Oh my God, what did I get myself into this time? Before me, a hefty hardcover book, 280 pages in total and written in Dutch. I was asked to write a little review, and after saying yes, it somehow started itching everywhere. And while I was writing this review, I began to understand the itch: How do I write something about a book written in Dutch in an English spoken medium to get people interested in buying the product ... Silence ... And the answer was simple: I'm gonna focus on the CD that comes with the book and then you will understand why the book is a truly welcome addition to any bookcase.
Between May 1981 and October 1982, there was a dutch fanzine / D.I.Y. ethics magazine entitled "Binnenlandse Ontwikkelings Hulp" (which translates into something like the Ministry of Internal Development Aid). These guys organized a festival in the squat De Blauwe Aanslag in The Hague (which formerly hosted the Dutch I.R.S.), and at the festival, you could buy a tape in a limited edition of 150 copies. This tape has been remastered by Peter Johan Nijland and can be found as an extra in this book.
Nine bands are performing a total of 22 songs; it's 1982. In the five years before 1980, the world saw the uprise of punk as a way of living and thinking, and as of '78, '79, there was already a 2nd wave of punk, called post-punk.. Maybe because the punk we heard at that time was mostly "I wanna" or "I don't wanna", "Resist", or "Fight", and the post-punk was more based on emotions you had while thinking about those subjects. Artistically I think post-punk was way more a matter of guiding the audience into developing their own thoughts.
The CD is filled with proper examples of Dutch post-punk in the early 80's. An excellent example is "Wij vinden dat niet" (We don't think so) by The Return of the No Feters. Minimal post-punk, pre-wave with the voice of a Dutch politician who said he was 'for the people', but in fact, he was as right-winged as possible. But the band states the obvious in the title: 'We don't think so'. Another track of theirs is "Bedrijf" (Company), whose lyrics are absolutely brilliant to any Dutch listener. '...' is on the CD with three untitled tracks, which makes it really hard to review, so I'll skip them even though admitted, I feel 15 again. The Untouchables are the most punk sounding band on here, and if I'm honest, there's not a single 'bad' band on here.
The tape back then and this CD right should be considered a well-documented snapshot of the post-punk scene of The Hague early 80s. Music-wise the experimentations as reaction to the punk music of the years before, emotionally the start of a new decade where the youth just didn't want the same shit of the 70's again (cold war, nuclear threat, oil shortage) and politically they also wanted something different, but the alternatives that were presented were as bad as what was already there.
So back to the book: The book contains all six issues of the BOH magazines that were released in those 18 months of existence. It's all written in Dutch, and they present the vision of a group of friends for whom the available magazines didn't fulfil their need for information. And in those days, the solution always was: "We'll do it ourselves!" The combination of the book and the CD should be considered the contents of a time capsule buried 40 years ago, and you can open it yourself now and relive those moments.
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