01. Comment c’est formé le groupe et quand ?
02. Qui compose la musique et les textes et de quoi parlent vos textes ?
03. Que pensez-vous de la psychiatrie et de la prison ?
04. Est-ce qu’on vous censure ?
05. Quels sont vos groupes préférés ?
06. Avez-vous joué a l’étranger ?
07. Que pensez-vous de la vivisection ?
08. Que pensez-vous de la scène hardcore/punk ?
09. Que représente le groupe a vos yeux ?
10. Le mot de la fin ?

At the end of 1981 PIK formed the band because he had written a few songs and he wanted to play them in front of an audience. In order to do this, he searched and found a bassplayer (HANZ), a drummer (ANIMAL) and a singer (DUVEL). This line-up was responsable for about ten gigs. Then the drummer and singer left the band and were replaced by ZJANTIE and BART (brother of HANZ). BART and HANZ were thrown out later on because they weren’t interested anymore. JENZ became the new bassist and CLO the new (female) singer. That was in the summer of 1983. A year later CLO was forced to leave after quarrels and we decided not to replace her. PIK took over the lead vocals and JENZ (and later also ZJANTIE) took over the backing vocals from PIK. Since then THE DIRTY SCUMS are a threepiece band namely: PIK (vocals & guitar) - ZJANTIE (drums & vocals) - JENZ (bassguitar & vocals).

PIK composes the music with or without the coöperation of JENZ or/and ZJANTIE. PIK and JENZ write the lyrix and they talk about and against fascism, racism, army, dictatorship (left or right), nuclear weapons, pollution, third world, Belgian government, abuse of policepower, terrorism, church, anarchy, parties, beer, girls, gigs, … Nowadays we sing maybe about less serious things then before because the people who read the lyrix or listen to them are already convinced of the fact that this world is bad to the bone and because you don’t reach those people who should read them. Singing about the problems we have on this earth is a bit boring at the end and it’s flogging a dead horse, nothing changes. We think it’s better to begin to change the world with yourself than to sing all the time about problems you can’t change just by singing about them.

Besides the real scum that belongs in prison there are a lot of people who are there because of a little crime e.g. theft (= robbery). People who steal things like food, clothes, things they can’t buy, people who sell some shit, people who refuse the army, even children, should not be in prison among the real criminals. In the psychiatry there also is a lot of abuse, e.g. in Belgium it is possible to put someone away relatively easy, all you need is a signature and a statement of the mayor and a doctor that the person is dangerous.

Nobody changes our lyrix unless we agree with it, we have been totally free to write and publish anything we want up till now. But they never play our music on the official radio, we are never on TV, in the big papers they don’t write about us. So, if you want, we are censured because they refuse to talk about us and some concertorganisers (even in the scene) never ask us for a gig (because we aren’t straight-edge ?, because we don’t play metal ?).

Our favorite band is the RAMONES, they are the greatest ! Besides them we listen to a lot of other bands and to many kinds of music. First of all our favorite music, punkrock: SHAM 69, THE CLASH, SEX PISTOLS, STIFF LITTLE FINGERS, X-RAY SPEX, THE VIBRATORS, UK SUBS, THE DAMNED, and many more. We also listen to hardcore and metalmusic: CYCLONE, BONELESS ONES, TOXIC REASONS, ENGLISH DOGS, GBH, EARDAMAGE, VORTEX, D.R.I. (now and then), HEIBEL, VERBAL ABUSE, MOTORHEAD, JUDAS PRIEST, … We also listen to rock, pop, sixties, blues, hardrock, e.g. ROLLING STONES, THE STOOGES, IGGY POP, AC/DC, STATUS QUO, SCORPIONS, TYLA GANG, JOE JACKSON, PATTI SMITH, LOU REED, HERMAN BROOD, THE SWEET, THE HOLLIES, CCR, … We are influenced with ingredients from all those kinds of music and that’s interesting for us and for the people who listen to our music (we hope).

We played three times in the Netherlands, the first time in Maastricht, then in Amsterdam and recently in Hoorn and that’s it. But we would like to play more in foreign countries to meet other people and to know what it’s like to play for an other audience. We have concrete plans for a gig in Toulouse (France) and in Switzerland in the near future, namely in Bazel.

We aren’t vegetarians but we care about animals. We think it’s disgusting that animals are tortured for a doubtful, mostly not useful cause. Imagine you are an animal (maybe that ain’t too difficult for you ? (joke)).

In Belgium the punkscene is possessed of metalmusic and skateboards, joggingsuits, straight-edge. The bands are supposed to sound "metal" and when you don’t, you get less attention (mainly from gigorganisers and the musicpress), you become second class. It has even happend that someone is forced to stop the pogo and to stagedive instead. Maybe that’s exceptional but it’s a good illustration of what is going on (a friend of us has experienced it). The atmosfere is not like it used to be, everything becomes more serious, there are too many unwritten rules one is supposed to do to be part of it e.g. not to drink alcohol, to have a skateboard, to adore the music of SLAYER or METALLICA or to hate D.R.I., not to be ambitious, … We don’t care about it and we’re going our own way like we always have done. We’re a rock’n’roll band that plays punkrock and if you don’t like us you don’t have to buy our records. But in spite of everything the scene isn’t less active: there are a lot of ‘zines, records are released, compilationtapes and many gigs with foreign bands.

We think that the people who know us, know that we are taking things not too serious, that everything is relative, that we are not liable to certain trends, that we are going our own way. The audience can expect certain things of us, we are highly recognisable. The band can also be seen us a little image of a smal society, with three individual personalities with their own problems, with the friendship high in the banner, with left-wing political ideas, with their own ideology, and with common codes such as honesty against each other, …

Take care of the girls, have fun, buy our records, be aware of what’s going on in the world.