Nitwitz Bio (OLD)
by Jeroen Vedder, written ca. 1996
Dunno what the line of thinking is in your part of the world, but here in the land of windmills and wooden shoes anyone with half a brain will tell you that the Nitwitz are legends. Not just in their own minds, but in the mind of every flying Dutchman with half a brain. (Note : due to the massive intake of locoweed the number of people with half a brain in this country only adds up to 0.03 % of the entire population).
Anyways, what I'm trying to say here is that no-one gives a fuck about the Nitwitz these days.
As one of the most popular P-rock bands in the early 80's (second only to The Ex) the NITWITZ were ALL OVER THE PLACE back in those days, playing every club, squat, toilet or barn imaginable at least twice, Areleasing a stack of wax on their own label Vögelspin Records in the process, all of which currently enjoy serious collector's item status.
Try to find a copy of the live 'Wielingen Walgt' 12" EP from 1981 (left), where you can hear Nitwitz in full flight, obliterating a jampacked crowd of squatters in just over 15 minutes. course, the fun didn't last too long. And by 1982, the times were-a-changing.The local punk scene, which up until then (sorta) had had a mind of it's own, either came under the spell of a new breed of cynical cash-hungry UK bands, took the 'OI' bait, or fell for the 'new music' fad (this shortlived hype may well be regarded as a determining factor for Amsterdam's current reputation of being the "Gay Capitol Of The World")
If London was calling, the Nitwitz certainly didn't bother answering.
But in May 1982, shortly after their 100th show (where they threw 100 cans of beer into the) cheering crowd, the band broke up. This would later prove to be the definite turning point in Dutch punk history.
The Nitwitz were the first Dutch punk band to set up their own gigs abroad, touring Germany and Switzerland before anyone.
While singer Eric Peters went on to form a reasonably successful 'fun punk' band named Outrageous, and resurfaced in later years with a terrible (at times unintenionally hilarious) chart-oriented outfit named The Zoo, the other three remnants of the Nitwitz found a new singer and changed their name into B.G.K.
Taking their lead mainly from scarce, at the time extremely hard to find import lp's by the likes of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, the Germs and M.D.C.
They discovered they could UK kind, which had little more to offer than permanently intoxicated morons who staggered around burping along to "Troops Of Tomorrow" and had become infested with violent with 'OI' goons who were out for trouble. Wanting an alternative, B.G.K. turned away from the traditional (i.e. leather and spikes) punk scene to become one of the first real hardcore bands in Europe, no less than half a decade before the press first found out about it.
The story of B.G.K.is a long one. They played all over Europe in the most unforgiving Spartan circumstances, and were essential in the formation of an international hardcore scene in Europe. They toured the U.S.A. twice and put out some great records. All of thisr went by completely unnoticed by the media who considered punk rock to be over and done with, but in the underground however, B.G.K. were well respected for their continuous involvement in every good cause imaginable, playing an endless string of benefit shows for squatters, doing a nationwide tour to support anti-military organisations, etc.Getting respect is one thing, but being used is another. As main Nitwit Tony Slug put it : "There came a point where I got pretty sick of that scene...I recall B.G.K. once played a benefit to raise funds for some squatters' electricity bills or something, - we did shows like that all the time - and being asked back a couple of weeks later to do another benefit show to cut the losses from the last one. Apparently one of the organisers had taken off with the money and left town that night...I mean, come on... you reach a point where you go 'fuck that'... "
After the demise of B.G.K. (1987), Tony put together a new band : Loveslug, taking inspiration from the likes of his favorites Radio Birdman and MC5 and leaving the ever narrowing mindset of the punk community behind him. "..I knew it was time to bail from hardcore when hardcore embraced metal, or vice versa, on one hand, and that whole straight edge hoopla started coming around, all those kids eating up the stereotypical imagery, etc. Punk rock became like boys club or something... Then you had bands like NoMeansNo and Victims Family who played real complicated, eclectic stuff with thousands of breaks and tempo changes, I think they called it 'Jazzcore', and around that time Jazzcore became real hip with the alternative crowd... But I just wanted to rock, Rocknroll should be confrontational, and I sure as hell ain't about to cater to a crowd that wants to hear some zany, quirky-ass Frank Zappa stuff.."
Loveslug became an instant underground hit everywhere in Europe, except in their native country Holland. Four albums and as many European tours later the band found themselves topping the blacklist and banned from all main venues in Holland for being notorious bad boy rocknrollers. Also they found themselves ripped off by their German label, who consequently dumped them. When bassist Mike de Veer came down with diabetes it was time to call it a day. Loveslug played a memorable farewell show in Amsterdam where a frenzied crowd showered them with sugar cubes, and ceremonially passed "the official torch of Slug-rock" on to opening Loveslug clones the Duke Of Dicks from Germany. A couple of years ago when me and my pal Jerry were asked to write a book on the early Dutch punk scene.
One of the first things we did was make up a list of people who we thought would have a good tale to tell. High on our list was Tony Slug. When a date was settled to do the interview, it turned out Jerry couldn't make it so I had to go there on my own. Now I had heard rumors of Tony being strung out on amphetamines and being impossible to talk to, but it turned out to be just that : rumors. He turned out to be a real nice guy, and besides picking up some vital quotes for the book we were in the prcess of writing, we discussed diverse topics such as his personal heroes Handsome Dick Manitoba, Rijk De Gooijer and the french writer L.F. Celine One of the things Jerry and I had planned to do was organize a big launch party to celebrate the publishing of the book, with a lot of oldsters playing together for the first time in many years, as just a one-off type thing.Tony shrugged and said he hated reunions, but eventually warmed up to the idea over the next couple of months.
When the big party was there, The Nitwitz, with former DEADLOCK drummer Steven Nieuwendijk (pictured right) replacing original drummer Marcel Verhoeven who had since relocated to Switzerland, headlined over five other bands in Amsterdam's main venue, the Melkweg, and near tore the roof off the place.Rather unexpectedly the European division of Epitaph records were impressed enough by their live performance to slap them with a little dough to record a demo tape with new material. The result of these sessions, a mixture of the old Nitwitz' attitude, B.G.K.'s speed and Loveslug's melodies, however, didn't impress the folks at Epitaph very much.Perhaps they didn't think they could market a band like the Nitwitz to the walletchain-and-skateboard crowd. Nevertheless, the Nitwitz persevered, playing a handful of low-key and scarcely attended gigs as well as recording more demo tapes.As more and more new titles found their way onto the set list, the 20 year old songs gradually disappeared. This way, the band nicely avoided the danger of becoming just the next reunion band making a living out of nostalgic sentiments while merely going through the motions while on stage. Shortly after the second demo was recorded, guitarist Steven Walraven was canned for a variety of reasons. Enter Theo Brouwer (of defunct sixties/garage band THE KLIEK) and with Tony Slug moving over to guitar everything fell into it's place for the band. What this line-up is capable of you can check out for yourself on the Nitwitz long-awaited offering, titled records wisely decided to unleash upon the unsuspecting consumer : It's a full-throttle, frontal punk ROCK blast that will surprise a lot of people 'cause it avoids dumb-ass type genre casting and contrived stereotypes, yet it rocks harder than almost ANYTHING else that goes around for 'punk' these days (or any type of music for that matter).
Anyways, what I'm trying to say here is that no-one gives a fuck about the Nitwitz these days.
As one of the most popular P-rock bands in the early 80's (second only to The Ex) the NITWITZ were ALL OVER THE PLACE back in those days, playing every club, squat, toilet or barn imaginable at least twice, Areleasing a stack of wax on their own label Vögelspin Records in the process, all of which currently enjoy serious collector's item status.
Try to find a copy of the live 'Wielingen Walgt' 12" EP from 1981 (left), where you can hear Nitwitz in full flight, obliterating a jampacked crowd of squatters in just over 15 minutes. course, the fun didn't last too long. And by 1982, the times were-a-changing.The local punk scene, which up until then (sorta) had had a mind of it's own, either came under the spell of a new breed of cynical cash-hungry UK bands, took the 'OI' bait, or fell for the 'new music' fad (this shortlived hype may well be regarded as a determining factor for Amsterdam's current reputation of being the "Gay Capitol Of The World")
If London was calling, the Nitwitz certainly didn't bother answering.
But in May 1982, shortly after their 100th show (where they threw 100 cans of beer into the) cheering crowd, the band broke up. This would later prove to be the definite turning point in Dutch punk history.
The Nitwitz were the first Dutch punk band to set up their own gigs abroad, touring Germany and Switzerland before anyone.
While singer Eric Peters went on to form a reasonably successful 'fun punk' band named Outrageous, and resurfaced in later years with a terrible (at times unintenionally hilarious) chart-oriented outfit named The Zoo, the other three remnants of the Nitwitz found a new singer and changed their name into B.G.K.
Taking their lead mainly from scarce, at the time extremely hard to find import lp's by the likes of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, the Germs and M.D.C.They discovered they could UK kind, which had little more to offer than permanently intoxicated morons who staggered around burping along to "Troops Of Tomorrow" and had become infested with violent with 'OI' goons who were out for trouble. Wanting an alternative, B.G.K. turned away from the traditional (i.e. leather and spikes) punk scene to become one of the first real hardcore bands in Europe, no less than half a decade before the press first found out about it.
The story of B.G.K.is a long one. They played all over Europe in the most unforgiving Spartan circumstances, and were essential in the formation of an international hardcore scene in Europe. They toured the U.S.A. twice and put out some great records. All of thisr went by completely unnoticed by the media who considered punk rock to be over and done with, but in the underground however, B.G.K. were well respected for their continuous involvement in every good cause imaginable, playing an endless string of benefit shows for squatters, doing a nationwide tour to support anti-military organisations, etc.Getting respect is one thing, but being used is another. As main Nitwit Tony Slug put it : "There came a point where I got pretty sick of that scene...I recall B.G.K. once played a benefit to raise funds for some squatters' electricity bills or something, - we did shows like that all the time - and being asked back a couple of weeks later to do another benefit show to cut the losses from the last one. Apparently one of the organisers had taken off with the money and left town that night...I mean, come on... you reach a point where you go 'fuck that'... "
After the demise of B.G.K. (1987), Tony put together a new band : Loveslug, taking inspiration from the likes of his favorites Radio Birdman and MC5 and leaving the ever narrowing mindset of the punk community behind him. "..I knew it was time to bail from hardcore when hardcore embraced metal, or vice versa, on one hand, and that whole straight edge hoopla started coming around, all those kids eating up the stereotypical imagery, etc. Punk rock became like boys club or something... Then you had bands like NoMeansNo and Victims Family who played real complicated, eclectic stuff with thousands of breaks and tempo changes, I think they called it 'Jazzcore', and around that time Jazzcore became real hip with the alternative crowd... But I just wanted to rock, Rocknroll should be confrontational, and I sure as hell ain't about to cater to a crowd that wants to hear some zany, quirky-ass Frank Zappa stuff.."
Loveslug became an instant underground hit everywhere in Europe, except in their native country Holland. Four albums and as many European tours later the band found themselves topping the blacklist and banned from all main venues in Holland for being notorious bad boy rocknrollers. Also they found themselves ripped off by their German label, who consequently dumped them. When bassist Mike de Veer came down with diabetes it was time to call it a day. Loveslug played a memorable farewell show in Amsterdam where a frenzied crowd showered them with sugar cubes, and ceremonially passed "the official torch of Slug-rock" on to opening Loveslug clones the Duke Of Dicks from Germany. A couple of years ago when me and my pal Jerry were asked to write a book on the early Dutch punk scene.
One of the first things we did was make up a list of people who we thought would have a good tale to tell. High on our list was Tony Slug. When a date was settled to do the interview, it turned out Jerry couldn't make it so I had to go there on my own. Now I had heard rumors of Tony being strung out on amphetamines and being impossible to talk to, but it turned out to be just that : rumors. He turned out to be a real nice guy, and besides picking up some vital quotes for the book we were in the prcess of writing, we discussed diverse topics such as his personal heroes Handsome Dick Manitoba, Rijk De Gooijer and the french writer L.F. Celine One of the things Jerry and I had planned to do was organize a big launch party to celebrate the publishing of the book, with a lot of oldsters playing together for the first time in many years, as just a one-off type thing.Tony shrugged and said he hated reunions, but eventually warmed up to the idea over the next couple of months.
When the big party was there, The Nitwitz, with former DEADLOCK drummer Steven Nieuwendijk (pictured right) replacing original drummer Marcel Verhoeven who had since relocated to Switzerland, headlined over five other bands in Amsterdam's main venue, the Melkweg, and near tore the roof off the place.Rather unexpectedly the European division of Epitaph records were impressed enough by their live performance to slap them with a little dough to record a demo tape with new material. The result of these sessions, a mixture of the old Nitwitz' attitude, B.G.K.'s speed and Loveslug's melodies, however, didn't impress the folks at Epitaph very much.Perhaps they didn't think they could market a band like the Nitwitz to the walletchain-and-skateboard crowd. Nevertheless, the Nitwitz persevered, playing a handful of low-key and scarcely attended gigs as well as recording more demo tapes.As more and more new titles found their way onto the set list, the 20 year old songs gradually disappeared. This way, the band nicely avoided the danger of becoming just the next reunion band making a living out of nostalgic sentiments while merely going through the motions while on stage. Shortly after the second demo was recorded, guitarist Steven Walraven was canned for a variety of reasons. Enter Theo Brouwer (of defunct sixties/garage band THE KLIEK) and with Tony Slug moving over to guitar everything fell into it's place for the band. What this line-up is capable of you can check out for yourself on the Nitwitz long-awaited offering, titled records wisely decided to unleash upon the unsuspecting consumer : It's a full-throttle, frontal punk ROCK blast that will surprise a lot of people 'cause it avoids dumb-ass type genre casting and contrived stereotypes, yet it rocks harder than almost ANYTHING else that goes around for 'punk' these days (or any type of music for that matter).
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