Doe Maar

The name is Dutch for go ahead, mostly used in a deprecatory, sulky manner.

They are generally considered to be the most successful band in the history of Dutch pop music, perhaps not by any objective standard (what would that be?), but because everybody says so.

Outside the Dutch-speaking world they are little known, because they usually sang in Dutch and most of their recordings are in that language.

Line-up

The best known Doe Maar line-up is: Henny Vrienten[?], bass, Ernst Janz[?], keyboard, Jan Hendriks[?], guitar and Jan Pijnenburg[?] on drums. This is the group that was featured in all the magazines, although the drummer did not appear on any of the recordings.

The success

(if you've heard of the Beatles, the following may sound remarkably similar in aspects)

How it started

For a couple of years, Doe Maar had lead a fringe existence. The band had more or less decided to split, but were looking for a new bass player to replace Piet Dekker in order to wrap up their performance obligations and to finish recording the second (and what was then thought to be the last) album.

They approached professional player and composer Henny Vrienten, who refused at first, because Doe Maar did not look like the right step in anybody's career.

Later Henny decided to join after all, because Doe Maar looked like a band where 'fun' was a key word, and with him the band suddenly had two gifted song writers in their midst (the other being Ernst Janz) who influenced each other's work in a positive way.

Accidental air time

The record company was still not convinced of their quality and held back the release of the album, Skunk, until after the december season[?] and after carnival, because they felt that the bands offering would not survive amidst bigger names.

However, the record company did start marketing the album and samples were sent to the radio stations. Due to an error, the djs did not know that the record had not been released and were happy to have some quality amongst the usual vulgar carnaval music trash of the northern Netherlands.

Listeners immediately picked up on the song, 32 jaar[?] (32 years old) although they had difficulty remembering the original name '1 dag of 2' (a day or 2, until radio dj Frits Spits[?] renamed it to the current title. The rest, as they say, is history.

The reason

The huge success of Doe Maar cannot just be explained as a function of the quality of their music. Here are some possible explanations.

In the late seventies, the pop landscape in the Netherlands was pretty barren. It may just have been a matter of Doe Maar being a definite injection of quality at the right time.

One of the strange things of their success was that they were hugely admired by young teenage girls, who for some reason have a knack of falling head over heels for a band or star and sobering up by the time they hit sixteen.

Doe Maar had two older front men: as Henny Vrienten sings, he was 32 at the time and Ernst Janz was of a similar age. However, they were good looking in their own way and what's more, their songs were unusually raw, honest, direct.

(of course, everybody says that about the artists they admire -- you won't hear somebody saying 'they were a bunch of lying hypocrites' -- but perhaps somebody else can expand a bit by some text analysis)

Of course, the feedback function of any hype could have played a role: once Doe Maar were recognised (consciously or unconsciously) as a hype, they in effect were a hype.

Nederpop

The success of Doe Maar made it possible for other Dutch singing groups to break through, a development called Nederpop.

The end ...?

The band had a hard time dealing with the success. They did not revel in seeing tens or hundreds of young girls fainting in overly crowded hot venues, nor did they particularly seem to like the overnight and complete loss of privacy. Telling may be the name and a stanza from their song 'Eén nacht alleen' (One night alone)

    Sylvia, Jeannette, Nathalie en Fien; 
    Elsje, Treesje, Truus, Babette, Betsie en Sabine;
    Greet, Magreet, Marie, Marij en Angeline; 
    Mies, Marjan, Marjo, Marlein en kleine Tine

... which is a list of girls' names.

Their break-up in 1984 made it to the usually very high-brow public television eight o' clock news.

However, the band members still enjoyed playing together and admitted to doing so in private. In 1999 they got back together for a one off tour and album, Klaar (Finished or Ready, whichever way you want to interpret it).

Links:

• http://www.xs4all.nl/~pulp/doemaar/virus.htm is a discussion in Dutch of the band's history and especially of the album 4us (pronounced 'virus' -- with an 'i' as in 'bier' -- which means, erm, virus ).