Date: 14/10/2005
Questions by: Matthias
Appeared in: ?
01. For those who are not familiar with "Deadlock", could
you give us an introduction of the band ?
02. This was indeed a stupid question ! Let's start again with a typical one:
introduce us the members of The Dirty Scums.
03.The Dirty Scums have been around for twenty-five years now. Can you remember
the first show togetter ? And what was the best experience in all those years ?
04. At the Out Of Control Fest, Alex from Flatcat told us his first punk
album was a Dirty Scums-tape or CD. Flatcat is now a well known band at Dour
Festival, Pukkelpop and is listed in the commercial radioprogram “De
Afrekening”. Don’t you want to start all over in the year 2005 ?
05. In the past twenty-five years The Dirty scums have been on innumerable
compilations. I know it’s a though question but is there a compilation that
you’re still proud of that The Scums are on it ?
06. The last question is a sort of game. I suggest two bands, choose one of them
and motivate your answer …
01. For those who are not familiar with "Deadlock", could you give us an introduction of the band ?
Mate, this is a strange introduction-question … Well, to my knowledge, we only played once with Deadlock, so there’s not much of an introduction to them from our side. It’s a band from Amsterdam with whom we played in 1985. It’s possible we played more gigs with them but then they are not noted in our big history-book. There’s a small report of that 1985-gig on our site from a well-known fanzine at that time. It was most surprising to read it again: it was namely a festival in Eeklo, with 3 bands from Tielt (Repulsives, No Numbers, The Dirty Scums), further on Ausbruch from Germany, and finally Deadlock from the Netherlands.
02. This was indeed a stupid question ! Let's start again with a typical one: introduce us the members of The Dirty Scums.
Well let’s kick off with presenting you our junior, Dirty Keez, who is only part of the band since 1994. He plays the bass and sings also a part of the vocals. From 1984 till 1990, he played in Get Stuffed, a punkband from Tielt’s satellite town Aarsele. Their song “Rocket to Heaven” figures as a bonus track on our “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”-CD (2002). We have plans to release on Dirty Records a CD with a live-gig from Get Stuffed. Keez furthermore played in Alice D and the Noiseboys from 1992 till 1993.
Then we have our drummer Dirty Zjantie, with whom I’m playing in the band since 1983. He’s from Zwevezele, the same village of the one I am from, and later on he followed me also to Tielt. When we were kids, I once learned him how to drive a bike, I remember it wasn’t easy ! Before he joined the Scums, Zjantie played the drums in two other bands. The first one was the Patrick Boys (yes, a very stupid name) in which he played from 1978 till 1983. They once did the support act for Eddy Wally ! In the mean time, in 1982, he played in Up to Date. From this band, you can hear the song “Romantic” as bonus track on “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”. While bein’ member of the Scums, Zjantie also joined two other bands. In 1986, he played in The Quest, a band that rehearsed in our rehearsal room. In 1989, he joined Medard en de Muzen, in which played also a founding member of the legendary late seventies punkband the Underdogs.
And finally I think I’ll have to introduce myself too. Well, as you might know I’m Dirty Pik, singer and guitar-player of The Dirty Scums. From the first time I saw the Sex Pistols on TV, I knew this was my kind of stuff and I knew this was what I wanted to do. We didn’t have any musicians in our family, so it took till 1980 till I could persuade my mother to buy me a secondhand classic guitar. I still remember its price: 1.000 BEF (25 €). In this same year I joined the hardrock-band Machine Head from Roeselare, a then well-known band in the region. They allowed me to use the second electric guitar from the other guitarplayer of the band. Around Christmas 1981, I formed The Dirty Scums while I was still part of Machine Head. We finally split up in 1982. Again on the “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”-CD, there’s this bonus track “The Wizard” from Machine Head. As we spent our weekends most of the time in Tielt, in 1985 I definitely moved to Tielt. 1985 is also the year in which we released our first album “Dirty Songs”. Since 1991 I live in that other satellite town of Tielt: Schuiferskapelle. You probably know already the best bands from the Tielt-scene have their home in Schuiferskapelle, no ?
03. The Dirty Scums have been around for twenty-five years now. Can you remember the first show together ? And what was the best experience in all those years ?
Yes, I do remember our first gig, on 6 March 1982. It was in the legendary de Marbel-club in Tielt where we played as a support act for Revenge 88. We were then together for less than three months. We didn’t receive any money, instead we had to pay ourselves the extra costs the P.A. asked the organizer for the supplementary band ! Our singer was so drunk he didn’t know the lyrix by heart, so he had his papers with him, but people took them away and so. People who were there at the time and still remember it, now talk about a legendary gig …
The best experience ? Well, every release of a new CD is a kind of special experience. And each time we receive some kind of an appreciation like a place on the bill of a festival-gig or a good review in a foreign fanzine, … Recently we received this mail from the owner of a fitness-club in New York. They did a kind of jump-rope on punkmusic, and he liked to have more Dirty Scums-songs in his collexion. But thé best experience is of course when you realize that you’re playin’ in a band that exists for almost 25 years now. Oh, nearly forgotten, another great experience of which not that many bands ever have the chance to experience: our teenage kids who like our music and who come to visit our gigs.
04. At the Out Of Control Fest, Alex from Flatcat told us his first punk album was a Dirty Scums-tape or CD. Flatcat is now a well known band at Dour Festival, Pukkelpop and is listed in the commercial radioprogram “De Afrekening”. Don’t you want to start all over in the year 2005 ?
You mean starting all over in order to be better known or so ? Well we can’t complain about our popularity but we’re definitely an underground band. So we’re indeed not asked that much on for instance the big Belgian summer-festivals and they don’t play us that often on the radio either. But even with less popularity in the underground scene, I would do the same thing as I do now, it’s just something I hàve to do, it’s not some silly kind of being busy-stuff or so. Punk ís in fact just a matter of not carin’ about commercial things, D.I.Y. you know. And there are some history-facts on which we’re proud and that wouldn’t be true if we would start all over again: the third album of the Belgian punkscene after the first wave is our debut, we were the first Belgian punkband with a girl on the vocals, we’re the longest running Belgian punkband, we have a back-catalogue with such a number of songs that most bands only can dream of, … No I’m not jealous to start all over again, on the contrary, I would have preferred to start in 1977 instead of 1981 !
Let me finish this question with the lyrix of our song “Proud to be a punk”. It illustrates a bit what I just said.
Despite our age we’re the next generation
Done with the books, we are the facts
I was there in ‘77
And we started back in ‘81
We never followed a rule or fashion
‘Cos those ones are the sick ones
We just do what we have to do
We just keep goin’ on
Refrain: We are proud to be a punk
We stay true to ourselves
We stay true to friends
We’re brothers in crime, brothers in punk
Friends in the union of the dirt
We’ll never follow a rule or fashion
‘Cos those ones are the sick ones
We’ll just do what we have to do
We’ll just keep goin’ on
Refrain
We give you sweat
And we give you good times
We’re proud to be a punk
P.U.N.K. P.U.N.K. P.U.N.K. P.U.N.K.
Refrain
05. In the past twenty-five years The Dirty scums have been on innumerable compilations. I know it’s a though question but is there a compilation that you’re still proud off that The Scums are on it ?
Well, first I’d like to say that we’re of course more proud on our own releases than on the compilations we figure on. There are about a 30 compilations we’re on, and there’s only about one third from Belgian origin. So we are still proud to be part of about 20 foreign compilations. The “Second Time Around”-tape, released in 1983 is definitely a legendary one, with an early line-up of ourselves but for instance also with the early Zyklome A on it. By the way, other people also seem to realize this is a legendary tape: within the next months it will be re-released on vinyl. But to answer your question, most proud I am with the German “Blitzkrieg over you”-CD of 1998, where we figure next to bands like Motörhead, Newton Neurotics, Die Toten Hosen, Action Pact, Nina Hagen, The Adicts, … A special one is also “Ramones Forever - An International Tribute” by Radical records from the USA, and released in 2002. The origin of this CD is a Belgian double-CD, and this renowned American label selected the best tracks for their own compilation.
06. The last question is a sort of game. I suggest two bands, choose one of them and motivate your answer …
Start with the All-time classics: The Ramones or The Sex Pistols.
Jeezes, this is a tough one. Don’t let me choose between these two bands ! For myself ànd for The Dirty Scums everything definitely started with the Sex Pistols. Our first song ever we played was “Submission” from the Pistols. We have played up till now about 6 different songs from the Pistols. As for the Ramones, you know we play as The Thirsty Scums a set of Ramones-covers and we recently released a CD with covers of the band. Up till now we played about 25 songs from them. Anyway, both bands are of a very great importance to us. Every set-list of The Dirty Scums includes a Pistols-cover and a Ramones-cover !
Punkrock maestro’s from the nineties: The Offspring or Green Day.
Difficult to choose again. I have more stuff from Green Day than from Offspring. Generally Offspring is musically more interesting than Green Day but then “Dookie” from Green Day is very much of an all-time classic for me. We even used to play some time “Basket Case”. Thus, impossible again to choose.
Belgian punkrock bands in 2005: Flatcat or Nailpin.
This one is easy. The name Nailpin doesn’t say me much, so
Flatcat is the winner.
Thank you for this interview and congratulations with the initiative to bundle the bands from the Tielt-scene in one site/document. Still worth to mention is that we will celebrate our 25th Anniversary from December 2006 till December 2007. The anniversary year will start with the release of a double-CD representing a selexion of songs from all our albums, singles and tapes that appeared in this 25 years. The (rather difficult) selexion of the songs is already behind the back: each CD will contain 25 songs, so 50 in total. We plan to end the anniversary year with the release of a new studio-album, which will be the start for the next 25 years ! In the mean time, at the end of this year or at the start of next year an Italian label will release a double live-CD from The Dirty Scums. It’s a label that started a project with the name “Sins of your Fathers” in which they release stuff from bands from all over the world based on the following criteria: seventies/eighties alternative and early hardcore bands of a big historical interest.
As it is also a bit of the intention of these interview to make publicity for the bands from Tielt: you can find our different formulas and prices for a gig (and all other info) on www.thedirtyscums.com. Our mail-address is thedirtyscums@yahoo.com.
Cheers to the boys and a big hug to the girls from The Dirty Scums !