A TRIBUTE TO AN OLD FRIEND: BRAM PESCADOR

Yeah... For a part of my youth I grew up in what was then a pretty rough working class neighbourhood in Rotterdam called Honderdentienmorgen. During summer my mom and a lot of other women living in the flats where we were living would come down with a chair and they would sit there together, gossiping, chain smoking and drinking endless cups of coffee, it was that kind of a neighbourhood, and us kids where always outside, roaming around causing all kinds of trouble.... It looked like this:

Then, when I was 8 years old we moved to a small city outside Rotterdam called Krimpen a/d IJssel and we were smack in the middle of what was (and still is) called Oud (old) Krimpen and that neighbourhood was heavily hard-core Christian, the kind of Christians that, on Sunday go to church all dressed in black and no smiles what ever (we call them "zwarte kousen", "black socks" in Holland). Me and my brother, both of us talking that heavy Rotterdam accent, city boys, were not accepted and in school and out of school we would get into fights, almost every day, just fighting, fighting and fighting... After a few years we moved to a more modern part of that city... I must've been around 12 years old, i was crazy with The Beatles and of that age when you make scrap-books about the stuff you really liked so i was busy with a Beatles scrap book.... One day a kid, maybe 2 years older then me, was waiting for me outside school, and he gave me a glossy photograph of The Beatles for my scrap-book and that kid was Bram Visser.... Well...me and Bram became fast friends, spending lots of time together. My first real friend in that small city... It was also the year that punk broke out with The Sex Pistols on Dutch tv, Iggy Pop "destoying" the Top Pop tv studio while performing Lust For Life, 1977, and me and Bram were both blown away by it. We were both heavily into punk and heavy metal at the time and Bram, who was very, very creative kid made us both fake guitars out of plywood and we would be headbanging in his room.... Around the end of 1978, beginning of 1979 we started our own punk band called Pleeboy (Toiletboy, a word play on Playboy) together with Henk Verhoek on bass and Peter Heumen on guitar. Non of us could play 'cept for Peter, our very own "hippie", I became the drummer and Bram became the singer (and sometimes playing guitar too). We started out practicing in the garage of Bram's parents house:

And later we had a very, very cool place for practicing:

The last performance we did was at my school, in Rotterdam. And it was chaos. We played a few of our one minute songs and the director of the school pulled the plug. A classmate of mine, Edwin M. who was a huge, huge skinhead knocked the director out, put the plug back in and we kept playing. It got me kicked out of school and next thing you knew I ran away from home, age 15. and spend about a year in squat houses in Rotterdam... After a year I moved back to my parents, too many folks in the punk scene dying, violence, drugs you name it, and for a while I played in another band with Bram, more of a new wave band.... I actually still have some photo's from that performance at my school:

I started working, moved back to Rotterdam and me and Bram lost touch. Bram always kept playing, in many, many bands. In 1982 he played in a punk band called NL Corruption and they put out this ep (now a very expensive collector's item): In the 90's he was the singer and guitar player in a band that was quite successful for a while called The Hangman Jury, they toured in the USA and other places: And like I said, lots of other bands like: Well, lately he's been uploading some of his solo work on youtube and I thought it would be nice to share some of that here. Hope some of you, ehrrr, a lot of you, will like it: So yeah, Bram Visser aka Bram Pescador, my oldest friend, and we still keep in touch every once in a while, and if you're reading this buddy, I love you and I'm watching all those great videos you're putting out :) Enjoy!!!