The fragmentation of punk styles, the spread of drug use, the lack of respect for ‘punk spaces’ and the hedonism that supplanted activism all contributed to a smaller, less committed scene. Meanwhile, the economic troubles of the 1980s had passed and employment was on the rise. The ‘no future’ sentiment which had fuelled youth disaffection in the UK in the 1970s and the
Netherlands in the 1980s had waned. These factors all contributed to a ‘lull’ in punk in the 1990s.
Daan and Sander both complain of the musical quality of the bands that were active at this time; a number of hardcore bands had begun
experimenting with a new, metal-influenced direction. Lotte says that around 1993 punk in Groningen ‘started to go backwards’ (Lotte). Bram elaborated on this, suggesting that the riots following the eviction of the WNC were the catalyst:
That kind of signalled the start of areallybad time here because that riot got so out of control and so out of hand like everybody in the city here, like the politicians, the cops, the regular citizens they all were like ‘oh squatting we can’t let that happen, ever again,’ you know! So […] you couldn’t squat anymore, it was really repressive you know, we [would] basically just walk in the street and you [would] just
randomly get beaten up by some students and stuff. […] Cops they knew us by name, you know, so a cop car would drive by and they
would actually just like open the window and shout your name out of the window, like ‘oh we’re going to get you’. […] So it was a really bad time actually. At that time I think a lot of people moved away (Bram).
Being a punk at this time in Groningen was difficult; not only were punks subject to persecution, but many of the spaces in which gigs had taken place had gone. With the WNC evicted and the atmosphere at Simplon less welcoming, the punk scene shifted to Café Vera; never truly a punk hangout but certainly a venue where punk bands played regularly.
This dip in the early 1990s was not limited to Groningen, but present elsewhere too. Luka complained of ‘nothing going on’ in Amsterdam.
Whilst this was a quieter time, the scene was still active: bands were still forming, playing, recording and touring, and zines were still being written. Owens (2009) discusses this as a phenomenon of ‘decline’ in the context of the squatters’ movement, suggesting that ‘[e]ven as the movement enters its decline, activists take refuge in their own activist identity to get them through the period between movements’ (17). A similar process happens by which punks continue to bolster the scene even in a low period.
Luka: (37, male) is student. Originally from Belgrade, Serbia he now lives in Amsterdam. He is straight edge and plays with Vitamin X.
Sander: (21, male) is a student from Amsterdam, he plays with Gewapend Beton.
It was not too long, however, before the next generation arose, attracted by the pop punk craze that hit the mainstream in the mid-1990s (Thompson, 2004). The commercial success of bands such as Green Day, The Offspring and Bad Religion, along with Dutch band de Heideroosjes, put this music onto radio stations, television channels and computer games, and made punk – in this guise – available to a younger generation.
The first bands [I listened to] were […] Nirvana, also Green Day, Bad Religion. […] And then discovered some other bands, you know the Heideroosjes? They are a really big band for when you are sixteen, haha! A lot of people nowadays think they are ‘jaah[(negative)] a popular shitty band’, but still when you are sixteen and first listen to a band and feel the energy at the shows – because it’s always a big party at their shows – it was for me like ‘wooow’it was cool, I want to do this (Larry).
The rise of pop punk – specifically its commercial success – was not entirely welcomed by other, older generations of punks, who often either reject or negate it in their narratives. Jacob remembers a young Green Day touring Europe and begging for gigs in Groningen so that they could afford the petrol to the next venue, and the subsequent shock when later the same year they signed to a major label and appeared on the MTV awards. Jacob
Larry: (28, male) is political activist in Nijmegen. He is straight edge and used to play with Smash the Statues.
argued that pop punk ‘is actually more pop music’ (Jacob), whilst Jaap commented that, ‘all that poppy punk stuff, or hardcore poppy punk stuff: I think it’s idiot music’ (Jaap).
Whilst these tensions emerged generationally, they draw on wider debates over the possibility of punk to be commercial. As such, pop punk has become a key sphere of derision within the punk scene. The discourse that pop punk isn’t ‘real’ punk, either because it’s too commercial or because the music is too accessible, has become a common refrain, even amongst those who (previously) liked it. Pop punk therefore becomes either a past mistake, excusable only as a ‘gateway’ to ‘real’ punk, or a ‘guilty pleasure’ to be
indulged in, mitigated by excuses given in order to avoid losing subcultural capital (Thornton, 1995). This is highlighted by the way in which Larry, aware of the subcultural context, feels he must defend his musical taste. The tension(s) that existed between different generations of punks is a theme that will be returned to in section 3.9.
Pop punk was therefore framed as a common entry point to the punk scene by participants in their mid-twenties and early thirties. Many later broadened their interests to other genres of punk. Once their interest was piqued, they sought access to the structures that underpinned the rest of the underground punk scene. Alongside youth centres, squats were still
Jaap: (55, male) is promoter at Café Vera in Groningen, had played music and been a tour manager for the Moving Targets amongst others.
providing spaces for punks to gather, socialise, attend and run gigs, and practice with their own new bands. In time, this new generation of punks helped to rejuvenate the Dutch scene. ‘[T]here was this explosion of bands here, new kids came and […] new places got opened, new squats [and] new shows’ (Luka).
Meanwhile, there were similar resurgences in the hardcore scene. This was particularly notable in the case of straight edge, which enjoyed a particularly popular period across Europe from the late 1990s to the early 2000s: ‘at a certain point […] everybody started playing straight edge hardcore, and then a couple of years later everybody dropped the “edge”’ (Larry). Many of those who became aware of punk through pop punk in the mid-1990s moved into hardcore. This certainly was the case for Lisa, Larry, Andre, and Bart25.
25It is worth noting that the foregrounding of the hardcore scene over others (such
as pop punk) in this narrative is in part due to the way in which snowballing recruitment for participants will give prominence to the particular subgenres in which participants are involved.
Lisa: (28, female) is student in Nijmegen, originally from Drachten, she has also lived in Groningen. She plays with Planet Eyelash and regularly contributes to 3voor12, an alternative music publication.
Andre: (28, male) plays in Antillectual, and is based in Nijmegen. Bart: (28, male) is a truck driver based in Nijmegen. He played in The Minority and has driven bands on tour around Europe.
The Dutch straight edge scene shrunk dramatically following its high in the late 1990s. This was part of a global trend caused by a backlash against the scene, which had become increasingly rigid in its definitions and militant in maintaining boundaries (Haenfler, 2006). In the Dutch context many individuals and bands often remained part of punk but dropped the straight edge label, with many also dropping the practices of abstinence. A few individuals, including those four participants (Larry, Luka, Maxim and Daan) who had previously identified as straight edge maintained the lifestyle but dropped ‘straight edge’ as an identity. By the time of my fieldwork there was consequently little in the way of a straight edge ‘scene’, more a handful of individuals who remained connected through punk.
However, there were new developments in other Dutch punk and hardcore scenes around the dawn of the millennium. Some of the bands who were prominent in the scene at the time of this research project, and that were mentioned by participants as of particular interest, were established around this time. Nijmegen’s Antillectual began playing in 2000 and built their fan base throughout the 2000s, and Gewapend Beton formed in 2003. Vitamin X, who started out as a straight edge band in 1997, received cross- over support from the hardcore scene even after straight edge dwindled and they continued to tour throughout this period.
Gewapend Beton were part of a notable new generation in the mid- 2000s Dutch punk scene. When they got involved with the scene they were
considerably younger than other active punks. They used this to define themselves as the ‘embryo punk’ generation.
Sander: We we started to listen to punk and started to go to punk pubs it became obvious that we were the very youngest, we were fourteen or fifteen, so that’s certainly quite young. The next youngest were called the ‘baby-punks’, [...] we asked ourselves ‘what’s younger than a baby?’ [...] we called our demo tape ‘embryo punk’, and then we wrote a song with ‘embryo punk’ in the chorus, and then we started calling ourselves [and] our friendship group [embryo punks]. Actually, we wanted to call our whole generation of punks ‘embryo punks’. Kirsty: In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, or the whole world?
Sander: The Netherlands, Europe, it doesn’t matter. If we play a gig and we play the song with ‘embryo punks’ in the chorus, then there is really the feeling that this is for today’s generation of punks, you know? Becuase there’s a lot of people who are hung up on what went before, but ‘embryo punk’ is more about what people are doing with [punk] now.
The embryo punks were particularly prominent in the scene between late 2007 and early 2009, when they opened a squat (De Baarmoeder26),
notable for hosting many gigs. It was not just members of the ‘embryo’ generation who remember this period fondly. Maxim, a few years older and originally part of Amsterdam’s straight edge scene in the last 1990s, named
the time spent in this squat as the most important period for his experience of Dutch punk:
I think really for me personally the peak was when there was a squat, […] the Baarmoeder which was run by Gewapend Beton. […] They really had a lot of really good shows going on there and they had a really great festival, […] they called it the ‘abortion festival’ when they were getting kicked out of that squat. That was [a] reallyreallygood scene going on there (Maxim).
Members of the older generations were still around and active
throughout this period. By the late 2000s the Dutch punk scene was made up of multiple intersecting groups, divided as much by generation as by
subgenre. This seemed to be especially true of Groningen, where the scene is more isolated from the rest of the Netherlands and where there were high levels of activity amongst older punks. Interviews with Groningen punks indicated that there were distinct generations of punk, each with their own scene. This theme was reinforced by fieldwork observations, in which a younger crowd did not seem to have much contact with older punks. Commenting on the younger generation, Bram said, ‘I know some of them, but actually it’s a separate little scene (Bram). However, in other places such as Amsterdam, generations were more mixed. Ultimately, though, the
Maxim: (30, male) is student in Amsterdam, originally from Moscow, Russia. He is straight edge and plays with Vitamin X.
fragmentation of punk in terms of both genre and generation had opened up the potential for members to be part of multiple groupswithinpunk.
Whilst older punks often played in contemporary bands – some of which had existed for a long time (e.g. The Ex and Yawp!), and others of which were new (e.g. Indifferent Suns) – there was a notable trend for punk nostalgia at the time of this project. This trend could be seen in the organising of reunion gigs and the re-releasing of old recordings. Punk nostalgia in the Netherlands is reflective of a wider trend of old ‘greats’ reuniting and re- releasing material, as highlighted by the Sex Pistols tours of 1996, 2002, 2003, 2007 and 2008, and the 35thanniversary edition of ‘Never Mind the
Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ in 2012, alongside many other bands’ and individuals’ practices of ‘punk nostalgia’ (McLoone, 2004).
Man Lifting Banner reunited in 2008, played new gigs and released the double album ‘The Revolution Continues’ in 2012. This featured a number of new songs as well as re-releases of previous EPs. The sleeve art draws parallels between their earlier political thought and more recent revolutionary developments such as the Arab Spring. This placed their nostalgia in a contemporary continuum, highlighting links between old and new. The Rondos took a more distinctively retrospective approach, releasing their 30thanniversary box set in 2009 accompanied by a bilingual biography,
a 226 page photo-booklet, lyrics, and a Red Rat comic strip in which the main character revisits the squat lifestyle of the Rondos in the 1970s.
The punk nostalgia trend was boosted by the growth of social media. One participant described Facebook as the catalyst for a large reunion of Groningen punks which took place in May 2011. Excitement and anticipation for this event was present during my time in Groningen.
There is now also one of these reunions of a bunch of people. […] Last year I had a girlfriend and she wanted to know – on Facebook – 'show us some photos with [you when you had] hair'. So I post a few and then a couple of people saw that and [also] put old pictures up, and then somebody went ‘great, we should do a reunion'. […] I am not so much one to look back but […] I find it fun because I'll be seeing a lot of people I haven't seen in ages and that's always nice, people who live in France now or something (Jacob).
When the fieldwork for this project was conducted in 2010-2011, the scene, according to many participants, was again ‘quiet’. They stressed that Dutch punk was not as active as it had been. Lotte commented that, ‘the scene has shrunk’, and Sander expanded on this: ‘it isn't that you see something on every street corner or that something is being organised everyday by the people, yes, it's quite small, that's for sure’ (Sander).
However this, again, certainly did not mean that there was not an active scene. Gigs happened regularly (there were many punk gigs per week listed across the Netherlands), and those I went to were well-attended. There were many active musicians, bands, promoters, activists, and others who helped support the scene in multiple ways. Indeed, there were complaints
that there were ‘too many’ gigs, with multiple events occasionally run within travelling distance of one another either within a city, or a few hours’ travel away (this phenomenon is further discussed in Chapter 4). This highlighted the manner in which scene participants (especially) in ‘quiet’ periods are willing to travel further to attend a gig. Moreover, a higher proportion of those who are part of a ‘quiet’ punk scene are ‘active’ within the scene, putting on gigs and/or playing gigs. Just as in the other intervening ‘quiet’ times between ‘golden’ periods, the scene continued to exist and develop, with a core of people invested in it.
A few participants discussed a more general cultural shift that affects the strength of young people’s subcultural identifications today. ‘Young kids are […] more open minded, they think less in ‘hokjes’27we call it in Dutch’
(Ruben). However this concept of ‘hokjes’ as related to age is complicated by older participants’ who also invoke ‘thinking outsidehokjes’ when describing the widening of theirownsubcultural interests over time. Indeed, Haenfler (2006) also talks about older members ‘refusing to be compartmentalized into a tidy stylistic or ideological box’ (160) as they age. The process by which people move beyond or reject ‘hokjes’ reflects shifts outlined in Chapter 1 towards postmodern, fluid, subcultural identities. There was a worry amongst some participants that this would impact the continuation of the Dutch punk scene, as there were less invested individuals willing to participate heavily.
27Boxes. ‘Hokje’is both used to represent ‘thinking outside the box’, or as a synonym
A few participants, however, found positive aspects in the diminishing punk scene. They suggested that after earlier fragmentation, different
factions were reuniting in an effort to keep things going. Lotte observed that historic rivalries between different subcultures had been set aside, and Bram confirmed this:
Well if you go to the bars here where we hang out, or the gigs, you [now] get a lot of different people you know. It’s not just [the] punks, it’s also […] the metal guys, and rock and roll, rockabilly, […] even the proper normal looking people, middle age[d] people. […] It’s not always like that but it has been perhaps for the last ten to fifteen years. And I like that. It’s also because the subcultures are getting smaller so it mixes a bit more (Bram).
For most, the contemporaneous ‘lull’ was seen as temporary, as all past lulls had been. Jeroen was quietly optimistic that in the
contemporaneous context of a poor economy and state repression of
squatting that a change would soon come. ‘I think we're now at a point, in the Netherlands anyway, that things will go downhill [… but] then something new may come along’ (Jeroen).