The song is now almost 50 years old and everyone in Brabant has probably sung along to it. “And yes, there has never been better beer. Than in cafe D’n Egelantier!” A folk song from the 1970s by the famous band RK Veulpoepers BV. Singer and frontman Zjef Naaijkens from Hilvarenbeek talks colorfully about it in the new episode of the podcast ‘Hee gaode mee’.
If you listen carefully to D’n Egelantier’s lyrics, quite a lot happens. For example, someone is raped in the song. “It was the first me-too song in the Netherlands,” says Naaijkens. Some people had trouble with the sexist lyrics, but it still became by far the band’s biggest hit. The song withstood the criticism and still ranks high in the Brabant Top 100 of Omroep Brabant every year.
The Veulpoopers were an ‘absurdist, activist music group that brought a lot of joy to the struggle’. Quite a mouthful, but it is an apt description. There was a lot to fight against in the 1970s and early 1980s. Just mention nuclear weapons, the Berlin Wall or apartheid. Naaijkens: “We had it in the objectives. Combating mind-numbing substances in general and the CDA and Hilversum 3 in particular.”
“We went to the Chinese every now and then and you got paid your share of stuff every week.”
The band and the song about D’n Egelantier became a phenomenon. They even entered the charts and were invited to AVRO’s Toppop. The performance was canceled because the band refused to playback. Zjef: “We were actually just amateurs. No one got paid. We went to the Chinese every now and then and you got paid your share of stuff every week.” And yet De Veulpoopers were playing in front of 200,000 people on the Museumplein in Amsterdam during a demonstration against cruise missiles. Not bad for a bunch of ‘amateurs’…
Listen to the podcast ‘Hee goade mee’ and hear many more special stories about De Veulpoopers. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And don’t forget to listen to the other episodes with Gerard van Maasakkers, Björn van der Doelen and Lya de Haas, among others.
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