Patapoe
Saturday, 29 November 2008
In the eighties I did a weekly radio show for Radio Patapoe. The show was called ”De firma Dynamiet” and I played more or less the kind of music that I write about in this blog. But back then there were no CD’s yet and my record collection was much smaller then it is now, so played a lot of stuff from cassette tapes that I had recived from other collectors. Cuing cassettes was difficult, especially since the Patapoe studio built with rubber bands, paperclips and cello tape. I didn’t do the show very long. The studio was in an old squatters centre, and there wasn’t even a heating system. So when it became winter, I quit. I never felt that I was the right person for that station anyway, I was much to mainstream.
The reason that I started doing this show was that I was asked by one of the people who run the station, B. He was a very nice guy. We exchanged a lot of tapes, and his tapes are among the best that I ever have received. I will write more about them later. One day B. was sent to prison because he refused to discuss his “oproep” for the army. ”Totaalweigeraars”, as they were called got a ridiculous sentence, I think he was in prison for TWO YEARS. I visited him a few times, but I could barely handle that. Here was a guy who refused to do any war-act, doing TWO YEARS IN JAIL among thiefs and dealers and other criminals. I still don’t know how he survived that. And shortly after he had done his time, compulsatory military service was abolished. Beam me up, Scotty.
Before B. was sent to prison, he divided all his stuff among the people that he could trust. I got some of the Patapoe administration and his Dutch record collection. I had two years to record all of it, which I did of course. Tonight I could only find four cassettes, but there is much more. (Somewhere!)
Later I got many of these records myself, but not all of them. There were many great Dutch records that I heard for the first time because B. had to go to jail. Ain’t life strange.
B. was also the very first person who ever sent me (half) a tape with Dutch advertisement records. In fact, because of this tape I started collecting these records! I must have kept that tape somewhere, but it is now too late to go and search for it.
Here is a song from one of the Dutch 45’s cassettes: The Wipe Outs with ”De krakers van Amsterdam”:
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