Friday, 14 November 2008

16 Hollandse Hits


I will admit I only bought this album because one of the acts on it is called 'Cock Van De Palm'. And if there is a better reason than that for spending fifty pence on an LP, I have yet to come across it.

Warning:
This LP contains Accordions and Yodelling

Kant 1:
  1. Als 'n Meeuw de Wind (4'09) - Arne Jansen & Les Cigales
  2. Joke Stop Met Koken (2'46) - Leidse Sleutelgaten
  3. Vragende Ogen Lokkende Lippen (3'48) - Cock Van De Palm
  4. De klokkenluider (3.'48) - Duo Onbekend
  5. Als ik Leer Zie, Word ik Wild (3'15) - Ria Valk
  6. Wals Voor Jopie (3'15) - De Electronica's (sic)
  7. Krijg je Van 'n Jogen Rode Rozen (3'39) - Liesbeth
  8. Op de Bibbelbonse Bergen (2'45) - Take It Easy
Kant 2:
  1. Blit Dat ik Rij (4'00) - Henk Winjngaard
  2. Jodeladiehiepiepiep (3'45) - Franky Boy
  3. Natasja (3'21) - Het Sneeuwbal Trio (The Hot Snowball trio?)
  4. Als de Soldaten..... (2'49) - De Roffels
  5. Waarom Dans je Met die Ander (4'00) - Janske
  6. Zuidwind (3'03) - Gerry Van Hourtert
  7. Vissersleed (2'54) - De Bohemiens
  8. El Paradiso (3'44) - Ad & Karin

The highlights of this album are:

The compulsively wonderful Op de bibbelbonse bergen ( Side 1 Track 8) - a song with elements almost certainly 'borrowed'* from this catfood jingle, and what sounds suspiciously like a snippet of The Muppet Show's theme music.

The disturbing mixture of Yodelling and cow noises that is Jodeladiehiepiepiep (Side 2 Track 2 ).

The relentlessly cheerful Zuidenwind (Side 2 track 6)

And for me the cherry on the cake: The Rock and Yodel stylings of Ria Valk (she's the one with the big hair and the sequin headband on the cover) with Als ik Leer Zie, Word ik Wild (Side 1 Track 5). This one track alone would keep the album in the house. It just creases me up every time I hear it. I can see why it was a hit back in 1983.**

The rest is a mixture of the awful, the bland, and the cruddy. Europop, Country and Western, and waltzes - all sung in a language that must be a real bugger to sing anything in. The Country and Western warblings on here come off particularly badly. No matter how many steel guitars and harmonicas they ladled on top, it still sound like Tex Ritter clearing his nose into a spittoon.

God! I hate Dutch. I don't hate THE Dutch: great cheese, genius inventors of Mayonnaise on chips, some brilliant painters - and, during the early 1980s at least, creators of some really crap music and heroic moustaches. I have nothing again Dutch people or the Dutch countryside or anything else that came from Holland - but the language? It drives me crazy. I just can't get my brain to store more than two letters of it at a time (It twists my melon! It drives me crazy in the coconut!) every time I have to write or type any Dutch my brain goes into spasms. No real language can possibly have a J and G next to each other THAT often.

So, Dutch people, forgive me if I made a total hash of copying the track listings and typed rude and offensive things.

Frankie Boy - Die Poppenstaar Hollandeschjgk


And here he is in action.


*Heavily.

**Given Holland's liberal dope laws of the time I can see why all of these tracks became hits. These were probably the only people in Holland straight enough to make it into the recording studio - well maybe that's not true - maybe these were the only people who came out again having actually recorded anything; whilst all the real musicians were getting stoned out of their gourds in cafes in Amsterdam's 'coffee' shops this lot had the field to themselves. Yodelling was obviously big in Holland for years. I mean, just look at Dutch Prog Rock giants Focus:

2 comments:

Phoebe said...

I would have considered buying this album because the title looked like "Hollandaise" to me at first glance.

Um. The cow sounds scared.

I'm so glad this is the monkey on your back... not because it could be something worse (although that's a good second). Rather it means that this monkey doesn't plague MY back. Tyler would fall into eternal eye rolling spasms, or just stare unblinkingly at me forever.

Does this stuff make your kids dance like crazy?

Phoebe said...

Just watched the Franky Boy video. No wonder the cow was scared.