Wir Bleiben Fahren Pogo Party 7-6-2014

Yesterday I went to Enschede, in the east of the Netherlands, to attend a reunion of Babylon Hengelo and the Chi Chi club in Winterswijk. Two famous venues back in the 80's that held a lot of festivals, had many classic bands play and organized stuff that was not just about music as well. I have seen many classic bands there and played both venues a few times with Lärm.
The festival contained 12 bands, some of them only re-uniting for this occassion only.
My main reason to go there was to see people I had not seen in about 25 years or more, as well as to watch Indigesti and Winterswijx Chaos Front, Murder Inc and Neuroot.
(Well Indigesti had to cancel, I already knew that).
I am glad I went. It was good to talk to all of these people I had not seen in a long while, some of them took some time recognising me, I am fortunate to have a good memory for names and faces. Sometimes when you encounter old friends it is mostly about 'things used to be a lot better back in the days' and so on, but not yesterday. Interesting talks about how we evolved from being a hardcore kid to the persons we are nowadays, looking back on all the dogmatism that occured in the hc scene back then and ofcourse sharing a lot of good memories. Best thing though was that some people thought I was Olav, if you know us both, you know we do not look alike at all and never did. Oh well. People travelled form Germany, Belgium and the north and east of the Netherlands. There were only a handfull of people from the west of the country, which proves again that they are too lazy to leave their cities and part of the country and also why I have always enjoyed festivals and concert in the northeast of the Netherlands more than I did in the major cities. It was weird though to arrive at this festival and not seeing a lot of cars from Germany with their doors wide open and stereos on full blast. No punks on the streets carrying their own crate of beer of bottle of wine. No people who came around to look at all the weirdos attending such a festival. No Lärm Straight Edgers who wanted to battle the drunk punks. I guess we have all turned a bit older, or maybe matured.

In the end I only saw a part of Murder Inc's set, which was really tight and the whole set of Winterswijx Chaos Front. Unfortunately I had to skip Neuroot, but at least I have a t-shirt!
Winterswijx Chaos Front played a rather chaotic set and I stood there with a huge smile on my face, singing along silently. Although they did not play perfect, it sounded great and their enthousiasm and the visible joy made up for all of it. So many good times we shared together. I am glad I went all the way to Enschede (well, 'all the way', 1.5 hours each way) to see them and talk to them. I am looking forward to hear the recordings of this set.
Thanks for organising it, it must have been a lot of hard work to do so.
For the people using facebook, here's a video of 'the crow flys'.
WCF live at ATAK Enschede 07-06-2014


I have uploaded two live sets: one recorded at the Chi Chi Club (this might be their farewell gig) and the other one recorded at Parkhof Alkmaar in 1987. The set at the Chi Chi Club features quite some talking and experimental music and it seems as if Harm forgot to bring his distortion pedal, because it sounds very clean. As a bonus I have added their ep.
WCF live Alkmaar 1987
WCF live @ Chi Chi Club Winterswijk
WCF - s/t ep