04/12/2010

The Holland Song



In the 1970’s, British TV was fond of showing police detective dramas, sometimes British but more often American. With shows like Kojak, Cannon, Columbo, The Rockford Files, New York and Los Angeles came to seem as familiar to the British viewer as London. One detective series, however, Van Der Valk, was different. The detective was Dutch (though the actor playing him, Barry Foster, was British and later popped up playing Sherlock Holmes) and instead of the usual American mean streets, the drama was played out against a backdrop of the bridges and canals, bicycles , trams and cafes of Amsterdam. And instead of the routine car chase screeching to an inevitable finale, Van Der Valk often had a more leisurely boat chase, with the villain in one boat and the detective in the one behind as they pootled round the canals before a convenient bridge offered the opportunity for an arrest (and perhaps the words “u wordt ingekerft, zonneschijn”)

I suspect that the popularity of the programme – its theme tune, Eye Level, was Number One in Britain for 4 weeks in 1973, finally knocked off by David Cassidy and The Puppy Song - had much to do with the outdoor locations.  (In much the same way, I had an aunt who sat through TV Westerns because she liked the scenery).The city is, of course, very photogenic and has been the setting of numerous films since then, including Snapshots, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Oceans 12 and the 1999 Silent Witness. It has also been well covered by songs since Max Bygraves and Tulips from Amsterdam in the 1950’s. Perhaps one of the most well known has been Jacque Brel’s In the Port of Amsterdam, recorded by Scott Walker and David Bowie amongst many others. In English language versions, however, the lyrics can seem totally overblown, as far away from the image conjured up by Tulips from Amsterdam as possible – “There's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails,And he'll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon, that can haul up the sails, that can swallow the moon”

In some ways, songs about Amsterdam have been less successful in capturing the city’s landscapes than TV and film. In some, the ‘Amsterdam’ seems either purely incidental – as in Coldplay’s song of the same name –or in a lyric that could really be anywhere: as in Janis Ian’s Amsterdam. Mainly, one of two sets of imagery have cropped up. One, predictably, has focused on the drugs and hippy legacy. Amsterdam, by American group Guster, for example: “From way up on your cloud, You're never coming down, Are you getting somewhere? Or did you get lost in Amsterdam?” Or Van Halen’s Amsterdam: “wham, bam, oh Amsterdam. yea, yea, yea, stone you like nothin' else can”

The second has been to go back to its art and history-famously with Don Mclean’s Vincent, the sheet music of which is in a time capsule buried under the Van Gogh Museum. Jonathan Richman also had a stab at both the painter and the museum with his ode to Vincent Van Gogh: “Now in the museum what have we here?
The baddest painter since God's Jon Vermeer.” The prog rock outfit King Crimson chose a Rembrandt painting as the inspiration for their 1974 Night Watch epic. Neutral Milk Hotel went back to another famous icon of Dutch history - Anne Frank- with their deeply obscure lyrics of Holland 1945.

Yet there have been some songs that reflected more the writer’s personal experience of the place . Al Stewart, whose sojourn in Brooklyn was the subject of a previous column, wrote about a tour of Holland in his 1972 Amsterdam song. Michelle Shocked reflected “It's 5 a.m. in Amsterdam and this is how I know. There's a church beside a park and it fills the dying dark with five strokes”. The song here, The Holland Song, by Two Nice Girls, from their 1989 album of the same name, is another such personal response to the place. Two Nice Girls, a self-styled ‘lesbian rock group’ from Austin, Texas, came closest to commercial success with Sweet Jane (With Affection), a merging of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane and Joan Armatrading’s Love & Affection. The Holland Song was written by group member Kathy Korniloff when she was 16 and, in an odd way, it is maybe this that makes the song suit the place. Though the lyrics are clumsy at times- “These Dutch are too much, they built this land from the sea” – there is also an almost gauche enthusiasm that, with the harmonies and jazz-tinged folk backing, manage to give a warm and sunlit feeling to the place despite the rain and North Sea breezes. As so many people feel when they visit Amsterdam and wander along the canals and in and out of cafes, the message is - I think I could live here.

Maybe people seem to feel at home so quickly in Amsterdam because they find what they expect to find, whether that is windmills and tulips in the market, Van Gogh’s landscapes or Panama Red - though the unexpected is always there to delight, like mayonnaise on hotdogs and chips. And taking away an image of a watercolour land is as good as any.


Link to song

61 comments:

  1. There's a totally fascinating piece by one of the singers here: http://www.twonicegirlsmusic.com/bio.html - it explains a lot about the band and their music.

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  2. I had never heard of this band, but went to read more about them after your column and found their song "I Spent My Last $10.00 (on Birth Control & Beer)" which is genius!:)

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  3. I'm more familiar with one of the band members, Laurie Freelove, who went on to be a solo artist - http://www.hrmusic.com/artists/lflart.html - and is very very good. I've heard her play a few times in New York.

    Thanks for the column Geoff - I was wondering when you'd write about Amsterdam!

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  4. Geoff! Don't forget about the Van Halen song about Amsterdam - a great rock song (I think it might be about smoking pot there though). It's 1995's album Balance, the last album with Sammy Hagar. Definitely makes Amsterdam sound really fun. A good rock beat. I saw them at the Oakland Colliseum in May of 1995. Anyway, Amsterdam seems like it might be a fun city for rockstars to go to and then write about. Great column - rock on!

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  5. Geoff - thanks for writing about the band. I'm a huge fan of the part of the mid-80s Austin, Texas, indie scene. And country-rock in general - which I don't think you've written about before.

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  6. I had forgotten about this band!
    Thanks for the reminder.

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  7. I really liked their version of "Sweet Jane" (which mixed in Joan Armatrading's "Love and Affection"). It never got the same airplay as the Cowboy Junkies version did, unfortunately.

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  8. I love their song "Cotton Crown" which I think might be a cover of Sonic Youth.

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  9. I played drums with Gretchen Phillips.

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  10. Yes, Lou Reed apparently heard the Two Nice Girls' version of "Sweet Jane" and was sorry he hadn't known about it when he publicly said the Cowboy Junkies' version was the best recording ever (better than his own). He wished he had plugged their version instead. It really is one of the most magical recordings I've ever heard - i think you can hear it at the Two Nice Girls website.

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  11. Anyone heard their song "Like a Version"? It's a super-cool jazzloungey version of the theme from Speed Racer, from their 1990 album. Very very cool.

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  12. Thanks for a great column! Gretchen and I go way back! Love her to pieces and love you too for having her on your blog! xxxxx

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  13. Gretchen has a very good new album out - I was Just Comforting Her - it is 2008 or 2009 i think. Red State/Blue State is a great protest song.

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  14. “I Spent My Last $10 (on Birth Control and Beer)” was one of the first songs by a lesbian artist that made me realize that lesbians can be funny. It’s made a regular appearance on mix tapes throughout the years. Thanks for the reminder to go check out the rest of Gretchen Phillips’ work!

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  15. The band members are featured in some length on the documentary Radical Act (well worth seeing): http://www.buyolympia.com/q/Item=radical-act-dvd

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  16. But there were 3 girls in the band.... I guess only 2 of them were nice:)

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  17. This column made me rewind to the late-90's as I was browsing in a used CD store... and ran across a promo copy of Lesbian Favorites: Women Like Us - in perusing the tracklist, I saw Dar Williams' As Cool As I Am, as well as selections by k. d. lang, Janis Ian, Ani Di Franco, Jane Siberry and Ferron (so many of the artists I was recently discovering). I of course read the liner notes (written by Gretchen Phillips) when I got home... and only now realize she was a founding member of Two Nice Girls, after reading your column! Thanks Geoff!

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  18. The opening tune to Van Der Valk is so memorable. I remember this! Didn't it reach number one in England at some point in the early 1970s??

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  19. I was in Van der Valk (and there is no capitalisation in "der"). I played Arlette van der Valk in 1972 and 1973, until they replaced me with Joanna Dunham. And yes, ours was the first television theme song to hit number one in the charts I think. I still think it was a marvellously enthralling programme, although I think the author of the column was mocking us a little!

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  20. Oops, actually you mention the song being number one, just reread that paragaph, sorry Geoff!

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  21. aaaaaaaaaah.......so many memories watching the opening credits to the show.... watched it on TV as a kid. You have to admit - this HAS to be one of the most memorable theme tunes of ANY TV program - ever!! I remember like it was yesterday. In fact, they even used to play in my junior school when the classes were leaving the main hall after morning assembly. Absolutely brilliant!!

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  22. I loved the opening credits link! (More than the actual song by the Two Nice Girls actually Geoff - sorry!). I liked the video too. The titles of the 11 DVD Series 1-5 boxed set are all the Channel 5 ones when they were reshown sometime in the early 2000s and not this one. It was tremendously atmospheric and one of the highlights of a young Ric's introduction to Van Der Valk, especially the gentleman riding along with his dog in the basket. I do wonder why they show the DVD with new titles - I thought it was copyright reasons, but the music is definitely the same, and I can't imagine you'd copyright a title sequence. Oh well!

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  23. I watched van der Valk religiously in the early 1970s and I can't remember a single plot line but that wasn't the point. The ambiance!

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  24. I loved this theme and series as a child and have loved Holland and the Dutch ever since. Even though all the actors were English !

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  25. The theme song was a big hit here in Canada...both the show AND the theme song...so much so that KLM airlines used as the music in their commercials as it was so strongly associated with The Netherlands.

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  26. I used to think watching the show, it was the Dutch national anthem.

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  27. This ranks for me as one of the best tv or radio themes. Along with "Liberty Bell" (Monty Python's Flying Circus), "Domino" (Never The Twain), "Up To Date" (Man About The House), "Distant Hills" (Crown Court), "George & Mildred" (aka... George & Mildred) and the funktastic "Precinct" (previously the theme to the cult 70s Jon Pertwee-hosted murder quiz Whodunnit?) along with the whacky offbeat themes to the Bob Godfrey animated classics Henry's Cat and Roobarb.

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  28. Oh dear, but Van de Valk always seems more than a little jaded. And he’s more likely to be at a pub than dealing with the political fallout of his cases.

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  29. Also, was noone ever struck by the instances of incongruous English slang, such as when Van der Valk asks someone "if they're taking the piss"? They were supposed to be Dutch policemen........

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  30. Yes, Sherri, he was constantly drinking on the job when he wasn't skipping out to enjoy the sun out in the park:)

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  31. Aside from the best theme tune for a cop show ever, he never has to go after drugs or prostitutes cos it's legal. Unlike similar UK shows of the 70s. Genius!

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  32. Anyone remember "I can't take anymore of this without a drink"? Classic Van der Valk.

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  33. Was anyone ever struck by how well Arlette kept the two children out of the way? We never see them. They are only heard upstairs once or twice!

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  34. I think the same composer, Jack Trombey, who did the theme for Van der Valk also did the theme for Callan: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDdSWjpPJDg

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  35. I had a schoolteacher who maintained that the Van der Valk song was a Dutch traditional tune-but also that the words should be "I had some ham on an Amsterdam tram" ...

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  36. But Mick, we ARE given tantalizing little tidbits of the "seamier" side of Amsterdam, with hints of sex shops and transvestite bars (as well as that floating sex barge used for blackmail purposes)..........

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  37. I agree with Geoff: the period detail and the location work in Amsterdam is what the whole point of this programme was. Not the action or the characters or the actual mysteries!

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  38. I wasnt really mocking the programme, Susan! I saw an old episode recently and was struck by the leisurely boat chase in it! Actually I think the locations introduced a lot of people to Amsterdam at the time. I am not sure about it being the first theme tune to be number one though -what about Stranger on the Shore?

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  39. Geoff, sorry to be the stupid one, but I've googled the phrase "u wordt ingekerft, zonneschijn” and nothing comes up (except your blog of course!). Any chance you can be bothered to translate this? I think the last word is 'sunshine' but not sure about ingekerft!

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  40. I hope it says, 'You're nicked, sunshine' but I was relying on babelfish for translation!

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  41. Oh. I suppose I always thought that Acker Bilk wrote "Stranger on the Shore" independently of the show, and then eventually it was used as the theme tune. But if you're right that it was written specially for the programme, then I guess our little show can't even claim to have had the first number one hit from a TV theme song. Oh well!

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  42. Ah! Thanks Geoff - very funny:)

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  43. It's interesting - TV show theme songs seem to have done better in the U.S. for some reason. I think at least four TV themes have made it to the top of Billboard's chart:

    S.W.A.T., theme from S.W.A.T. (1975-1979) by Rhythm Heritage

    Welcome Back, theme from Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979) by John Sebastian

    Miami Vice, theme from Miami Vice (1984-1989) by Jan Hammer

    How Do You Talk to an Angel, theme from The Heights (1992) by The Heights

    The dates were
    Feb 26, 1976 - S.W.A.T.
    May 8, 1976 - Welcome Back
    Nov 9, 1985 - Miami Vice
    Nov 14, 1992 - How Do You Talk to an Angel

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  44. Well, the UK also had the theme From M*A*S*H "(Suicide is Painless)" which topped the UK charts in 1980.....

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  45. Re Susan's point, I think it was written first, used as the theme for a children's TV serial and then became a hit because of that- so I guess its a moot point whether that or Van der Valk was the first!

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  46. Is it just me, or is the Brel version of Amsterdam kind of cooler:

    “There's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails,And he'll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon, that can haul up the sails, that can swallow the moon”

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  47. I think this is a fascinating example of songs trying to do something that maybe film can do much better - meditate upon outdoor locations. Like Venice, Amsterdam is an intensely visual city - with the added element of having no obvious ethnic or folk music tradition either (unlike Budapest or Spain, which you've written about). So it doesn't surprise me at all that there are more films and TV shows with Amsterdam scenes than there are songs about Amsterdam - although it's fascinating to read all about it in such wonderful detail - thanks Geoff!

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  48. I don't know, but there is something unsatisfying about all the songs you mention about Amsterdam, maybe because - as you point out - the city is better covered in visual forms. Even the way you end, with the idea of an "image of a watercolour land" evokes the visual, not music. For some reason, I don't think songs have really got to the essence of the city (or any of its many essences). Or maybe there is nothing to say after Van Gogh!

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  49. Wow, this column was jampacked with fascinating-sounding references! I hunted down a few of the songs Geoff mentioned, and thought the Neutral Milk Hotel, Holland 1945, song was particularly provocative: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCjpbjCH5L0

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  50. I disagree a bit Dawn. Geoff mentioned Al Stewart's Amsterdam song. And the combination of the lyrics, his voice and the jaunty melody DOES sum up the city's spirit for me. Here's the music: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jKDppqiAUk

    And the lyrics are:

    Oh I just came back from Haarlem
    On the very last day of Autumn
    Made it through the customs, took the bus into town
    The flat looked cold and empty
    The chairs unused and dusty
    Just a few old letters and papers lying around
    The Dutch people were friendly
    You know they put me up and they fed me
    All along a tour of one night stands
    All my days and all my ways
    Are so confused
    I tell you right new
    I'm going to make it back to Amsterdam

    And you can feel fine anytime
    You choose to lose yourself for a while
    Bottle of wine
    In some back street cafe
    Or out on the street, there's a chance
    For you to meet anybody you please
    Taking the time
    To ease your blues away

    Fred was a crazy driver
    He took us at a hundred miles an hour
    Down a side street out of a traffic jam
    All my days and all my ways
    Are so bemused
    I tell you right now
    I'm going to make it back to Amsterdam

    Oh I just came back from Haarlem
    And the very thing I was wanting
    Was to find some way to let you know how I felt
    You can't say much in an evening
    If you know you'll soon be leaving
    There's not much time to talk, and it's maybe as well
    But I wanted to give you something
    Because you knew you really helped me
    So I've written you a song with a small West Indian band
    And though it seems some days that all my ways are
    Bound to lose
    I tell you right now
    I'm going to make it back to Amsterdam

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  51. I think you are right, Dawn-and Laura. Theres nothing quite fits Amsterdam in the way Scott Walker's Copenhagen seemed to fit there somehow.

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  52. Here's me performing Jacques Brel’s In the Port of Amsterdam: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU2D8t-THD4. Hope you enjoy it!

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  53. Oh dear, well I disagree with you too then Geoff:) (In a super friendly kinda way!)

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  54. Here are a few more films that are either set in Amsterdam or have long sequences there........

    Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
    Hostel
    Northern Light
    The Lucky Star

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  55. I take your point about the spirit of Al Stewart's song, Jim but somehow the song makes me think more about Al Stewart than Amsterdam!

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  56. What is it about police dramas and the 1970s? The decade really did see flood of them--some 42 premiered during the decade apparently. I also think it's when the genre came into its own stylistically: their protagonists became increasingly individualistic and quirky. They came closer and closer to the alienated position of the private detective, and moved farther and farther from the Dragnet-style police procedural. The title figures of McCloud, Columbo, and Kojak were police detectives marked as much by personal idiosyncrasies as concerns with proper procedure or law enforcement effectiveness. McCloud (Dennis Weaver) was a deputy from New Mexico who brought Western "justice" to the streets of Manhattan. Columbo (Peter Falk) dressed in a crumpled raincoat and feigned lethargy as he lured suspects into a false sense of confidence. And Kojak (Telly Savalas) was as well known for his bald head and constant lollipop sucking as for problem-solving. The 1970s inclination toward offbeat police officers peaked in detectives that spent so much time undercover--and masqueraded so effectively as criminals--that the distinction between police and criminals became less and less clear. Toma (a ratings success even though it lasted just one season) and Baretta led the way in this regard, drawing their inspiration from Serpico--a popular Peter Maas book that eventually evolved into a film and a low-rated TV series. These unorthodox cops bucked the police rule book and lived unconventional lives, but, ultimately, they existed on a higher moral plain than the regular police officer. The genre was also fortified in the 1970s through other strategies: incorporating a medical discourse (Quincy, M.E.), setting policemen astride motorcycles (CHiPs--a term, incidentally, which was fabricated by the program and is not used by the California Highway Patrol), and casting younger, hipper actors (Starsky and Hutch). By the 1980s, the police drama was a well established genre, but felt like it was in danger of stagnation from the glut of programs broadcast during the previous decade. It really was a 1970s genre.

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  57. I suppose in a way it was a continuation of the Westerns of the 1950's and early 1960's which also had the idea of the individualistic and unconventional loner pursuing the law. Hill Street Blues, which I think started at the end of the seventies, recast this idea to some extent.

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  58. Hi Geoff! This is somewhat unrelated to Amsterdam but I thought you'd enjoy this list! There probably aren't too many songs about the places on it!

    http://listverse.com/2010/01/06/top-10-places-you-cant-go/

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  59. oooh, I was just about to send a list too! I think it's that time of year when lists get published:) Here's a good one about best albums of the year......

    http://www.npr.org/series/131413130/npr-music-s-50-favorite-albums-of-2010

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  60. I think you're absolutely right Geoff. The Western loses popularity in the 1970s because of its association with the Vietnam war: the John Wayne war where soldiers' letters and memoirs quote them pretending to be cowboys and Indians, and 1960s and early 1970s Westerns seem conscious of Vietnam, while Vietnam war films quoted Westerns. American politicians and generals called hostile Vietnam “Indian country” and referenced “Daniel Boon Squads.” In the book Dispatches, Michael Herr claims that a captain invited him to play cowboys and Indians, and a scene in the documentary Interviews With My Lai Veterans from 1971 features three veterans discussing the scalping of dead Vietnamese (“people were on an Indian trip over there,” observes one). The antiwar veteran Ron Kovic called Vietnam “the glory John Wayne war” in his memoir and said he felt like “your John Wayne come home". Anyway, after the war was lost and over, I think Westerns seemed entirely inappropriate (at least until Reagan announced the new frontier and Vietnam films tried to rehabilitate that myth of warrior-masculinity (the Old West) in their new Vietnam films like Uncommon Valor (1983), Missing in Action (1984), and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). But I agree that inbetween Westerns of the Vietnam era, and the action films of the 1980s, the replacement was the cop shows of the 1970s - especially the anti-hero style cops, as far from John Wayne / Rambo heroics as you can imagine!

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  61. I think that analysis is spot-on- and the Rambo type films updated the myths of the Western. I think the British genre of cop/detective shows-including Van der Valk- had a different context. They seemed to be split between the intellectual detective, going back to Sherlock Holmes, and the Sweeney/Z-Car type show, which Life on Mars recently recaptured.

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