RONDOS - RED ATTACK

Yeah.... So this is the 1980 album Red Attack from Rotterdam punk band the Rondos and it isn't easy to put into words how much this album impacted and influenced me when it came out.... I was 15 at the time, was playing drums in a punk band called Pleeboy, and the Rondos was one of the very first punk bands I saw perform, at a street festival in Rotterdam together with Bunker Oeso and The Railbirds in 1979. There's no footage from the Rondos or Bunker Oeso but there is some from The Railbirds: For a while the Rondos were huge, they all lived together in an enormous place called Huize Schoonderloo, they had their own recording studio there and printshop and they were putting out a monthly magazine called Raket... I still have some of those magazines:

I also had all their ep's but those were stolen many, many years ago.... Anyway, they had a huge impact on the Rotterdam scene and the Dutch punk scene in general. They were very, very political and quite aggressive about it and sometimes could go a little to far with their, for lack of a better word, preaching, they would call you a fascist for example if you were smoking hash because you were, according to them, supporting fascists regimes by doing that (weed and hash were basically all imported ((smuggled)) from other countries like Morocco back then)... Now, the Rotterdam punk scene was huge back then, and it had a pretty bad reputation for violence and most punks back then were more into partying, dope, alcohol and generally just having fun and all the preaching and such from the Rondos, well.... a huge part of the punk scene just got sick of it and an anti Rondos sentiment was soon growing, mostly centered around the (excellent) band Kotx and some other bands.... This is around the time that I started going out, to pubs, to punk club Kaasee and Eksit and by the end of 1980, like so many others my age back then, I ran away from home and started living in squat houses in Rotterdam with fellow punks... Then the Rondos quit, the released one last single which had a statement printed on it: In September 1980 The Rondos’ last single appeared, titled Fight Back!. On the sleeve it said: “the rondos quit. this is our last record. we brought the rondos to a conclusion, because in our opinion we became too successful. and being successful means being accepted. besides; a great part of the punk-movement is developing in a direction, which is not ours; violence, alcohol, confirmation and commerce/business. but the struggle continues! we keep on fighting with other means.” It was written without capital letters, in both Dutch and English. Me, I was with the anarchist and communist punks and it was a violent time, so many fights, and so many deaths because of heroin and around the end of '81, sitting in a squat house looking at the folks around me shooting up I just had enough, I left, lived for another fantastic four years with my parents, working, books, music and concerts and loads and loads of weed....

A concert we, Pleeboy, gave in 1980.... At the school I was going to at the time, after 3 one minute songs the director pulled the plug and a huge friend of ours, a skinhead beat down the director and we played on, I got thrown out of that school after that which wasn't really a big surprise....

Pleeboy, practise session, somewhere in 1980....

Me, standing in the middle in front of the podium of a small punk festival in 1981 in Rotterdam after we demonstrated for a new punk venue after the city had closed down Eksit and punk place Kaasee had burned down, I remember Bunker Oeso, J. Dops Band, Debiele Eenheid and Kotx were playing that day....

Me in Amsterdam in a store with Dutch punk poet Diana Ozon working there, 1979....

A concert poster from a gig we did in punk club Simplon in Groningen, 1980.... Towards the end the Rondos also came into conflict with Leo Schelvis who was the owner of record shop Haddock (a great record shop where I bought tons of records back in the days) because Leo was selling the Rondos records for a bit more then the fixed price the Rondos wanted, and Leo released a flexi single with various members of the bands- the Dolbies and Stealer, an anti-Rondos flexi disc (and I wish I still had it, excellent music!).... So yeah, the Rondos.... For me, still, a fantastic band and some years ago all the ex members came together and they released this box with this album, all their ep's, a live concert, some booklets and other stuff:

And they made a website where you can buy this box and which is chock-full of information about the Rondos, their history (which is way more complex and fuller than what I'm describing here in this short post, just read about the time they performed together with English punk band Crass in England, crazy stuff) : http://rondos.nl/ GET THE ALBUM HERE Their drummer, Willem played in Dutch band the Ex for a while and Maarten later started the excellent band Nieuw Hip Stielen: Enjoy!