This is a precursory page to the posts on the 5th Leed-festival. There was quite some commotion and it led to a substantial evaluation of the Vort’n Vis’ policies…
from the preceding V.V. newsletter
Accounts of the actual festival will be posted later:
17 sep ’93: Fingerprint (Fra), De Kift (Nl), Beerepoot Brothers (Nl)
19 sep ’93: Nations On Fire (Bel), Strength Of The Will (Bel), Eversor (Ita), Hiatus (Bel)
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I don’t think ‘Viktor’s Hofnarren’ actually played… It’s the evening that Hans [Verbeke] needed to be rescued by ‘Doom’!
Bruno Vandevyvere
‘Viktor’s Hofnarren’, squatters (autonomous centre Schrottbar) from Biel/Bienne (Switzerland) played anarchopunk with a crusty edge. (Later on they did a split-LP together with ‘Jobbykrust’ from Belfast out on Maximum Voice.) They were: Steph(ane) Guillet (bass/vocals; Panikeshi zine & distro), Niggu Rimann (drums), Bänz (guitar), Annette Wagener/Suri Dawicki (vocals) and Tez (vocals). Annette later joined the Groninger band ‘P.C.P.’. Steph & Annette were also running Panik Bourgeoise (concerts, zine).
They’d come all the way from their hometown for the fest together with a whole bunch of friends. After all this time it isn’t clear anymore whether they were invited to play or just wanted to see the bands. I guess ‘V.H.’ and their mates got rather drunk pretty fast (or they arrived drunk/stoned). Their friends also didn’t feel like they had to pay entrance… This attitude certainly annoyed most of the V.V. collaborators. There was some friction between them and SxE people (to say the least) but the way I remember it is that the main issue was that they didn’t feel like contributing their share to the organisation of the event and the fees of the bands. The fact they were so wasted and behaving irresponsibly amplified everything…
At some timepoint V.V. collaborator Hans (perhaps provoked by the animosity) supposedly (tried to) hit someone with a baseball-bat (actually it was a table-leg; I didn’t see it happen with my own eyes) for attempting to sneak in for free… He was “physically attacked from various sides”. Things were threatening to go out of control and it was decided it was best for him to leave in order to remove the fuse from the powder-keg… He had to be more or less secretly evacuated from the V.V. premises and was driven out of town in the van of the band ‘Doom’…
The whole incident drove some of the collaborators to tears for realising there were people who didn’t value their hard work and that some (who came from far away) couldn’t care less that there was a huge risk the autonomous centre could collapse (organisationally or as a result of being shut down by the authorities). Personally, I was disappointed and angry because I had already seen it happen when the 1st venue where I organised – in my hometown (De Marbel) – got shut down…
All this (together with previous) lead to the V.V. ‘shit-workers’ making up some sort of pamphlet calling for mutual respect, and listing some ‘rules’…which on it’s turn raised some questions with certain factions of not being ‘anarchist’ enough, etc.
Some people (squatters) from Gent and Liège even thought they were going to be refused entrance (Willy of ‘Hiatus/‘Unhinged’ wrote me that at that time). Of course that wasn’t the case… The 1st issue of Fifi (Vort’n Vis zine), May ‘94, states: “The Swiss assholes of Zürich (…) are no longer allowed in the Vort’n Vis. Reason: violence, intimidation and a broken window.”
Brob
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Quite a lot has been published on the matter. Here’s a few bits – not to stir things up after all these years but for history’s sake (so that perhaps a younger generation will learn of it)…
This excerpt from the Swiss zine No Sanctuary #22 gives a rather detailed account …
This is the initial bit by Steph of ‘V.H.’ in No Sanctuary #21.
Another bit from No Sanctuary #22 shows that ‘V.H.’ had caused similar problems in Germany.
Pamphlet issued by the V.V. collaborators after this event.
Letter by Willy ‘Hiatus’ & response by Vort’n Jan
Willy’s intro to his zine Rabougri (March ’94)
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Niggu (‘V.H.’ drummer) sings for ‘Unhaim’ nowadays. They released an excellent LP… [Brob: I tried hard to get in touch with anyone of V.H.’ but didn’t succeed…]
Pablo, Resistance prods, Biel
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Despite all the commotion, numerous people enjoyed themselves (crowd-shot by Karl Penando); in the foreground: Kurt Deprez (‘Shortsight’), Bruno Vandevyvere (Genet recs), Pierre Anne (‘6 Feet Over’) – in the back: Rudy Penando
Vort'n Vis in the 90s 
Nothing changes – still got crusty twats who fuck things up and think they have some god-given right to not pay for anything…
Actually, Hans hit one of those Swiss guys with a leg on a old chair :-D, after they were getting really agressive. There was one guy who was screaming “capitalists” at the people who were standing at the door/ticket-booth, yet he was wearing a ‘Chevignon’ cap (a very expensive & preppy designer label of clothing); I always found that funny. I eventually ripped his hat of his head and did a runner with it. He was too drunk to catch me anyway. A funny thing happend 2 years later, where my old band was on tour in Europe and at one gig in Hamburg, the guy with the hat was there and reminded me that I stole his ‘cap’. Our singer at the time kept telling me that this guy wanted to kill me (which wasn’t true, but I believed him at the time). I later met one of the women who was with them, on a train in Switzerland in 2000 and she laughed at the memories. What’s punkrock without a little aggravation? The SE lot were just dying to beat some crusties though, so they can look tough in the international SE scene :-D. Funny times.
I’m curious what those assholes are doing today. Maybe some of them are now the worst capitalists you can imagine? We don’t hear anything anymore about most people who critisized the Vort’n Vis 20 years ago but the Vort’n Vis still exists.
Hans didn’t hit one of those assholes with a baseball-bat, but with an old table-leg. Where does that story of that baseball-bat come from? Some hours before that incident, there was another incident. I was so tired about being intimidated and hassled in my own self-established venue by assholes who thought they had a god-given right to pay for nothing and take everything. So, I was so pissed that I grabbed a the baseball-bat after the bar and was prepared to defend myself. But the other Vort’n Vis cooperators stopped me ’cause they thaught this was a bad idea with too much consequences.
Annette Suri runs a people’s kitchen (‘cuisine poulaire‘) in Biel/Bienne
Crazy story about the Biel-posse… I remember they also went to Zürich to fight their way into a gig at Wohlgroth. They were not very welcome at the time. I guess this could have been a reason why Steph wanted to join our band ‘Vide Psychique’ and play more student-emo-sound, haha.
More on this in the interview Willy ‘Hiatus’ did with Jeroen ‘N.O.F.’
Ohh… I remember all this so very well!!! I remember Jan! I remember Hans! I remember bottles flying around just everywhere.
Rob from ‘Feeding The Fire’ was discussing with that Zürich gang afterwards… They started to talk to him in so many different languages and every time he replied on what they where saying in the language of that moment! It really looked like Rob spoke all languages.