91-12-21 Crivits – Feeding The Fire – Shortsight – Blindfold – S.O.Y.

‘Crivit’s guitarist Jeff had visited the Vort’n Vis a while before and his wish (here expressed in the guestbook) was apparently readily granted…

A straight-edge matinee organised by P.M.A. recs (‘Positive Mental Attitude’; Hans Verbeke’s label) & ‘Above The Crowd’ (A.T.C.; Wim Vandekerckhove’s zine/project), and their friends/band-mates (most of them were also volunteers at the V.V.).

This was probably ‘Blindfold’s 1^st show at the Vort’n Vis. Wim Vandekerckhove (vocals), Sacha ‘Chatn’ Baelen (drums), Hans Verbeke (guitar) & Jan Maelfait (bass).

‘S.O.Y.’ played still with the ‘early line-up [see 91-06-08]: guitarist Dominiek ‘Dompi’ & bassist Frederik Denolf, Jan Maelfait (vocals) and Hans Verbeke (drums).

Also in their early stages were ‘Shortsight’; with David ‘Mong’ Dumont singing (the one and only time; later he started playing guitar), Björn Lescouhier (drums), Jeroen Lauwers (bass; also ‘N.O.F.’) & Kurt Deprez (guitar; later bass).

‘Shortsight’ (picture kindly donated by Bart Van Mulders, source unknown)

Besides these (more-or-less) locals, there were also bands from The Netherlands…

‘Feeding The Fire’ were friends with some people of the H8000 Crew (although I don’t think they were calling themselves like that yet). They came from Kerkrade (Limburg). Rob Franssen (nowadays in ‘Born From Pain’) was the singer, Roger (Connection X zine; together with Rob) played the bass, Dennis ‘Crustbus’ Niesing was still hitting the drums, and guitarists here were Illona Stephan & Michel Senden (also in ‘Point Of No Return’ with Rob & Roger) – Har(ald) Brosselt (also in ‘No Sense’) joined later.

‘Crivits’ from Rotterdam were Jeff van der Wal (guitar), Koen Westphal (drums), Dennis Verhiest (vocals), Edwin Verhiest (bass) & Marco (Mark) van Schouwen (guitar). They played energetic old-school straight-edge hardcore, in the vein of ‘Youth of Today’ and ‘Gorilla Biscuits’.

‘Gloves Of Destruction’ was kind of a project (don’t think they lasted long as a real band) with people from ‘F.T.F.’: Roger played guitar here, Rob bass and Har drummed. The other 2 guys in the band were named Joël and Angelo. Their ‘crew’ wore workmen’s gloves marked with big fat X-s. They were also mirroring themselves with ‘Seein’Red’ and ‘Man Lifting Banner’, hence the communist flag as backdrop…

Brob

Hans Verbeke also sang for a little while but I don’t think we did any shows with him. When he didn’t feel much like going on, he introduced [his sister] Saskia. Françoise ‘Hazel’ Lepers also joined on guitar later but she wasn’t on any of the recordings.

David ‘Mong’ Dumont, ‘Shortsight’

I did one show as the singer for ‘Shortsight’, and that was the legendary show at the Pits [Kortrijk] with ‘S.O.Y.’, ‘N.O.F., ‘Blindfold’ and ‘Shortsight’… [92-01-19] After that show I wanted to focus on one band instead of 3. So I quit both S.O.Y.’ and ‘Shortsight’, and we did a shitload of shows, tours and records with ‘Blindfold’ after that.

Hans Verbeke

Indeed I was in ‘Feeding The Fire’ (guitar) and ‘Gloves Of Destruction’ (drums). I remember that we (G.O.D.) handed out quite some construction-gloves with fat X-s to the audience [see photo]. These flew through the venue the entire concert. We even wore them while playing, what obviously wasn’t such a success…

Har, ‘F.T.F.’ & ‘G.O.D.’

This was one of the first times we played Belgium I think. ‘G.O.D.’, in which I played bass, was just a fun-project and this might even have been the only real show we ever played haha. I still remember that we were impressed by all the very young kids in the bands, especially ‘S.O.Y.’ which to us seemed 12 year-olds at the time (they might have been). It was a good time and the start of long and deep friendships with a good amount of new people out there.

Rob Franssen, ‘F.T.F.’ & ‘G.O.D.’

When ‘Shortsight’ started, I attended rehearsals every now and then but after a short while Kurt played guitar and Stephane Boens (‘Veggie’) on bass. In the mean time Jaak and I had gotten in a car-accident, and Edward was in L.A. for a couple of months; so ‘N.O.F.’ was in a quiescent phase. When Veggie left the band and I was up and about again, I filled in on bass for them; this here was the only gig. The week before this gig, Edward came back from L.A. and ‘N.O.F.’ was revived because the first lp was about to come out (myself I started my civil service). ‘Shortsight’ got rearranged: Mong picked up the guitar and Kurt the bass; Hans joined as vocalist. When things became too busy for him, Saskia joined for what would become the classic line-up. There was, however, a recording with Hans (4 songs, released as a demo on Warehouse recs and one song on the Regress No Way compilation 7”). Don’t know when Hazel joined but during the short summer-tour of 1993 (with ‘Blindfold’) she was in the band. Hazel didn’t stay that very long: on the tour with ‘Acme’ (summer of 1994) she wasn’t part of ‘Shortsight’ anymore. Björn has always been the drummer. ‘Shortsight’s last concert was in November 1994 (in Poperinge with ‘Blindfold’ & ‘Congress’ (organised by Vik).

The rest of this gig here brings up very little memories: very calm and all bands sounded the same… ‘Gloves Of Destruction’ was ‘Feeding The Fire’ plus friends, kind of a ‘Project X’ rough SxE outfit. ‘Crivits’ were nice people but unfortunately played very boring, typical SxE hardcore.

Jeroen Lauwers

Yep, I remember that show… A first cooperation with ‘Feeding The Fire’ singer Rob. I also remember that girl Illona on guitar… ‘Crivits’ was totally into ‘Gorilla Biscuits’; so obvious: the melodies and vocals were so much alike. Hans and me were smiling about how resembling they were :-). Don’t recall much of our own gig but I do about ‘Shortsight’ and ‘Blindfold’: they were excellent.

Dominiek Denolf, guitarist ‘Spirit Of Youth’

After playing a succesful gig at The Pits in Kortrijk we (‘Crivits’) thought we could take the Vort’n Vis by storm… We played this gig one day before recording our first ep but it wasn’t very good hahaha. I still remember this show as a day with lots of fun, lots of friends and a wise lesson learned… We bonded well with many people from the region, a day like that is always fun…nice people, good conversations, great gigs. What I also recall well, is that there was a tremendous hole in the stage… Great memories!!!

Dennis Verhiest, ‘Crivits’ vocalist

the bands were photographed by Bart Verelst (thanx a lot!):

‘Blindfold’

‘Shortsight’ (with ‘Veggie’ [R.I.P.] watching Jeroen’s every move attentively…)

‘Spirit Of Youth’

‘Crivits’

‘Feeding The Fire’

‘Gloves Of Destruction’

excerpts from the V.V. guestbook:

additions wellcome!…

91-09-21 Disorder – Alians – Mushroom Attack

After corresponding quite a while and visiting them in their hometown Piła (North of Poznan), I decided to try and organise a few concerts for my mate Kazi’s band ‘Alians’. These were their first concerts in the ‘West’ [see Brob’s tours] They rented/borrowed a car and drove over here. Things didn’t go very smoothly (car-trouble) but eventually they made it.

‘Alians’ has an unique sound (they still exist by the way): an original mix of punk, hardcore, folk, reggae and ska; they also use “unusual” instruments like an accordion and flute. At that time they had a tape out (Gavroche) and consisted of Rafał ‘Kazi’ Kasprzak (guitar, vocals, flute), Darek Kułak (drums & backing-vocals) & his brother Tomek ‘Korabol’ Kułak (bass & accordion). Shortly after Michał ‘Dósiołek’ Thiede joined (bass, melodica, flute) and later more people came along to play trumpet and keyboards e.g. [Kazi: Not totally correct but I don’t think it’s so important. Our first bassplayer was Michał ‘Dósiołek’ (but quite soon) the band was joined by our former drummer’s brother (Korabol) playing accordion. Dósiołek unfortunately destroyed his personal life, relationship with friends and musical activity, while Korabol is still with us being an important part of the band.]

‘Mushroom Attack’ was a crusty hardcore-punk band from Groningen. After ‘E.N.E.’ (‘Extreme Noise Error’) split up, drummer Maynard, vocalist Robbie (Tempel) and guitarist Piet (Pierre Erickson) decided to start a new band with the help of Juul on bass and Janine [Janien] on vocals.

[‘Mushroom Attack’ live @ V.V.]

‘Disorder’ has a long-lasting Belgian connection since my mate Jaak (‘C.P.D.’, ‘Nations On Fire’) drummed for them a while, and him and Rudy Hoeykens (‘C.P.D.’s bassplayer – see e.g. 21 dec 85) followed them to Norway in the 80s (to escape military service). (Smurfpunx did a few benefits for that cause; see e.g. 12 dec 87).

Brob

My Oslo story… I think it must’ve been May 1987 (?). I hadn’t been together with Jaak for a long time. It became apparent he wasn’t gonna be able to finish his (law) studies and he also didn’t want to do military service, so he made up the plan to go abroad. He asked me to come with him because my studies to become a school-teacher weren’t going that well either; so I wanted to join. We decided for Oslo because of Taf: I recall vaguely him being rather praiseful about Oslo. We secretly took the train, boat and hitchhiked up there: Jaak, Rudy, myself and 2 other girls. I think Taf took care of us there… He was working for a theatre, TV-studio or something like: handing out flyers, putting up poster,… We stayed in a flat that was empty. My meagre savings were used for our survival… If we wanted to go to a concert, we went begging in the streets (I still know the little line in Norwegian), that went rather well… Since the money was gone after a few weeks, Jaak and myself returned, on the sly. Our families didn’t know (we told them we were going to work in Brazil). That winter Jaak was asked as drummer for ‘Disorder’ and we went on tour with them. Back to Oslo, then Belgium, Milan, three cities in what was then still Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Ljubljana & Sarajevo) and after that Greece (Thessaloniki & Athene). Steve was in the band. I think it was just the 3 of them. There was also Norwegian band but they were travelling in their own van. We drove in our own car.

Kristel

Remember the police-attack? ;-) And on our way back home in a broken-down car: it took us 4 days to get from France to Poland.

Funny thing with that police-attack… I wouldn’t like to minimalise anybody’s feeling or experience but I saw it a bit different. I was only just sleeping when the story began, so when I woke up and got outside perhaps it was already after the main attack. In fact nobody of us suffered, I even remember I was arguing with one of the police-chiefs, something that is impossible in Poland. I was quite surprised he was in fact polite and for me it was unbelievable, compared to some experiences with the police in communist Poland. Perhaps they quickly realised we were Polish and in that era, shortly after the fall of communism in Poland, it was maybe popular in Europe to support Eastern Europe. Anyway, it happened a few times that we were stopped by the police in Western countries and actually nothing serious happened. Once or twice we even got some help with finding directions or so… Quite different from Poland, where they were always arrogant and narrow-minded. On the other hand: that moment in Ieper I got to understand what it meant that the police in the West is just ‘rightwing’. I read about that before but didn’t really realise what it meant. We were so inexperienced these days…

Rafał ‘Kazi’ Kasprzak, ‘Alians’ guitarist/singer

The police raided that concert and arrested nearly everybody, only me and Piet of ‘Fleas & Lice’ [‘Mushroom Attack’ here] did not get arrested, and 5 or 6 Belgians. What a mess that was! The police came in at about 4 in the morning, there was still some group playing inside. They were very hard and brutal beating up defenceless drunk young people.

At that time ‘Disorder’ consisted of ‘Taf’ [Phil(ip) Lovering] (bass & vocals), Rudy (vocals), Thor [Tor] (drums), Steve Allen (guitar). Stian (guitarist) joined in 1993 after ‘Kafka Prosess’ split up… The tour came about because ‘Disorder’ and ‘Mushroom Attack’ did a split-lp [Masters of the Glueniverse; on Desperate Attempt recs].

Taf, ‘Disorder’

Oh yeah, the police-raid, I remember that well!!! It’s not correct that only Pierre wasn’t arrested: me neither. At the moment of the raid I was in the sleeping-room and came down (in my underwear) to have a look what was going on. I saw a venue full of armed cops who were taking almost everyone with them, supposedly for public drunkenness! How’s that possible when you’re inside a bar? The next day we tried to find out where everybody was and what had happened to them. If I remember well, the father of one of the guys at the V.V. 1 was the mayor of Ieper or something, and he helped to get everyone free. Our driver had been beaten up pretty badly by the police in jail and he decided to make a declaration against them. He was told that if he would do that, they would file a serious charge against him and they wouldn’t let him go and would have to stay in prison. So he dropped the complaint. Practically everyone in our tour-bus got injured that night. Before the police came to spoil everything things were great, ‘Disorder’ are fun people to party with and a number of our friends from Liège had come over aswell. I can’t remember the other bands.

Maynard Schut, ‘Mushroom Attack’ drummer

>>It was big fun to tour with ‘Disorder’; they’re completely out or order. During the whole tour we were wasted out of our fucking heads. Most of the gigs we were totally pissed on stage so I can’t remember a lot. After the gigs we were communicating, drinking and having fun with people. After the gig in Ieper, the pigs showed up and arrested some Belgian punx, 2 persons from ‘Disorder’ and 3 of ‘Mushroom Attack’…<<

‘Mushroom Attack’s Piet in Ripping Thrash #7

I remember that gig, a funny thing happened to me just before we were going to start to play: I had to piss and get me a beer to have on stage, and as far as I remember this place was like a bar in front and the concert-hall at the back of the same building, so I had to get out of the door of the concert-hall and into the door of the pub to get a beer. When I came back the guy standing in the door refused to let me in because I didn’t have any stamp on my hand (of course I forgot to get one when I walked out, silly me). So, while Rudy, Taf and Steve were ready to play and stood on the stage shouting after me for a long long time, I had to argue with the door-man that refused to believe that I was playing with ‘Disorder’. He told me that a lot of people had been telling him the same that evening, so he didn’t buy that one… ;-). After a while he started to serve other people that wanted to get in to the gig. So once he turned around, I jumped over his counter and ran trough all the people inside the concert-hall with the door-man running after, trying to catch me. Once I jumped up on the stage and sat in behind the drum-kit this man realized that I wasn’t lying to him about that I was going to play. Ha ha…

The thing with the police was like this, as far as I remember: The police came and told the people in front of the bar that they were not allowed to sit down on the sidewalk. This happened over and over again so the pigs got irritated (I guess they didn’t like the idea of a punk concert in ‘their’ town in the first place and it more and more of them came down. I think at the most, it must have been something like 50 pigs around there and the local people told me that they got enforcement from all the villages around there). So, after the gig when the pigs came into the bar, someone shouted “police bastards” and then five of them jumped on him really violently. A woman started to pull their arms to stop them hitting him, then they started to hit on her too, so I shouted to them to stop being so unnecessary violent, especially to a woman, then four of the pigs jumped on me. They handcuffed me and two of them held my arms as high up behind my back (in handcuffs) as they managed, while two of them hit me in my kidneys as hard as they could, when dragging me to their police-car. Someone came and opened the door from the outside, letting me out of the police-car but we didn’t get far before we were caught again and she was arrested too. Our vocalist [Rudy] was really attacking and fist-fighting the pigs, so they attacked him hard to and put his face down on the burning hot hood of their cars, but they let him go at once they discovered that he was from Belgium. The pigs told me very clearly that they didn’t want to have people from other countries in their town, and especially not punks. So the people that did get arrested were the bassist, both vocalists and the driver of ‘Mushroom Attack’, our guitarist and me. They pulled ‘M.A.’s driver in front of our cell-doors windows and asked him what his name was, he replied that he did not want to cooperate with the pigs, so he said: “Well you got my passport in your hands, can’t you read?”. Then they beat the shit out of him with their batons, hitting him mainly in his neck, this went on and on and on for a long time. It was horrible to just stand in the prison-cell, locked in, watching this torture of a friend, not to mention for the driver himself, I met him about two years later and he was still having permanent extremely heavy headaches, I don’t know how he is doing today?? The next morning they let us out after some lobbying that I didn’t quite catch. As they say, Just another day at the office…

Tor, drummer of ‘Disorder’

‘Greenhorns’ were a local country-rock outfit with influences of Neil Young & ‘Green On Red’ …Not really punk but sympathetic.

Henk Loobuyck

Had a chat with the [female] bassplayer of ‘A Bao A Qou’ [from Belgium?] and we got along rather well :-). But nothing happened of course. Man, man, that entry [below] is funny. Can’t remember anything about their music though… [Brob: On the www I read “a Belgian new-wave/cold-wave band. They sung in French, sometimes in English and one song in Dutch. The style is comparable to ‘Flesh & Fell’. Also influences of ‘Aroma di Amore’.”]

Steve W.

We [‘Private Jesus Detector’] were asked to play when the gig was finished. We had no gear with us so had to lend it all from ‘Disorder’. I broke some of Thor’s drumsticks but he didn’t care. I remember Steve Allen to be a very friendly guy.

Leffe, drummer of ‘Private Jesus Detector’

‘Disorder’, pics by Eric ‘React’ W.:

‘Alians’, pics by Eric ‘React’ W.:

excerpts from the V.V. guestbook:

additions wellcome!…

Fast music doesn’t mean violent dancing

Flyer that was passed out at Vort’n Vis gigs (halfway the 90s)…

The lyrics are by ‘Disaffect’ (UK); a song on their An Injury to One… ep (see below)