The Connected Lives of Dutch Punks by Kirsty Lohman

Author:Kirsty Lohman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Travelling Participants

The structural factors previously outlined shape not only participants’ sense of place but also the very nature of the ‘Dutch’ punk scene. The ease of mobility in a small and well-connected country has resulted in a great deal of movement between various locations for ‘scene interactions’, which will be outlined later in this chapter.

A number of participants talk of travelling regularly in order to attend gigs. On the Saturday prior to being interviewed, Theo had travelled from his home in Amsterdam to see TSOL play in Eindhoven. Sander also lives in Amsterdam but will go to, “Nijmegen, Utrecht, Tilburg, if it’s a really big band, then we’ll hop in the car or on the train, no problem”. Lotte also says that she will regularly travel for a gig. Indeed this was a practice in which I participated during fieldwork.

Just as participants are willing to travel beyond their local area in order to attend a show, they will also on occasion travel to another country to see bands play. Although, “then it has to be something quite special, sometimes we’ll go to Antwerp, or Oberhausen or something” (Sander). Jasper was at the time considering a gig trip to Hamburg and Bart an overnight trip to Berlin to follow a favourite band on tour.

Travelling outside one’s local town in order to attend a gig is something that seems commonplace. However, it holds significance for theorisation of the nature of subcultural development. Traditional, locally bounded studies tend either to ignore this phenomenon or play it down, but such frequent gig trips play an active part in affecting the development of the scene, and furthermore contribute to the disintegration of the ‘local’.

The role of travelling is discussed by Hodkinson (2002) with regard to UK goth. Travel to other places in the UK 2 happened primarily for big club nights. Goth gigs are a less frequent occurrence than is the case within punk, although when they do occur they also attract ‘translocal’ crowds. The culmination of this is the biannual Whitby Gothic Weekend: an event that is a key meeting place for goths from all over the UK (and abroad). These translocal goths are mobile in a different way to the Dutch punks for whom travel is more part of their regular subcultural activity. “Regular club nights […] tended to attract a minority of travelling goths, but mostly from within their region. [… M]ore goths travelled greater distance for less-frequent events” (101–102). By contrast, even the smallest Dutch punk events may draw their audience from a variety of locations.

The mobility of the Dutch punk scene can further be seen in the way that some bands are able to draw members from across the Netherlands, or, indeed, beyond. When Planet Eyelash were formed, they were initially based in Groningen: three of the four members lived there, with one travelling to rehearsals from nearby Leeuwarden. But the members of the band all left Groningen and by the time they sought a fifth member, being from Groningen no longer mattered.

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