1/2 Frank du Mosch in the eighties (private photo).
Danscafé De Spoel was a small, dark hole in Tilburg in the eighties. But this dance den changed the lives of journalist Frank du Mosch and his comrades. And it woke up the city. When he returns there after forty years, he is touched: “I lived here,” he says emotionally. “With a leather jacket and bleached hair.”
The De Spoel building is still there, in the Fabrieksstraat, in the heart of Tilburg. With shutters on the windows still with graffiti on them. It looks like a small castle in the street. When Du Mosch is there again, he feels the eighties: “Our generation was far from carefree, but what the fuck: we just lived.”
He came to live in Tilburg in 1981 and took a series of courses, eventually ending up in journalism. After his training, he became a presenter of the Jeugdjournaal and later programs such as Netwerk and Studio MAX Live.
Du Mosch now lives in Het Gooi and has two children in their twenties. “They think they are having a very hard time and I think that is true.” But that was also the case during his time in Tilburg: “When I left secondary school, the dean said: ‘Just choose something you like, because whether you will get a job is a very uncertain story.’ There was a youth unemployment rate of thirty percent. So all the people around me who had graduated were unemployed.”
“The people were deeply grumpy and angry.”
According to him, Tilburg in the early 1980s was a very different city than it is today. “The textile industry was in ruins in the late 1970s. In all neighborhoods the houses were built around the factories. Tilburg residents not only lost their income, the entire social environment had collapsed. Those people were deeply grumpy and angry.”
Yet he was little concerned. He hung out in De Spoel day and night: “That was the place where you could be yourself. Whether you were a punk or an idiot.” It was a sanctuary, he remembers. Bands were formed in that dark dance cave. Exhibitions and festivals were conceived. Doe Maar performed there and singer Hennie Vrienten could hang out without being bothered.
“Culturally, Tilburg was a wasteland.”
Du Mosch made a podcast about it and went back to that time. In six episodes he describes what De Spoel meant for Tilburg. How it came about, in the early eighties, from a small pocket theater. The music that was played and the relationships that were created. The inevitable ending and last year’s reunion that sold out in seven minutes.
He also reflects on what De Spoel has meant to Tilburg: “In the early eighties, Tilburg was a cultural wasteland. Not much happened. But the city caught up and now even has the most cultural courses in Europe, I believe.”
Paradox music venue, pop venue 013, the Rock Academy. According to Du Mosch, something special has happened in Tilburg over the past forty years: “Of course, you cannot blame that 100 percent on De Spoel. But that was a breeding ground that caused climate change. The most beautiful things are created in a void, a vacuum.”
The first three episodes of De Spoelcast are now online. You can find them here:
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