punk mags all over the world like MaxR&R were raving, but did it get any good reviews in the Dutch music press? It got no reviews at all! Guess they were too busy hyping the utterly boring "garage rock" of Claw Boys Claw. September '85 was when Husker Du first set foot on our shores; did anyone do the obvious thing and book FO to play with them? No, they got two joke bands to support HuDu at their Amsterdam gig. There was a complete ignorance of what was going on over here, I think even The Ex didn't get a serious write-up until around 1989, at the time of their first American tour. Not that it was a big inconvenience or anything, it just made us stop caring and look across the borders. Now you know why this blog is in English!

P.S.: O.K., Claw Boys Claw turned into a pretty good band later on (about a 100 years later).

I STAND AND I'LL UNDO MY DRESS

2007-02-22T20:38:00.001+01:00

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

GEORGE ROPER'S FAMILY TREE

2007-02-16T17:22:00.001+01:00

Most of my friends were really crazy about the Subhumans, but somehow they never really registered with me. A bit too "rock", too proggy, too much genre-hopping within one song, or maybe it was because they emerged at the exact moment when I was going head-first into US fasterlouderstuff? My friends would buy all their records, and tape me stuff that I would listen to two or three times. The funny thing is, about two years later I was heavily into 60's/70's rock, having bought my emigrating hippie uncle's record collection, and I'd lend those same friends my Pink Floyd records because they'd heard the Subhumans were into them!
One of the first punk shows I saw were the Subhumans, A-Heads and (Dutch punkers) Hollands Glorie at local youth center Troll (which, hippie name notwithstanding, has seen lots of great punk bands throughout the years). For some reason the Subhumans went on before Hollands Glorie; some people came in late to discover they'd missed the headliners (which was pretty cool of course, just be there on time!). I remember being amazed at the way they looked: two longhairs, one regular-looking guy and on vocals (as my friend Rude Swearing put it) George Roper's son! Remember, this was back when people were counting eachothers studs to check out how punk they were. It was a great gig, but to be honest I don't remember much about the music, not knowing any of their songs. Apart from "No Thanks", their track on the Wessex '82 comp EP, which I didn't care much about although I was slightly intrigued by the lines "So they put you in the papers and worked out your family tree". A family tree? Like, your ancestors and stuff? A look at the sleeve's back cover cleared that one up: there was a huge family tree of the four bands on the EP, going back all the way to 1978 and featuring great names like Audio Torture, Maggotz, Stupid Humans (you guessed it, a forerunner of Subhumans!), etc. This must have been the start of my life-long fascination with family trees (god knows how many times I've tried to make one myself, for one result look here).
Listening to the Wessex '82 EP now, the Subhumans track still doesn't really rock my boat. But the other 3 bands have more than stood the test of time: Organized Chaos play some pretty fast and imaginative hardcore; A-Heads sound really slick and poppy but nice and punchy anyway. My fave song is the one by the Pagans (not to be confused etc...) though, a great dramatic melodic-but-rockin' track reminding me of The Wall more than a little.

Subhumans - No Thanks
Pagans - Wave Goodbye To Your Dreams
Organized Chaos - Victim
A-Heads - No Rule

HI HA HONDELUL!

2007-02-08T19:25:00.001+01:00

First time I met Maarten van Oudshoorn was when my band and his new band De Kift (who'd just formed) first shared a stage around 1988. We'd just arrived; there was a crate of drinks standing on the bar. I looked around like a good boy scout to ask someone if I could take a drink from it. Maarten, who was sitting at the bar, quietly hissed "Just take it, it doesn't matter," while looking the other way as if we were doing something really illegal. Later I found out this was Maarten in a nutshell: nice guy with a bit of a street fighter persona. On stage that night, De Kift blew the roof off the place (figuratively speaking as this was the Bunker in Rotterdam which was underneath a road); the music was great but Maarten's energetic, er, declamating and bull-necked stage presence was just the finishing touch. We were amazed this was the same guy who'd sung for Pistache BV on their classic 1982 Koesette tape. Back then he still sounded like a 14-year-old schoolboy (probably was), although the menace with which he spat out his rolling R's was already there. I never saw Pistache BV play live, but on this page you can see a short clip of them playing the Oktopus club, Amsterdam. Like a lot of Dutch bands in the interbellum between old punk and hardcore, Pistache BV played a very fast 4/4 beat (I still have a lot of respect for their - and the Nitwitz' - drummer; done some drumming myself, but playing at this speed gave me acute RSI), but the songs on the tape, as well as their 3 contributions to the first Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zit LP, are a notch above most Nederpunk of the day; music as well as lyrics (mostly Maarten's) are really catchy, and most songs have a one- or two-line chorus you can shout along with ("Hi ha hondelul!"). Which is why this tape was a pretty big "hit" in punk terms. (First time De Kift played our home town, we'd written a bunch of old Pistache lyrics on the walls, at which Maarten laughed coyly...) Pistache BV were also one of the few bands that would work at getting gigs (a very un-punk thing to do for some, back then!) so they played a lot throughout the country. For some reason a lot of ex-Pistache/ Eton Crop-members later worked as music journalists (Pistache drummer Roy Mantel worked for music paper Oor); Maarten stayed true to his roots, contributing to Johan van Leeuwen's great Nieuwe Koekrand 'zine.
Anyway, I'd like to thank sonic-devil (if he's reading this) for providing me with the following rips...

Blind En Doof
Philips (from Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zit comp LP, 1982)
Hi Ha Hondelul
S.T.E.R.
Je Maintiendrai
T.V. Prive (from Koesette, split tape w/ Eton Crop, 1982)

EET U SMAKELIJK'S FIRST BIRTHDAY

2007-02-01T11:33:00.001+01:00

Exactly one year ago this week I put the first EetUSmakelijk post online. I never thought I'd make it past 10 posts, and here we are! When I started out there were only a couple of blogs (that I knew of), and they were mostly about American punk/HC. Now there's literally hundreds of them, covering every sonic nook and cranny imaginable. A couple of the early ones have since quit, which is understandable considering the time put into it, and the fact just about every rare punk record has already been posted! I'm not planning on quitting any day soon, even though I'm fast running out of rare records to post. For me this blog's never been about rarity anyway. It's mostly about digging up old memories and providing (scratchy) background music to it. So, I might as well use this occasion to look back on how I started collecting. Collecting, as in actively searching for old stuff, as opposed to buying the new stuff that was around. For me, the Big Bang was issue nr. 15 of MaximumRocknRoll, which came out in July 1984. On the front there were just a lot of (badly reproduced) 7 inch sleeves, and the word "COLLECTING". Inside was an article by Tesco Vee of Meatmen/ Touch & Go fame with yet more (even more badly reproduced) pictures of old punk records next to it. The article was funny rather than informative, although there's a great innocence about it, this being pre-big bucks days:

"Occasionally I get frustrated at not having certain records, and bid outrageous prices to get them. This is essentially a bonehead move, as it only raises the price of what everyone else must pay. But if the record is worth $20 to you, pay it..."

More than the article, I was intrigued by the pictures, endlessly poring over every one of them, trying to find out the names and titles. Nowadays it's hard to remember how little information about this kind of stuff could be found (it took me 5 years to find out what, for instance, "EYES TAQN" meant!). Even now it's a great puzzle to look at (only just now I recognized Wire's "I Am The Fly", that's how badly it's printed, ha ha), with some super rarities (Fix, Necros, Misfits "Cough/Cool"), one Dutch record (The Mollesters' "Plastic"; back then I thought the band was called Lesters!), lots of Dangerhouse, but surprisingly mostly easy-to-find English stuff. Those old sleeves looked so great, especially compared to most predictable post-Crass/ post-HC-designs of the day, I figured the music had to be great as well! So that's how I set out to find those old punk platters...
For this anniversary, I'd just like to show a couple of those great sleeves accompanied by one mp3 each, covering the not-really-rare (and therefore seldom posted) UK variety.

Early Lurkers sleeve done by the great Savage Pencil (whose own band Art Attacks' single was also shown). Dismissed by some as Ramones copyists, B-side "Mass Media Believer" shows they did have a style of their own.

Great song, as urgent and in-yer-face as the sleeve pic. I know it's not rare but I got as much of a kick out of finding this than I got finding the Helmettes single.

Posted the flipside not too long ago, here's the A-side (different from the version on their LP, by the way).

Nice collage type thing from pop-punk pioneers the Boys; here's the flipside "Whatcha Gonna Do", which sounds a lot like Status Quo's "Down Down"!

Back then I thought the band were called Enemies. Great, melodic tune written by Philip Chevron, later of the Pogues.

The Mekons' (and Fast Product's) first. A pretty sophisticated-looking sleeve for such an ultra-primitive record. I like the way the shouty vocals jump out at you in "Heart and Soul".

Famous drummer moonlighting as obscure punk rocker in "Don't Care".

Early Step Forward release, with a pre-Adam & the Ants Marco Pirroni doing some mean soloing on "Man Of The Year". My copy was pressed a little off-center, so I had to file a bigger hole for your listening pleasure!

PUNK AS FUCKH

2007-01-26T12:12:00.001+01:00

What kind of weird cosmic shit(h) would have caused Spierdijk, a village so small they had three-digit phone numbers, to become a local punk stronghold in the early 80's? For a while it seemed like everybody between say, age 16 and 25, was into punk over there. The gigs organised by Rhythmsticks (est. 1979) served as punk baptisms for many friends of mine; although Spierdijk is about 7 miles from Hoorn, everybody would brave rain and storm to go there by bike (no mean feat when you realize the only stuff you could spike your hair with back then was soap!). For all the activities brewing in Spierdijk (apart from punk concerts, they had record labels, zines, a pirate radio station, and a bowling club!) there weren't any actual punk bands from the village. Apart from Shith! But they'd long broken up by the time I first set foot in Spierdijk. When I found their record around that time I immediately filed it under "old guard" because of the organ and the Ramonesy melodies. Of course, in hindsight, it's a classic! Shith are one of those one-offs that came from nowhere and went straight back there. Their record serves as a time capsule back to pre-Internet, pre-cable TV days when a band living in the countryside would develop their own style, as well as spell "shit" wrong (either that or they named themselves after some Islamic prophet!).
I talked to the guy to the left of the picture once (think he's called Jos, he wrote and sang "Tonight"), when someone pointed him out to me at one of the On(w)ijs festivals in Spierdijk, mid-90's. He said he still had a couple of boxes of the record at home. I wrote down his phone number but didn't ever contact him; this was right before the Killed By Death days, so I guess those records will be long gone by now!
I've heard the guy who wrote and sang "Suicide" (to the right of the picture) died years ago, don't know if it was an actual suicide...

Tonight She's By My Side
Suicide

DO WE REALLY WANT TO HURT YOU?

2007-01-18T20:22:00.001+01:00

One of the things I was looking for on my recent visit to the UK, was former pop mover & shaker (Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Wham!) Simon Napier-Bell's book You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, which I thought was out of print. Not only did I see a brand new reprint of that book on the shelves, but there was another book by him sitting next to it. It was thicker and had smaller lettering, so I bought that one instead! Black Vinyl, White Powder is a roller-coaster ride of a read, taking in no less than the complete history of UK pop from about 1956 on. What's great about it is that it's written from the viewpoint of someone who was (1) a manager (as opposed to an artist) and (2) gay. Napier-Bell is equally at home with scandalous gossip and business figures, and isn't afraid to share some of his own ideas with us. One of his theories: just like American rock & roll was influenced and informed by black culture, English rock & roll was influenced by gay culture (just think of the rock stereotype of the flamboyantly anti-bourgeois, eternally youthful loner). Another great one: they don't find the right drugs to go with the music; they invent the right music to go with the drugs! In that light, here's his account on the birth of punk rock:

"A new drug appeared, as speedy as cocaine but much cheaper, and it revitalised the music business. Amphetamine sulphate came as pinkish white crystals that had to be chopped fine enough not to scrape the nose when they were sniffed. It was a drug of pure aggression, the high came quickly and made you want to charge like a bull, but it was also disgusting. To complement its foulness, sulphate users needed to find a new type of music as rough-edged and disgusting as the drug itself. What they came up with was punk rock."

Simon Napier-Bell, though one of the "old farts" by 1977, knew enough about English subcultures to want to be involved, so he went about finding his own punk band:

"At the end of the first year of punk, there were probably more people in the music business who'd never seen a punk band play than people who had; I was one of them. So I went one night to a punk club in Soho to see what I've been missing. When the group came on-stage they stiffened their bodies and bounced up and down as if they were on pogo sticks. Thirty minutes later I was backstage offering a management contract with an advance of ten thousand pounds. The next morning I called Derek Everett at CBS and described what I'd seen."They jump up and down as if they're on pogo sticks and spit at the audience.""So do a thousand other bands," he told me."

The band he signed was called London, nowadays most famous for having future Culture Club drummer Jon Moss among its ranks. They were better musicians than the "average" punkers, but compensated (according to Napier-Bell) by behaving especially rude and vulgar. There's a classic anecdote where Napier-Bell calls Jon Moss (the most vulgar one) on the phone only to have it answered by a very well-behaved posh-sounding lady who turns out to be his mum! Despite major label support, London went nowhere fast and Napier-Bell quit punk rock to hit paydirt with Japan and Wham.
Curious what London sounded like, I looked for and found their 1977 No Time EP, supposedly their finest hour. First track "Summer Of Love" ain't no great shakes; pretend-punk in the vein of Depressions informing us that, wait for it, "The summer of love was just one big mess!" Then there's a punked-up version of the Easybeats "Friday On My Mind"... Funny how almost all punk covers of 60's songs don't come close to the original; this one has its moments (I like the way he sings "Everybody seems to nag... MEUH!" Gumby-style) but it's still less than essential. My fave track on this EP is "No Time", nice fast-paced melodic stuff sorta like the 2nd Clash LP.
After London, Jon Moss did a brief stint in the Scabies-less Damned (making him the only person to have been in 2 of the 3 top UK punk bands, as he was an early drummer for the Clash as well!). The Damned broke up, and Jon Moss formed The Edge with fellow former Damned Lu Edmonds. (There's a rumour they thought about having Dave Vanian or Captain Sensible in as well, but decided against it on grounds of professionalism!) Their "Macho Man" debut 45 is pretty good, I like it better than London; it's almost powerpop but with a sinister Stranglers-type vibe.
O.K., here's the music, the London tracks sound pretty scratched but that must be my imagination as the seller claimed this copy to be mint!

London - No Time
London - Friday On My Mind
The Edge - Macho Man
The Edge - I'm Cold

EXTREME NOISE ERROR

2007-01-10T22:48:00.002+01:00

Larm in 1983, still with 2nd singer Dorien.

A lot of early 80's punk was recorded by the bands themselves in their practice room, using the famous Teac 4-track and as many mikes. Often they didn't have a clue what they were doing, unintentionally distorting tracks or getting the balance wrong; of course, most of these recordings sound much better than stuff done in "real" studios at the same time! Studio engineers were still going for the flat, dull, close-miked, separated 70's sound which worked for the Eagles but didn't work for punk. However, when around '82-'83 cassette tapes became as important as vinyl, lo-fi sunk another couple of notches lower. Instead of a 4-track, bands would use a ghetto blaster with one built-in mike, resulting in a big blur of noise (even if they got a decent sound, 3 or 4 generations of dubbing onto cheap tape would still make the finished product sound like a big blur of noise). All-time low point must have been the first Holland Hardcore tape compilation from early '83. I loved it! The terrible sound just added to the mystique of then-already-legendary bands like Zweetkutten, Zmiv and Larm.

Through writing and trading tapes I struck up a friendship with those responsible for the HHC tapes, Larm's Paul and Olav. Already having a reputation for being (straight edge) hardliners, in person Larm were actually very easygoing and fun-loving guys; I recall at one gig they filled up empty beer bottles with water, casually drinking it to the amazement of onlookers. When they went into the studio to record their debut Campaign for Musical Destruction, my bandmate Erik and I invited ourselves to hang around. It was at Studio Oktopus in Amsterdam, a small room full of baffles and foamrubber (don't know if that's an actual English word...). I was amazed to find out that, rather than playing a 2/4 rhythm, Olav actually hit everything at the same time, fluctuating the volume to create the rhythm, which is something I've never heard a (non-jazz) drummer do before or after! Paul tuned his guitar in a chord so he could move one finger up and down; this tuning caused the droning effect he sometimes got. When we got to the other side of the glass it was a huge disappointment to me; through the speakers it sounded nothing like their tapes, just a flat sheet of sound, with everything drowning in cheap bubbly reverb. I asked engineer Patrick to hear what it would sound like without reverb, to which his reply was: "No reverb? Impossible, that hasn't ever been done before!"

Slowly I've gotten used to the sound of Campaign... (anyway, it's become a classic among HC fans) but I still have a fondness for their shitty practice tapes. Here's some recordings I found in one of my tape boxes; it's slightly better-sounding than the Holland HC tracks, and I think it's recorded around the same time ('84) as the studio stuff (because Menno imitates the echo at the end of "The Pogo")... You compare and decide!

Ban The Bomb (studio)

Crucify The Pope

Crucify The Pope (studio)

2007-01-04T19:26:00.001+01:00

I'll be back in a couple of days!

THIRTY YEARS OF BOREDOM

2006-12-28T19:27:00.001+01:00

I usually don't care much for anniversaries, but this week I'd like to celebrate the fact that on December 28, 1976, one of my all-time favourite bands the Buzzcocks recorded one of my all-time favourite records, the Spiral Scratch EP. That's 30 years ago today!! (O.K., yesterday.) The third or fourth UK punk record ever, and the first real Do-It-Yourself record at that, it still sounds as witty, spiky and exciting today as it did when I first heard it, and when I say "it", I actually mean just the EP's most famous track, Boredom (opening track of the great Burning Ambitions comp which I bought around 1982).
While Anarchy In The UK, New Rose and White Riot were flag-waving celebrations of a new dawn, Boredom was already one step ahead by being... well, bored. Actually it was a song about boredom and a send-up of songs about boredom at the same time; not bad with the only notable predecessor being the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's "I'm Bored"! Another contradiction lied in the fact that the music itself was actually very exciting; John Maher's stuttering drums, Howard Devoto's pre-Rotten sneer, Pete Shelley's sawn-off guitar (sounding more like the saw than the guitar) and of course, the Legendary Guitar Solo! Two notes, repeated in exactly the same way throughout the instrumental break with no regard for the underlying chords, creating a beautiful (well, that's what I think) jarring effect, it's probably the single most famous punk solo ever. The nearest comparison I can come up with are the out-of-sync guitars in Captain Beefheart's "Pachuco Cadaver"; Pete Shelley himself claimed, on two separate occasions, to be either influenced by the clarinet solo in (again!) the Bonzo Dog Band's Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold or John Lennon's atonal slide guitar in Yoko Ono's 1970 track Why (I've posted that one in its entirety, because it's a brilliant - and very irritating! - piece of protopunk; John Lennon's playing sounds slightly Boredom-ish around 4:30).
Not being part of London's fashion incrowd, the Buzzcocks were a big influence on punks from the more remote parts of the UK, like Edwyn Collins from Scotland who name-checked his "favourite song" in Orange Juice's 1982 hit Rip It Up (even reprising the guitar solo, although they're playing it wrong using octaves instead of fifths!). I always thought the guitar solo in Elvis Costello's 1986 I Want You is way too similar to be coincidence, so another tribute? Upon hearing Slaughter and the Dogs' Cranked Up Really High (the second Manc punk record, hot on the heels of Spiral Scratch), I immediately noticed Wayne Barret's singing the Boredom solo during the ride-out part (around 2:00)!
By the time their EP was released Howard Devoto'd already quit the Buzzcocks, to return to the limelight a year later with the sophisticated art-punk of Magazine. Buzzcocks, of course, continued and sandblasted their scruffy noise into the powerful pop punk that became the template for every Green Day on this planet. Both bands would keep playing the song, Magazine turning it into a widescreen Rock experience almost a la the E Street Band on this 1978 Peel Session, while on this Buzzcocks live recording from 1979 they're getting the job done as fast as they can, presumably because they've gotten a bit (insert Beavis and Butthead-type chuckle here) bored with it... Well, even after thirty years (or 24 in my case), "Boredom" still doesn't bore me!

LOUD IS THE NEW SOFT

2006-12-22T12:07:00.001+01:00

"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

THIS CHARGE

2006-12-14T19:08:00.001+01:00

I was never a big fan of what's now usually called "UK82", those English studs-and-spikes bands on labels like No Future, Riot City and Secret that put out an endless row of similar-looking EP's in the early 80's. I mean, I tried to like them, didn't have much of a choice because these records where often all I could find in my hometown, as there wasn't any distribution network for Dutch DIY punk yet, and American hardcore was just around the corner. Some of those records were alright; Vice Squad, Blitz, Partisans had a couple of decent tunes, and I had a weak spot for Chaos UK/ Disorder for being really noisy, but mostly it was just this tiresome churning out of sloppy, unimaginative noise with interchangable song titles ("Fallen Hero", "It's Corruption", "Vicious Circle") by interchangable bands (most of them named Anti-this, Anti-that, prize winner for most original name being Anti-Pasti!) with interchangable "leaning-against-a-wall-in-full-punk-regalia" cover photos. People talked about U.S. hardcore being "generic" but this stuff was much worse. Although these records were on independent labels, I think there was a very cynical "low cost - maximum profit" marketing scheme going on here. These labels would press up some demo recordings paid for by the band, quickly slap together a black/white sleeve, and without much promotion easily sell between 10,000 and 50,000 each. At least the major labels had hopes for their punk signings to "make it big"; independents like No Future and Secret only seemed to be interested in a status quo in which every record would look and sound the same.
(Here I gotta make an exception for Mike Stone's Clay label, who only signed a couple of bands - Discharge, GBH - and took care in putting out great, and great-sounding, records.)
Later I found out I dismissed some great bands before I had the chance to hear them, because I figured they'd be just like all the rest of them. UK Decay was one; generic name, great band (as I found out 20 years later!). So were Charge; I mean, with Discharge, who in hell would call themselves Charge? Actually, Charge were already around before Discharge, and made some great, imaginative records during 1981-82. When a friend of mine played this to me years ago, I mistook the band name to be "Charts", that's how out of step with "UK82" this sounds. "King's Cross" on the same-titled EP sounds like a faster Stiff Little Fingers with Dick Subhumans singing. Rhythmically, it's closer to the syncopation of Americans like Jeff Nelson/Minor Threat and Grant Hart/Husker Du than to standard-fare Britpunk. "Brave New World" sounds even more like SLF, but a great tune nonetheless, and once again all over by 1 minute 20 (always the hallmark of a great band!). Their 1982 Destroy the youth EP is a mixed bag; the title track is remarkable for being extremely fast for its day (for the UK), and "No One Knows" is slower and has some beautiful intricate chord changes going on. Oh yeah, the sleeve is an early work by famous designer Neville Brody. I've heard Charge got more into a glam/wave thing later on. I've also heard they did another EP before these two, does anyone out there have it??

King's Cross
Brave New World (From King's Cross EP, 1981)
Destroy The Youth
No One Knows (from Destroy the youth EP, 1982)

ARACHNOPHOBIA

2006-12-07T20:54:00.001+01:00

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

TODAY WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE PLOUGH

2006-12-01T12:07:00.001+01:00

Does humour belong in punk? Hell yeah! For all the sloganeering and cool posturing by bands like the Clash etc., there was a lot of healthy, self-effacing sillyness going on right from the start; think of the Ramones singing "Third verse/ Different from the first", or the ridiculous two-note guitar solo in the Buzzcocks' "Boredom" (inspired by a Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band clarinet solo). Some of the best early punk singles were actually comedy one-offs (Jilted John, Alberto Y Lost Trios, The Valves' "Tarzan of the King's Road" etc.), and one of the Big 3 UK bands, the Damned, were as silly as they came (a nice counterbalance to Clash & Pistols). Then, at a certain moment, it became a separate category, so on one side you had your Crass/Discharge, and on the "funnypunk" (awful word but they actually used it!) side there were the likes of Splodgenessabounds. I still really like those early Splodge records, even though the "critics" usually dismiss them these days. Come on, "The Malcolm Opera" on their first LP is brilliant, who can keep their eyes dry during the deeply moving "Blocked-up Noses Aren't Much Fun"? The Toy Dolls lost me though, as did most of the "laugh-or-I'll-shoot" stuff that came after that. But the Notsensibles, man, they were an obsession to me and my friends back in the mid-80s. We knew the skits on their 1980 classic Instant er, Classic by heart, a favourite being the "Star Spotting" monologue ("another easy to spot constellation is the Big Willie"). Some quotes ("You cheeky bitch!") are still part of our day-to-day conversation. And apart from that, they played some kick-ass pop punk as well. The weird thing is that there were two versions of the LP, with some songs on one version but not on the other. For instance, "King Arthur" is only on the second pressing. They also redid a skit (The Linton Kwesi Johnson-parody "Ploppy"...Now who in hell bothers to rerecord a skit?) (the first - messy - one was better, anyway). In those pre-Internet days, we couldn't find any info about them, didn't know where they were from (the opening monologue on the LP didn't help: "from Brighton, or Rhodesia or somewhere...") or if they were still around. Now, through the wonders of the Web and Myspace, I can tell you they're back together again! (And they're from Lancashire.)
First EP Death To Disco is kinda rare, but their retake of that song on the LP is a thousand times better. The I Thought You Were Dead EP is actually still available from the band (at a steep 8 GBP though). And I won't say anything about "I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher" (let alone post it) because you should own it already (at least on a compilation)!
Here goes, you might like it, you might not, but give it a spin anyway.

Instant Classic
Freedom
King Arthur
Death To Disco (from Instant Classic LP, 1980)
Coronation Street Shuffle (from Death To Disco EP, 1979)
Teenage Revolution (from I Thought You Were Dead EP, 1980)

THE ROOTS OF REATARD

2006-11-23T20:59:00.001+01:00

The best new record I've heard in a while and one that's been on high rotation over here this week, is Blood Visions, first solo effort by Memphis punk savant Jay Reatard. Back in the day (1998?) I missed out on the Reatards; I guess because of the name and sleeve designs I thought they were sort of a Spare Tyre Oblivians. A little later I somehow got hold of the (insanely rare) debut EP by his next band Lost Sounds, which I loved. They were obviously influenced by early (English) punk, but instead of going "Gonna puke all over you" KBD, "Oh oh I love her so" poppunk or angular Gang Of 4 wavo funko, they're rooted in a tradition that, for want of a better description, I'll call Drama Punk. Intense, almost theatric singing underpinned by fast, urgent, often minor-chord music. (Sort of a very early forerunner of Emo that doesn't suck.) The Adverts come to mind, Wire (not the cool, collected Wire the likes of Elastica were plundering, but the frantic version), the Saints' brilliant "This Perfect Day" (single version, of course) and - to these ears at least - Chris Desjardin's Flesh Eaters (the early 78-79 "thinking-man's-Germs" lineup). Blood Visions is pretty much a continuation of this style; there's even a note-perfect cover of the Adverts' "We Who Wait" (complete with sagging drums like in the original!). The great thing is that, no matter what influences you might dig up, Jay Reatard's music is totally original, great and new! Buy it! Here's some (not too familiar, I hope) examples of what I'm talking about, oh, and as a bonus I've posted that Lost Sounds EP (that I sold a while ago, enabling me to buy 30 or 40 records by the likes of the Adverts).

Adverts - We Who Wait (1977, Safety In Numbers B-side)
Wire - Options R (1978, Dot Dash B-side)
Flesh Eaters - The Word Goes Flesh (1979, from Tooth And Nail comp LP)

Lost Sounds - Plastic Skin
Lost Sounds - Don't Bother Me
Lost Sounds - What Did I Say
Lost Sounds - Lost And Found (2000, debut EP on SolidSexLovieDoll)

GONE

2006-11-15T13:17:00.000+01:00

I'm gone for the weekend; my brother's getting married in England. Where? In Windsor! Sounds like an unlikable place to find old punk records, but then again, unlikable places are the places to look! Couldn't find any song with "wedding" in the title (except Blurt's "This is my Royal Wedding souvenir"), so no mp3 this time. Check out, if you didn't already, the great new Dutch blog 1000 Aspirines (see sidebar)! 'Til next week.

YES, IT'S ANOTHER SHITTY SOUNDING TAPE! (BY A GREAT BAND)

2006-11-10T12:21:00.001+01:00

As you faithful readers already know, the mid-to-late 80's weren't my favourite period in music. But if was bad in the US/UK, it was about ten times worse over here in Europe. While the early batch of Europunk/HC-bands had a certain naivety/cluelessness that only added to the charm, after about 1985 it was boring self-righteous goody-two-shoes stuff all over the map, with pretentious band names like Life... But How To Live It? and album titles like I Want To Tell About A Way. Even though a lot of those bands were nice people (some of them friends of mine), the sheer humourlessness of it all bummed me out even then. And then, in the middle of the hellish depths of 1988, salvation came in the guise of a tape sent to my friend Hans Engel (R.I.P.) by all-around cool guy Anderz Nielsen (who'd booked our band some gigs in Denmark earlier on). Wow, what is this? Everything about the President Fetch tape was perfect and totally at odds with the times; snotty, pissed off singing (only occasionally straying into "strangled eel" Jello-land), ratty guitar, drums that sounded like drums instead of "God's eardrum being whacked by the Eiffel Tower" (got this from someone who'd once tried to describe the Simple Minds drum sound, too good not to use) and great, simple, singalongapunk songwriting. We quickly got them some gigs around our home town; they came, blew the roof off and went. If the number of T-shirts worn around town is a fair indication of how good a band is, then President Fetch are one of the all-time greats, because it seemed like everybody wore their T-shirt for years (same goes for Raped Teenagers, who came, saw and conquered around the same time); in fact I still see one popping up occasionally! (What washing powder do these people use?) (Oh, sorry, stupid question.) I saw them once or twice a couple of years later, but as far as I can remember it was more metal-tinged by then; I dare guess that also goes for the records they put out in the 90's (that I haven't heard), but this tape will always be a classic!

Furred Animals
I Hate Cowboys
Bestial
Fuck KKK
Blasphemy

P.S.: I'm glad to announce this Yahoo "file not available" shit is done with; but it might take a couple of seconds before downloading starts as it's from an IP address.

OUAIS OUAIS

2006-11-01T12:46:00.001+01:00

As this blog is about punk and all I ever blather about is punk, punk, punk, some might think all I ever listen to is punk. To redress the balance I'm going to let you hear just what's been spinning at Eet U Smakelijk Headquarters these last couple of weeks: the brilliant Ultra Chicks CD series of French 60's Ye-Ye girls! These CDs were compiled around the late 90's, and I believe they're currently unavailable, so I guess it's OK to stray from my "R.F.V.O." (Rip From Vinyl Only) principle this time.I've always had a weak spot for French pop, not just "cool" Ye-Ye sounds like Jacques Dutronc, but also the really cheesy stuff, the kind that they used to play on the radio on boring Sundays in the 70's. I sorta expected the music on these CDs to be on the cheesy side as well, you know, like "Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son" and stuff like that. To my surprise I found tons of fuzz guitar, pounding rhythms and Attitude. In the recent Mojo piece on the 1976 Mont De Marsan punk festival it was pointed out that, while the French might not have concocted punk rock, they sure brought along a lot of the ingredients. These great obscure mid/late 60's tracks strike just the right balance between innocence, brattishness, irreverence and downright rebelliousness; four punk ingredients if ever there were. There's a mean fuzz/whammy Freakbeat guitar at work in a lot of these songs, anyone got a clue who it might have been? I think I also hear former Atlantic guitar whiz Mickey Baker (he of Sylvia) doing his bluesy runs here and there. These records were mostly one-(or two-)offs that didn't get anywhere near the charts, and the singers in question would turn to acting or making kiddie or MOR records, which is probably why the French never realized what a treasure trove they were sitting on until some Canadian released these CDs. O.K., let's go... (And I promise I'll be back with Ye Olde Pun Krock next week)

Claire Dixon - On M'Appelle Petit Bout de Chou
Christine Pilzer - Ah-Hem-Ho-Uh-Err
Dani - Fille A La Moto
Aline - L'Education
Aline - Censure
Christie Laume - Rouge Rouge
Charlotte Leslie - Les Filles...
OP4 - Attention Aux Garcons
Monique Thubert - Booff
Arlette Zola - Mathematique Elementaire
Sophie Mansart - Au Secours Aidez-Moi
Stone - C'est Ma Vie
Ariane - Tu Voudrais Que J'Oublie

AIN'T NO COMMIENIST

2006-10-25T12:35:00.001+02:00

Rondos' first photo shoot (for a local newspaper), 1978.

Someone's gonna have to write a book about the Rondos someday; a mere post in a weblog can't start to describe their place in (Dutch punk) history. In their short lifespan (1978-1980) they pretty much started the "DIY" 2nd wave of punk, influencing the sound, look, politics and graphics of almost every band that came after (especially The Ex, who sorta picked up where the Rondos left off). Comparisons were often made with Crass, and yes, like Crass these guys were long out of their teens and had a similar art school background and semi-militaristic stage appearance. But whereas I can't listen to Crass anymore, I still enjoy playing the Rondos' 1980 Red Attack LP. On one hand this LP is the blueprint for all those scratchy Dutch early-80's "agit-punk" records, but the Rondos also add a sort of 60's feel. Opening track A Black & White Statement sounds like Captain Beefheart playing the Velvet Underground's Waiting For The Man. Those clean, trebly Fender guitars remind me of early Subway Sect, or even early Dutch pop-punkers the Suzannes. Some of the tracks are in waltz time, some (like the ironically titled We Don't Need No Speed!) are in a very fast 2/2 proto-HC tempo, but always clean and precisely played. Singer John van de Weert had a great punk voice that somehow always reminds me of Boston's The Proletariat, fellow self-professed commies.
In the Gejuich Was Massaal book, Johannes (he changed his name from the English-derived John) says their Communist thing was "just a joke", which I find pretty hard to believe. But then again, these days you might as well admit you were a baby-seal-killing Nazi child-molester than admit you were a commie. I guess he's trying to downplay the impact they had on impressionable young punks, who took a lot of things much more seriously than they intended... Like for instance Pinkel, who played in Tandstickorshocks, a sort of working class version of the Rondos. A documentary of the same name, which was on Dutch TV around 1982, shows how a disillusioned Pinkel turns to the extreme right after the Rondos called it a day, basically tearing the carpet from under his existence by doing so. Those Rondos must have been an impressive bunch, as none other than Penny Rimbaud of Crass claimed they wouldn't sit in the garden when they visited their English brethren, because "they didn't want to get a tan" (got this out of Fred de Vries' Club Risiko book). Well, I've known Rondos/Kift drummer Wim ter Weele for a long time, and as long as I can remember he's got a permanent tan from being outdoors all the time; so much for legend-building... Anyway, I'd love to read the book, in the meantime, here's the music:

A Black & White Statement
Progress
System
Syphillips
Soldiers
We Don't Need No Speed
Peace Dilemma

(all tracks: Red Attack LP, 1980)

PUNKS AGAINST FLOWER CORSOS

2006-10-20T12:21:00.001+02:00

These are not actually the Scoundrels this post is about, but it's the closest thing I found on Google (be glad I didn't use the picture I got when searching for "Labie"!)

I first heard and saw the Scoundrels around 1982, although I didn't know who they were at the time. I was watching some TV program about all kinds of stuff going on in the countryside, and there was this item about the big flower corso in Zundert, a village in the south of the Netherlands famous for being Vincent van Gogh's birthplace and... well, holding big flower corsos. Somehow they found out there were a couple of punks living in Zundert, and somehow someone must have gotten the brilliant idea that, hey, punks hate flowers, so there's our item!
Unfortunately, the Zundert punk contingent weren't as much "against" flower corsos as indifferent about it, so the item didn't get anywhere except for a snippet of a song the local (unnamed) punk band were practicing. I got to know these flower punks a year or two later, when putting together a compilation tape. I asked every band to submit a one/ one-and-a-half minute song (well, these were the hardcore days) and the Scoundrels gave me the great "No Farewell To Falwell", clocking in at 4 minutes! Although they were active in the hardcore scene, the Scoundrels played melodic mid-tempo punk; Patrick, Frank and Guus were a little older than the regular punks and also a little remote. After receiving and loving their 1985 Ufreettoemoef debut tape, singer/guitarist Patrick de Labie started giving me a "punk education", totally turning me around from HC to punk rock by sending me tapes of the Saints, NY Dolls, Dead Boys, Dickies, more than I can mention. On one of these tapes he put the Scoundrels' first demo tape, and to my surprise they were once a hardcore band too! And a pretty fast and furious one to boot; Patrick dated this tape 1981, which should make it one of the very first Dutch hardcore recordings. They had a great, aggressive singer who was more into rock 'n roll (his habit of ending phrases with "chacha" came from Dutch rocker Herman Brood); somewhere in the late 80's Patrick told me he'd passed away. Some of these songs, like "Public Places", later showed up slowed-down on Ufreettoemoef. I'd love to post something from that tape as well, but I don't have it anymore!The 2 mid-80's LP's the Scoundrels put out (Don't Cry For The Moon and Join Hands) are not too hard to find second-hand; they don't sound anything like these mp3s though! (Although on Join Hands they'd toughened up their sound by adding Luc ex-Wulpse Varkens on guitar).
Patrick is still going strong, he's running Studio 195 in the former customs office that has been his home for about 20 years now (where we'd regularly crash back in the day, after some gig in Belgium). In fact, I owe him a letter, I'd better go about writing it...

No Soul Show
Monarchy
Public Places
Geld Is Hun God

COULDN'T THINK OF A GOOD PUN WITH "BRAMAH" IN IT

2006-10-05T20:47:00.001+02:00

In a recent interview, The Fall's mighty Mark E. Smith said: "When punk started, I was hoping it was going to be something like the 60's garage bands". Of course, it turned out different, but if any band came close to the original garage sound and attitude (without copying it), it was the early Martin Bramah/ Una Baines Fall line-up. Una Baines's toy organ (or that's what it sounds like!) was a big part of that sound, and when she and Martin Bramah left to start the Blue Orchids, they picked up where they left off with the Fall. On their first two singles, the organ is almost the main instrument; the fact that it's slightly off-key lending just the right ramshackle charm to the music. A lot of guitarists-turned-vocalist turned out to be failures, but Bramah pulls it off alright; his singing is more melodic than Mark E's, and - just like the organ - a little off-key in places, so it fits right in. Of all the 2.794 ex-members of the Fall, he's the only one that was ever asked back (for a brief spell in the late '80's) as far as I know. But then again, when you look at early pictures of the Fall you can clearly see that he and Mark E Smith were equals in the band. There's one iconic photograph from around 1977, with Mark E singing, his face distorted in a sneer, and next to him Martin Bramah, all tall hollow-eyed punk rock cool. I think if Mark E'd dared to twiddle with the knobs of Martin's guitar amp, like he does with his current guitarists (whoever they are this week), he'd have decked him.

Disney Boys
The Flood (1980)
Work
The House That Faded Out (1981)

THE FASTERLOUDER YEAR(S)

2006-09-29T12:40:00.001+02:00

Around 1983 I'd been into punk for about a year and a half, listening to a broad range of music, from Crass to the Fall to the Damned to (gasp!) U2. The arrival of American Hardcore (punk, not porn) on these shores changed all that; suddenly everything had to be as fast and loud as possible. For a while at least, this was fun; a confused and fragmented scene became focused and exciting again. For me the big watershed was hearing the Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zit 2 LP for the first time. I'd already heard Gang Green, Void etc. but expected this new Dutch comp to be the same old Nederpunk. Not so, as the first track (Pandemonium's "Wir Fahren Gegen Nazis") immediately made clear. We'd just started our own band and we were playing fast, but this was something else; a maelstrom of supertight over-the-top screaming, pummeling drums and scorching guitars. And every track by every band on this LP was like that! An important factor must have been producer Dolf Planteydt, who in a fit of temporary insanity mixed the guitars about 5 times as loud as the rest (on the first BGK LP recorded around the same time, this style is taken to its ultimate conclusion: you hear nothing but guitar and an occasional kick drum), making these tracks sound unlike any Dutch punk that came before. I was just crazy about this LP, playing it non-stop during the year I got kicked out of school. Apart from the speed there's an excitement and mischieviousness about everything, everybody playing and singing as if their lives depended on it, but at the same time having a laugh about it too. Apart from Zmiv and Pandemonium all of these bands were from Amsterdam, most of them containing old scenesters like Herry Hubert (Last Few, later Deadlock and Yawp!), Fokkie (Outlawz, son of legendary Amsterdam communist Roel Walraven) and Maarten Luijendijk (Null-A, later No Pigs and the Soundgarden pub), so this fasterlouder stuff was actually something a lot of older punks were into! Too bad that in a space of just 18 months this excitement seemed to evaporate, leaving just politically correct, adequate-but-boring HC-by-numbers (just compare Als Je Haar... with the Beware Of The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing comp of 1985). And that was even before metal took over...
P.S.: Listening to the Haemorrhoids reminds me of the time I went up to their place to record them for a tape I put out. That was on the legendary Vondelstraat (mentioned by de Straks in their song "Eet U Smakelijk"!), where a big squatters' riot took place in 1980, although I think their practice space wasn't a squat, but the stately home of one of the members' parents! A guy about 7 foot tall called Bart Schut did backing vocals; years later he became a night DJ on Dutch VPRO Radio, sometimes "illustrating" some political theme on the show with a Mob 47 or Kaaos song!

Pandemonium - Wir Fahren Gegen Nazis
Haemorrhoids - Government's Decision
Outlawz - El Salvador
BGK - Video Voodoo
Last Few - Narrow Minds
Zmiv - Crime
Amsterdamned - Sleep
Null-A - Arbeit Macht Frei

BONUS PUNK

2006-09-22T10:55:00.001+02:00

So how come so many first-generation punk bands were to jump ship so quickly and "go pop"? I'd like to think there was some sort of secret plot involved: president and punk-hater Jimmy Carter calling a meeting of all record company bosses sometime in early 1978, telling them: "This punk rock has got to go!" Long ago I read some interview (forgot where) where someone (forgot who) was suggesting this happened. It sure would explain a lot. Like Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys once said: "First they give you a contract for acting like a bunch of chimpanzees, then they turn around and say stop acting like a bunch of chimpanzees!" At exactly the same time, maybe even the same week, every big label punk band was either dropped or told to "clean up". Nah... Conspiracy theories aside, this was probably simply because punk sold zilch. Another reason for going pop might have been the bands were sick of getting covered in spit, enduring (skinhead) violence at gigs, etc. But from playing punk myself I've learned that while it's easy to drop out of punk, it's harder for punk to drop out of you. You'll automatically go for the fast down-stroke and E/A barre chords, even when trying to write a country ballad or something! Maybe that's why punk-bands-gone-pop like the Carpettes and the Photos included bonus records with their "regular" records, containing some kick-ass punk rock.
The Carpettes' great early records have been posted here and there lately; "Johnny Won't Hurt You", one of their later 45s, is a disappointing reggae tune a la the Clash, but on the bonus disc we find 2 brilliant rough-'n-ready live cuts, including a great cover version of the 101ers' pre-punk smash "Keys To Your Heart".
From the ashes of punk band Satan's Rats rose the Photos, who in their lifetime were often compared to Blondie, although they played a much slicker kind of new wave/pop (their sole hit single "Now That You Tell Me That We're Through" even has strings!). With their self-titled 1980 LP came another limited edition LP called The Blackmail Tapes, that had 8 tunes recorded during one of their first practices, and is miles better than the "actual" LP! I first heard these tracks in the early 90's, and it fitted right in with the new lo-fi punk then coming up like the Shitbirds (whose singer Wendy Wu reminds me of here), Headcoatees etc. They were also probably the first punk band to write a song about a skateboard, some 5 years before Gang Green/ JFA and their ilk! This bonus LP is included with most secondhand copies I've seen of this record, which leaves me wondering just how "limited" it was... (Maybe they too liked it better than the real LP...)

Carpettes - Total Insecurity
Carpettes - Keys To Your Heart (live 1980)

Photos - Do You Wanna Dance
Photos - Skateboard
Photos - Evelyn
Photos - Sex Object (1979)

P.S. I'll be uploading the mp3s a couple of hours after posting this. (I'm using the PC at work for posting because Blogger don't work on my Mac)

ZACKENBIBBER

2006-09-14T19:32:00.001+02:00

Back when I was 14-15, I was a fan of The Ex and Svatsox. As was customary back then, I had both band names emblazoned on various pieces of clothing. Ten years later, I was making music with former members of both bands. Now my musical "career" might be bereft of any form of logic (quit a hardcore band that was going places, to play in a local Joy D. cover band that was going nowhere; played guitar in a pop-punk band that was going places, only to hang up my axe and rent a saxophone because of a sudden obsession with jazz; etc. etc.), but this was one of the things that actually made sense. I liked Svatsox even more than I liked The Ex; both bands pioneered the angular, Gang Of 4-influenced "Wormerpunk" sub-genre (at one point there were about 15 bands in the village (!) of Wormer, playing the same kind of music!), but Svatsox were ever so slightly more melodic, at times even new-wavey or dare I say it, gothic (in the good, early Banshees/UK Decay sense!). Guitarist Ferry Heyne, currently de facto leader of the very successful De Kift (the band I mentioned I was in), did some great John McGeoch-meets-Andy Gill stuff on their records. On their untitled EP from 1981, "Revenge" is the most straightforward punk song (actually it reminds me a little of De Straks' "Eet U Smakelijk"!), but the guitar goes in all kinds of different directions. Of the "Wormerpunk" Oorwormer comp LP, Svatsox' 2 tracks are easily the best; "What Colour Do I Smell" is in a fast-paced 5/4 rhythm (most Wormer bands had difficulty playing 4/4!) and the ultra-short "Eternal Hunting Fields" features some weird (home-made?) electronic gizmo (that sounds like it's also used on The Ex' "The Sky Is Blue Again").
Ruins, their debut LP from late 1982, is easily their finest hour; while the songs are longer and more spun-out, sonically it's much more powerful than their earlier stuff. The bass guitar pounds away like early Big Black, the drums are doused in reverb (without having that typical shitty 80's sound), and Ferry picked up a distortion pedal somewhere along the line. Ruins was one of a bunch of great records (see also Alerta's brilliant In The Land Of A 1000 Pretty Dreams, Zowiso's 2nd-and-a-half LP The Lust, the Wandas' The Ideal) that went in a different direction from hardcore, whose practitioners semi-jokingly called these bands "softies"; ironic, since most of these softies were pretty tough dyed-in-the-wool squatter types. Svatsox kept going into the mid-80's (occasionally playing old punk covers as the Sox Pistels!), before breaking up and morphing into De Kift. Oh, did I already mention US label North East Indie just put out a Kift CD?

Revenge (1981)
What Colour Do I Smell
Eternal Hunting Fields (from Oorwormer comp, 1982)
Zackenbibber
Never Knew Better Days
Ruins (from Ruins LP, 1982)

PROVO/PROTO

2006-09-08T13:07:00.001+02:00

In a recent Middle Class post by my good friends here, none other than Henry Rollins is quoted saying the first two hardcore records were the Middle Class EP and "some Dutch record from about 1972". Commentators were quick to point out this had to be the legendary Sound Of Imker 45, actually from around 1968, that has been on the top of many want lists (including Jello Biafra's, someone told me recently) for years. The story goes, the record was never released but the record company did give one of the Imker brothers two boxes, which they used for playing frisbee, target practice etc. So "rare" is an understatement here! Rarity aside, it's a good record and pretty fast as well, but to my ears really nothing special. But maybe that's because a lot of Dutch 60's music sounds like some kind of secret punk/HC forebear, not just in the music, but also in its attitude. Just take a look at the names: Outsiders, Zipps, Selfkick, 12345, Fallouts, Soft(enon)s sound more like '77 than '66. Lyric-wise, most songs weren't about love but either about various things bugging them, like war ("Stengun"), parents ("Paarse Broek"), TV ("Zet Die TV Af" ="turn off the TV"), work ("Ik Heb Geen Zin Om Op Te Staan" ="don't feel like getting up"), etc. or just silly for some reason often food-related nonsense ("Kejje Nagaan", "Waaro"). Rather than being a uber-hip style bible, leading Dutch 60's zine Hitweek would let any provincial bumpkin write in to tell the world about their plight being in the middle of nowhere having long hair and purple trousers, much like punk zines like MaxRock&Roll and Koekrand would later. And regarding speed... Well, we must have the Dutch "hoom-pah" folk music embedded in our genes, because there's lots of superfast ("proto-hardcore", if you like) stuff around; here's some examples that are hardly rare... Q65's "You're The Victor" was their first hit in Holland, it even has some traces of "oompah" left in the bass line...! This isn't the place to expound on the greatness of the Outsiders, possibly Holland's greatest band ever, and equally at home doing tender ballads or Stooges-type sludge-a-thons. Apart from 2 fast 'uns, I've also posted their ultra-primitive early 45 "Thinking About Today", that in my book could easily have been a self-released Dutch punk record from 1980 or thereabouts; it could fit on Utreg Punx or some such sampler!

Q 65 - You're The Victor (1965)
Outsiders - Won't You Listen (1967)
Outsiders - The Man On The Dune (1968)
Outsiders - Thinking About Today (1966)

SMALL ONES

2006-09-01T11:35:00.001+02:00

Angela Rippon.

O.K., we're not talking ultra-rare here, but I just had to post the Puncture Mucky Pup 45, having spent a couple of weeks running through the living room with my son to the sounds of this punk classic (my son calls punk rock "running music", as every time I've found a great punk record we put it on and start running and jumping around to it). Like most people, I knew the song "Mucky Pup" from the Exploited's Punk's Not Dead LP; I don't think they even credited the song so I didn't know it was a cover (now it's pretty obvious; the weird chord sequence sounds nothing like their kind of metal/punk). I was always wondering what they were shouting towards the end of the song; well, finally I know: it's "Angela Rippon! Angela Rippon!" (etc.) I have a sneaking suspicion Puncture were a joke band along the lines of Snuff Rock Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias, but as with Alberto Y..., they're great so who cares? In any case, this was the first release on Small Wonder records (hence the legendary catalog nr. "Small One"), a seminal UK punk label that put out a lot of great records but never seemed to have a clear identity. They didn't have a trademark sound (like Raw) or aesthetic (like Rough Trade), bands like Cockney Rejects and Crass were happily rubbing shoulders, and most acts jumped ship after 1 or 2 releases, going major (Punilux, Carpettes, some obscure band called The Cure) or starting their own label (Crass, Poison Girls). With this haphazard approach it's a miracle (or small wonder, har har...) how many great records they put out. I know there's a Small Wonder Punk Singles Collection CD out, so here's a couple B-sides I like. (Yes, I know, there's also a Small Wonder B-sides CD out now; be assured these mp3s are from my own scratchy dusty platters!)
Though not as great as "Violence Grows", the Fatal Microbes' "Beautiful Pictures" is a nice piece of clanging and yelping (these guys and gal look like they're 12 years old on the sleeve). The Rejects' "I Wanna Be A Star" is a pleasant ditty, not as macho as they became later (why, there's even baby pictures of them on the sleeve!). Nicky & The Dots are one of those one-offs I know nothing about; "Linoleum Walk" (B-side of "Never Been So Stuck") is a nice slice of powerpop. I still like punk rock busker Patrik Fitzgerald, even after Blur got big and I noticed the striking similarity between Patrik's and Damon Albarn's voices. The Cravats were one of the few bands that stayed on Small Wonder for (almost) all their career, but instead of posting something from their regular records I'd like to do a song that was one of my first punk purchases ever, back in 1981: the "Fireman" track that only appeared on a flexi with Dutch 'zine Vinyl. The Shend sorta reminds me of Pere Ubu's David Thomas, only a gruffer, Cockney version.

Puncture - Mucky Pup
Puncture - You Can't Rock 'n Roll (In A Council Flat)
Fatal Microbes - Beautiful Pictures
Cockney Rejects - I Wanna Be A Star
Nicky & The Dots - Linoleum Walk
Patrik Fitzgerald - Buy Me, Sell Me
Cravats - Fireman

SUMMER BREAK

2006-08-19T17:48:00.000+02:00

See ya in a week!

The Prunella Scales - Hey Bruce

DOES TOBY LITT LIKE THE UK SUBS?

2006-08-11T11:56:00.001+02:00

Both punk veterans UK Subs and novelist Toby Litt have the habit of naming their works alphabetically; just like the Subs' LP catalogue goes Another Kind Of Blues, Brand New Age, Crash Course etc., so Toby Litt's CV reads Adventures In Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, and so on. I wonder if he nicked the idea from them? Charlie Harper and co. were pretty famous for a while, even getting on Top Of The Pops (RIP) one or two times, back in '79. Even "CID", their first EP from 1978 (on City records, before they signed to Gem/RCA) isn't exactly rare, but it's here anyway because I think it's great. Brilliant production (Spaceward once again), incredible guitar sound (pre-empting grunge by 10 years), nice punk/r&b songs.
I liked Toby Litt's Corpsing, so I set about finding a copy of Beatniks. I'd read the two main characters in the book try using a 30-year-old road map while they're "on the road" (and of course fail miserably). Now this just happens to be something I thought up years ago... I was toying with the idea of starting a 60's/garage band, and thought that if I'd ever get one together we'd have to travel to gigs using a 60's map, avoiding the new highways, riding the funky old roads. It's this same romantic notion that drives neo-Beatniks Jack and Neal , living and acting as if it's 1966 forever, writing bad poetry, wearing sunglasses 24 hours a day and shunning anything invented after the 60's. The book happens to be a nice read (I won't go into the story here, check out Amazon.com); I was just disappointed Jack and Neal are made out to be little more than clowns in their quest for Beatnik purity... Toby Litt doesn't touch on the heroic side of it, the "we think the world sucks so we're inventing our own"-side that for instance gave birth to punk as well. (Wait, maybe I can get this post to go full-circle just like real writers do... Oh, never mind.)

UK Subs - CID
UK Subs - Live In A Car
UK Subs - B1C

AHOB!

2006-08-04T10:53:00.001+02:00

I have to write this post on my lunch break at work; the space bar on my keyboard at home doesn't work anymore since my son played some game that involved a lot of spacebar-whacking, so this will probably be a short one.
Trockener Kecks ruled my world when I was 14. They were one of the 2nd-generation "DIY" punk bands like The Ex and Nitwitz, but much poppier than most of their peers. At the time of their genius Schliessbaum debut LP (1981) and early Rik Ringers and Niet Alle Meisjes... EPs (81-82) their lyrics were downright silly, about banana peel terrorism, penis size, waiting for the alarm clock to turn 22:22, stuff like that... Right up the alley of a bored adolescent like me! Alas, after original members Edward (1st singer), Arjan (guitar, formed Frites Modern) and Piet (2nd singer, ex-Panic) had left, guitarist Rick de Leeuw took over vocal duties and steered the band into more serious waters, his Elvis-Costello-with-a-bad-cold-warbling sabotaging their stabs at hit success (with almost every single alluding to that elusive success in titles like To The Top! One In A Million! Now Or Never!). Though they never got their chart hit(s), Trockener Kecks did turn into one of the biggest Dutch live acts of the 80's/90's, earning a big fan base by working hard and generally being nice guys (bass player Theo Vogelaars famously helped washing the dishes at every youth center they played!). Too bad about the music, though...
Here's three tracks from their Schliessbaum LP, showcasing their early Jam-at-78-RPM approach. The two other tracks are from the Niet Alle Meisjes Zijn Verliefd Op Kors EP, the title track of which was already getting into pop/new wave territory (still great though!). These 2 tracks made up the B-side and in hindsight served as a sort of "punk farewell"; in my opinion this is possibly the greatest pop-punk ever made in Holland... ("Lang Zo Aardig Niet" was quite rightly selected for the famous I'm Sure We're Gonna Make It/ Killed By Epitaph-comps)

Trockener Kecks - Gifbeker
Trockener Kecks - Samen Met Jose
Trockener Kecks - Zeeuws Meisje (From Schliessbaum, 1981)
Trockener Kecks - Finishing Touch
Trockener Kecks - Lang Zo Aardig Niet (From Niet Alle Meisjes..., 1982)

CRASS MAKEOVER

2006-07-28T10:47:00.001+02:00

Just been reading Club Risiko by Fred de Vries, a new book in that ever-growing club of Dutch Books About Punk (the total number of which can still be counted on the fingers of one hand). Each chapter concentrates on different - sometimes seemingly unrelated - bands/artists that helped shape the 80's counterculture: from Einsturzende Neubauten to French filmmaker Leos Carax to The Ex to a totally obscure South-African group called Koos; it's De Vries' personal touch, often recounting his own experiences and meetings with the artists in question, that makes it work. For instance, at the start of the Crass chapter he recalls visiting (Dutch punk band) Rondos' H.Q. around 1979, carrying a copy of the brand new Good Vibrations comp EP. "Sounds good," a Rondo says, "but we're more into this!", upon which the first phrases of Crass' "Do They Owe Us A Living" are spitting out of the stereo. Another good thing is, he doesn't put the artists on a pedestal, but turns them into human beings with failures (Steve Ignorant looking like a middle-aged soccer fan with a beer belly and a bald head, great!). This is especially refreshing as Crass have always been this untouchable institution, its members using fake names ("B.A. Nana" was my favourite), wearing the same clothes, etc. Which is probably also why I never ever listened to my Crass records again after my initial (1982-83) burst of fandom. Too heavy, too confrontational, like someone shouting in your ear all the time... A lot of other Crass-related acts have stood the test of time better; I still enjoy playing those EP's by Dirt, Honey Bane, Zounds etc., and Flux Of Pink Indians' Strive To Survive... LP is still an all-time fave, great punchy tunes punctuated by constant guitar feedback. (Jesus & Mary Chain avant le lettre? Well, they did record Psychocandy with Crass producer John Loder!) The part in the book where De Vries visits some former Zounds members sheds an interesting light on the way Crass Records worked, and how they'd give other bands the "Crass Makeover"; for their Can't Cheat Karma EP, Zounds weren't allowed to use their own drummer, and of course everything had to have the same look, the stencilled letters, etc.
This immediately made me think of the Epileptics 1970s EP, of which my friend Joost owns two different copies. The first version is from 1979 or thereabouts, and is a classic chunk of Spaceward Studio punk rock (it could have been a Raw Records release!). Apparently the label re-released it after the Epileptics had become Flux Of Pink Indians and did the (Indie) chart-topping Neu Smell EP on Crass. Outraged by this capitalist move, Flux decided to reform the Epileptics in order to re-record the 1970s EP and put it out themselves at only 75 p (their old label was asking 1 whole Pound, the bastards!). The new recordings were done by John Loder at Southern Studios, with Penny Rimbaud playing drums as their own drummer had just quit (or so they say, maybe he wasn't good enough, ha ha...). It's fascinating to hear them get the Crass Makeover; the 4/4 beat is replaced by Rimbaud's trademark marching band rattle, the guitar has changed from meaty to scratchy, and the tempos are speeded up to the point where singer Colin sounds like an auctioneer. Well, listen for yourselves (and thanks to Joost for lending me the records!)...

Epileptics - 1970's (1979, Stortbeat version)
Epileptics - 1970's (1981, Spiderleg version)
Epileptics - Hitler's Still A Nazi (1979, Stortbeat version)
Epileptics - Hitler's Still A Nazi (1981, Spiderleg version)

PUNK ROCK SCHOOL

2006-07-21T10:07:00.001+02:00

For some reason all the punk bands from my hometown came from the school I attended. It was a pretty strict school called Werenfridus (named after Saint Wilfrid, who helped spread Christianity around these regions in the 8th century); they did stuff like censor the school paper (I drew comics for the school paper and once they blanked out everything so there was nothing but empty panels!). Some of my school buddies had a pretty strict upbringing as well; they'd leave their house wearing "regular" clothes, then change into their punk clothes in the bike shed. I guess it was this strictness that got their juices flowing; both Indirekt and Gepopel were eager to go places, put out records, tour, etcetera. But the first punk band from our school weren't that ambitious, they were just doing it for fun. Ironically Antidote were the first ones to make it to vinyl, having 5 songs on the local "Rock Collective" sampler Dijkdoorbraak in 1982. Now there's a typical Dutch 80's phenomenon: the Rock Collective comp LP! The first one might have been national comp Uitholling Overdwars, the one I mentioned in my Ivy Green post, and that one set the standard: one great punk band, the rest forgettable noodle-rock and synth-wave. A whole bunch of comps followed: U-Tracks, Groeten Uit Amsterdam, A Rits Of Potential Hits, etc. etc. As far as I know these comps aren't very sought after; the thing is, even with the sole punk band worth checking out (Lullabies on U-Tracks, Workmates on Groeten...), their stuff (recorded in a "real" studio for once) sounds stilted compared to their own lo-fi releases. Not so with Antidote; they recorded their stuff in their practice room on a Teac 4-track. Bassist Joost often told me how they had to go mixing at some other place, and were cycling as fast as they could because the 4-track guy charged no less than 10 Guilders/ hour (about $5)! I still like these songs a lot; just the right mix of anger and fun, especially if you happen to understand Dutch!
P.S.: This LP preceded the New York Antidote Thou Shalt Not Kill EP by a year, making "our" Antidote the first one (on record, at least) of the 4 or 5 Antidotes around!
P.S.: If you happen to visit Hoorn, check out the great secondhand record store Dropstyle; chances are you'll find ex-Antidote screamer Benno behind the counter.

Antidote - Het Begin/ BVD/ Stop Van Agt/ Openbaar Vervoer/ Jongerencentra (5 songs, 1 file: I'm lazy, it's the weather...)

BOO HOO, NOBODY WANTS US

2006-07-14T11:33:00.001+02:00

Bloody Mannequin Orchestra, 1983. Behind guitar: Sharon Cheslow. Under snare: Colin Sears.
When does a record become collectable? In punk/HC, it's a combination of rarity, the right timeframe (1977-1983), reputation...oh yeah, and quality (sometimes). Here's two records I recently sold, that score on all points and yet they fetched no more than $5 each.
I bought The Bloody Mannequin Orchestra Roadmap To Revolution LP sometime in 1986 at a Boudisque sale; this was in my Dischord-phase, when I bought anything remotely connected to that label. I really liked this record (and still do); it's not hardcore but a sort of geeky punk (singer Alex sounds a bit like Doc Dart of the Crucifucks) with a bit of Contortions-style no wave thrown in courtesy the scratchy guitar of Sharon Cheslow (who later helped put together the Banned In DC book) and a skronking yet melodic sax. Their rhythm section of Colin Sears and Roger Marbury would later show up in the first line-up of Dag Nasty, whose debut LP I also bought around that time; I recall playing those 2 records back-to-back, making Dag Nasty's humorlessness stand out even more. (Tho' I gotta give their later singer, Peter something, credit for doing that "We used to be like brothers..." part using a Kermit doll!)
So, if B.M.O. weren't strictly hardcore, how about the brilliant 1983 He-Ho LP by Philly punks Ruin? I scooped this one up at the same time, same cut-out bins, and regarded this a vintage hardcore masterpiece ever since. Ruin were one of the few bands that could play slower and still retain HC power, sorta like SS Decontrol did on Get It Away... Yup, it's (almost) that good! But it seems like nobody from outside Philadelphia has ever heard of them. I think there's something weird going on with this release, because it's a Dutch pressing, and everything from the typesetting to the catalogue numbers points to some sort of "big label" release. Can it be this LP was only pressed in Holland? And if so, by who? Has it got anything to do with the fact there was a Dutch guy called Tristan Reignier in (fellow Philly-ites) McRad, whose great Dominant Force 12" was licensed and pressed in Holland in the same way? Questions, questions...

Bloody Mannequin Orchestra - Cauldron Of Fright
Bloody Mannequin Orchestra - Streets Of Saigon
Bloody Mannequin Orchestra - Ritual

Ruin - Dionysian
Ruin - Proof
Ruin - Altar

FLEA MARKET FIND OF THE YEAR

2006-07-07T12:11:00.001+02:00

Well, since the good people at KBD Records already posted the Rousers "Magazine Girl" 45 I wanted to post today, I guess I'm allowed to post a KBD record instead; here it is, the Lubricants' 1980 "Activated Energy"/ "Transformation Vacation" single. To celebrate the fact I found both records at a flea market in my village last week, at $0.25 each. Along with a bunch of other less rare but still very cool records; 5 or 6 Buzzcocks 45s (including Orgasm Addict, Spiral Scratch and a Tiller Boys EP), singles by the Zones, Gang of Four, Undertones, Rip Rig and Panic, first two 45s by Jesus and Marychain, a stack of 90's indie limited editions by Posies, Stereolab, etc. etc... My head is still reeling. I was just having a bike ride with my 4 year old son and decided to check out a small flea market in front of some farm, a couple of hundred meters from my place. Who knows, they might have a nice Flintstones video tape. (Well, that's the excuse I always use to persuade my son!) Of course I had to flick through a box of 45s I saw underneath a table; one by one I pulled them out... Of course then I had to go through the whole box, all the while having my son tugging at me going: "Are you ready, dad? Just one more record. That's it, now we're going home, dad. I said one more record, dad. Can we go now?" (etc. etc.) Now all I wanna know is: how the hell does a super rare midwestern punk single from 1980 end up in 2006 at a flea market, a stone's throw from my house??
I'm waiting now for someone to show up and go: "Just kidding! Now gimme back my records!" Or maybe someone who once got negative feedback from me on eBay has put it there and saturated the sleeve with poison so I'm gonna die. Or, maybe it's this Nick Hornby/ High Fidelity type of thing where an irate ex-girlfriend threw someone's records out, in which case I guess I should give them back if that person ever finds out (luckily, I don't have a lot of readers!). Actually, I'm curious now about the former owner of this stack of records... In the same box there was a stack of early 45s by (Dutch indie label) Electrolux/Excelsior, and as I was in an Excelsior band at the time there's a big chance I actually know this guy/girl (o.k., let's say guy). It must be someone around 40 years old, who in his youth grooved to punk and new wave, then later on turned to indie rock, and had a weak spot for private pressings and limited editions. Maybe it's an ex-music journalist. Come to think of it, I don't wanna know!
Anyway, the Lubricants' sole release is a nice slice of 1980 Mid-West punk rock. Funny detail: both labels say "Modern Physics" and are glued over with small stickers saying "LUBRICANTS"; check out the story behind this at the great breakmyface.com.

Lubricants - Activated Energy
Lubricants - Transformation Vacation

THE LAMP POST INCIDENT

2006-06-30T12:27:00.002+02:00

Inlay of Glorious Death/ Stanx/ Idijotz tape, 1983
When I think of the "Holland Hardcore" bands of 1982-1984, there's one band in particular that I really liked, that never made it to vinyl; Steenwijk's Glorious Death. They were a siamese-twin-brother-band to the (slightly) better known Stanx, both played 200MPH-thrash but Glorious Death seemed just a bit more melodic. In fact, most of their songs are really catchy; I could still sing along (in my head) playing this for the first time in more than 20 years. These tracks are from the demo tape pictured above; they're practice room recordings from late 1983, about a year after the Holland HC tape and mostly the same songs, but with some interesting changes and better sound!
Glorious Death/ Stanx turned the unlikely small town of Steenwijk (in the thinly populated East of the Netherlands, right at the edge of our own Bible Belt) into something of a punk stronghold during 1983-84. Every band that counted (and some that didn't) played the punk festivals held at youth center De Buze; 4 to 6 times a year the good citizens of Steenwijk saw their town being invaded by an army of freaks. When some of those freaks pulled a lamp post out of the ground and triumphantly paraded it into De Buze, they were not amused, and around late 1984 (as I recall) those festivals ended.
The last time I played De Buze was around 1996; there were none of the old faces in the audience. My band played an impromptu version of Glorious Death's "Police State" (I love the line "you feel like some shit"), dedicated to any ex-members that might be present, but we didn't hear from any.

Glorious Death - Love Story
Glorious Death - Jesus Christ
Glorious Death - The News
Glorious Death - R.I.P.
Glorious Death - Commercial Beat
Glorious Death - Police State

PUNKIN' BEE

2006-06-23T12:53:00.000+02:00

There's something inherently punk about B-sides; they're no-goods nobody has any time for, conceived in a hurry, then discarded, now doomed to a life of tagging along with their bright successful A-side siblings, etc. etc. Often the roughest, couldn't-care-lessest music of the 50's and 60's was to be found on a 45's flipside. Most garage classics started out there (the granddaddy of them all, Richard Berry's "Louie Louie", first saw life as the flip to his version of "You Are My Sunshine"!), the Beatles' wildest stuff was to be found there, and even later on in the years of manufactured bubblegum pop, they'd put a bunch of noise on the B-side so the DJs couldn't be mistaken as to which side was the "proper" one. Of course, this whole esthetic of trash-thrown-down-then-picked-up became one of the key elements of punk.
So how about punk B-sides? Are those punker-than-punk? (Or punk x punk = punk squared?) Well, no. DIY artists had a hard enough time putting out their 45s, often selling their mopeds/ record collections to cough up the money, so they didn't really feel like wasting half a record on throwaway stuff. (or, in the case of the Pagans or Desperate Bicycles, they put the same music on both sides to save cutting costs!)
It's the (semi-)big label artists that have the interesting B-sides, either because they didn't care about them, or because that's where they let their guard down. For instance, Year Zero punks the Damned would acknowledge their 60's roots by covering "Help!" on the flip of the very first punk single; likewise, Generation X put out a very early (methinks it's Billy Idol himself on out-of-tune guitar!) Peel Session of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" as a B-side.
Dave Goodman, the Sex Pistols sound man who did all their B-sides (their A-sides being done by hotshot producer Chris Thomas), made a one-off punk record called "Justifiable Homicide" (which strangely sounds like the Chris Thomas-produced Pistols!), but the proggy flip "Take Down Your Fences" exposes him for the old hippy he was! (I like it.) Magazine on the other hand, who were consciously getting away from the "standard" punk sound, put a scorching punker with the great title of "My Mind Ain't So Open" on the back of debut single "Shot By Both Sides".
When the Lurkers had "gone powerpop" in 1979 with "Out In The Dark", they apologetically followed it on the 45 with an old-style punker (uncredited on the sleeve) called "Cyanide" (although that's not technically a B-side!). If you think the Stranglers couldn't punk out then check out their so-punk-they-were-probably-kidding "Shut Up", clocking in at 1:02 and flipside of "Nice 'n Sleazy". The Stranglers put out lots of extra-curricular stuff, often in the form of fanclub releases, but on the B-side front another er... interesting one is 1979's "Yellowcake UF6", an instrumental slowed-down and played backwards, a bit like Husker Du's "Dreams Recurring". The prize for all time worst punk B-side however goes to PiL, who chose to couple their most accessible, uplifting song ever, debut single "Public Image", with a piece of horrible noise called "The Cowboy Song". There you have it, six punk B-sides, varying in quality from great to "interesting" to crap, but all of them shedding a different light on the artists in question!

21 YEARS OF PUNK QUIZ

2006-06-16T12:41:00.001+02:00

Successful sculptors. Club bookers. A&R representatives. Poets. Painters. Writers. Newspaper columnists. Journalists. Sound guys. Radio DJs. It's funny how lots of people that have been in punkbands later ended up having media/art-related careers (in the same order: onetime members of Zmiv/ Vopos/ Asperitys/ Neuroot/ Frites Modern/ Union Morbide/ Human Alert/ Pandemonium/ Indirekt/ Echte Boter GVD/ Gotterfliez/ Laitz/ Eton Crop, and that's just off the top of my head).
I never had a career of any kind, maybe that's why I'm still reliving those punk years through this here blog. Apart from having a girlfriend, kids and a mortgage, not a lot has changed for me since I was 17; I'm still making ends meet working various minimum wage paying jobs, still wondering what to do with my life and still in a punk band that puts out a vinyl single every once in a while. Just last week we put out our latest one; that's exactly 21 years after my first band put out our first one. To celebrate this fact we have a quiz: name both band names and song titles belonging to the 2 mystery tracks listed below; track 1 is by my first band, track 2 from the new record by my latest band. Winner gets a copy of the latter (I'm sorry, a copy of the former would set me back $70 on eBay). Friends and family are excluded (well, that leaves out 99% of our readers).

1985
2006

PUNK GIRLS ARE COOL

2006-06-09T12:39:00.001+02:00

Saw punk combo De Tommies play their 2nd ever show a couple of weeks ago. Young, local and weaned on pop-punk: in most such cases I can be seen fleeing the place after about 5 minutes of Green Day chord changes and ska interludes, but they were great! "How can this be?" you ask, to which I reply, "cuz they're girls!" Yes, my dear reader, a lot of my favourite (post-)punk noises were/are made by women, and this is for a couple of reasons: first, whereas men (myself included) often revert to the same ol' Chuck Berry-riffs as a result of practicing those riffs for years, girls don't waste their time honing their instrumental skills, they just make up riffs they can play straightaway! While male punk rock musicians focus on playing tight, fast, loud and often complicated, the females focus on originality; even if someone can play just 2 chords, she'll play them in an interesting way. In male punk, the whole band is playing the same notes at the same time (or trying to); in girl punk different simple parts are interlocking, creating a much more interesting whole using less "technique". Then there's the fact that the female voice simply has a bigger range and more possibilities than its male counterpart; it's great for using as an extra instrument instead of merely barking the words. So these last few weeks I played a lot of my old grandmapunkrecords by bands that De Tommies have probably never heard of, but that sound like them anyway: the Slits of course (is there a more 1977-adrenalin-inducing record than their Peel Sessions?), Raincoats, Kleenex, Delta 5, Au Pairs (o.k., those last two were half-and-half)...and last but not least, Mo-Dettes. For some reason the Mo-dettes have never received the critical accolades bestowed upon Slits/Raincoats/Kleenex...well, every other band I mentioned. No retrospective CD, no mentions by Greil Marcus or in Rip It Up And Start Again; I guess because of the name (and their Roy Liechtenstein/Pop Art-style record covers) people think they were a Mod band. Well, bass player Jane Crockford was the one who bit a piece of Shane McGowan's ear off back in 1976, how's that for punk credentials?
I've yet to hear their LP, but I really like their 45's that I have. 1979 debut single "White Mice"/"Masochistic Opposite" was distributed by Rough Trade, and sounds as clangy and primitive as anything from that label, but with a bit more melody than their peers. Second single "Paint It Black" is o.k., but doesn't stray too far from the Stones original. I really like the grating Gang Of 4-style rhythm guitar on third (or fourth?) 45 "Dark Park Creeping" from 1980. Like the Slits' Ari Up, Mo-Dettes singer Kate Korus came from a German-speaking country, giving her vocals an ever-so-slight Nico touch. Come to think of it, singing in a language that's not your own is sorta like the vocalist's equivalent to playing an instrument you're not technically adept at!

Mo-Dettes - White Mice
Mo-Dettes - Masochistic Opposite
Mo-Dettes - Dark Park Creeping

THE YEAR OF FLUBBED INTROS

2006-06-01T12:09:00.001+02:00

A while ago I heard the Squits' 1982 Noise Against Silence EP again; I vaguely remember I wasn't too crazy about it back in the day, but I really like it now! The Squits (not to be confused with the Squats from Nijmegen) were from Haarlem, a town that produced some pretty noisy and primitive punk EP's (Neo-Punkz, Suspense). While this record sounds primitive enough, the sleeve and labels are beautifully designed by fellow Haarlem artist Joost Swarte (he also did the No Fun labels as well as the cover for the Rousers' powerpop classic A Treat Of New Beat), making this record stand out among its coffee-stained KBD-style punk peers. Having 12 tracks on a 7 inch was also pretty unique (back then). Because of the short songs and fast tempos the Squits got lumped in with hardcore; I think it sounds more like good ol' 1980-vintage DIY-punk sped up a bit. Anyhow, they sound like they're having a lot of fun, especially on the great Karate Aapje, or in the flubbed intro to Porno Pirate.
The Squits' girl singer reminds me of local heroes Indirekt's first singer Marjolein a lot; husky with a bit of a rough edge. Marjolein (sister of drummer Jeroen) was on Indirekt's first tape and EP; while the EP (Nieuws Voor Doven En Slechthorenden) shows up on mp3-blogs or eBay every now and then, there were only 50 copies in existence of their early 1983 Groeten Uit Hoorn tape, so I guess even their staunchest fans never heard this one. As Indirekt literally started to play their instruments the week they formed, they still sound pretty primitive here. I like it!
It sounds like guitar and bass are both using distortion pedals with 2 settings: Noise and More Noise. The drummer pounds out a relentless 2/2 thumpa thumpa beat throughout the tape. The songs - named after their topics: Neo nazis, Hiroshima, etc. - are delightfully simple, both musically and lyrically, and you gotta love the Gumby-style backing vocals (courtesy of their bassist, the normally very soft-spoken Rick Blom). The obligatory song-with-flubbed intro (every band had to have one after the Exploited did one on their first LP), Klitten, sounds staged instead of spontaneous while there's also some tape pitch manipulation; but still a great version of an Indirekt classic.
Indirekt would progress beyond recognition in the following years, in my opinion sometimes trying to make things a little too "good" and losing some of their early spontaneity. I've heard that their 2CD retrospective that's in the making won't include any tracks from this tape. So bootleggers will be disappointed to learn I digitized these songs using a faulty wire (not on purpose tho'), resulting in an appalling hum throughout the mp3s!

Squits - Punx/Skins
Squits - Porno Pirate
Squits - Karate Aapje
Squits - Squits
Indirekt - Hiroshima
Indirekt - Tros Aktua TV
Indirekt - Neo-Nazi's
Indirekt - Klitten

2000 IDIOTS

2006-05-26T12:31:00.001+02:00

As Jerry Goossens' and (sometime Eet U Smakelijk commentator) Jeroen Vedder's great book Het Gejuich Was Massaal pointed out, the first wave of Dutch punk bands consisted of musicians who started playing punk, while the second wave was made up of punks that started playing music. The Suzannes, art-school punks from the Eastern Netherlands (Enschede) fall somewhere between those two categories. Reportedly they'd already started by 1976; in any case, around early 1978 their sole EP "New Disease" was released by one of the first Dutch independent labels, De 1000 Idioten (The Thousand Idiots as you might already have guessed). The label's name was derived from the fact there would always be at least a thousand idiots that would buy their records (2,000 in the Suzannes' case). I guess if they'd start their label today they should call it De 100 Idioten, being the approximate amount of copies any Dutch punk band - that doesn't do 100 gigs a year - can hope to sell. But I digress.
The Suzannes had almost a garage/60's type of sound, which might also have something to do with the 4-track studio it was recorded at. I especially like the tinny guitar sound that reminds me of Subway Sect (see under) a little. Anyway, this holds up much better than some big label stuff from the period. Another thing that sets them apart from their contemporaries is the number of songs on the EP; a whopping six; this wouldn't be standard practice in DIY/punk until 2-3 years later.

Hippie
Naughty Young Girl
Listen To My Heartbeat
Teenage Abortion
Deepfreeze Boy
Organisation