Dutch Pirate Stations and Nederbeat

Koen recently celebrated a vinyl-only evening with two old friends.  On his own blog, Koen writes: My generation grew up with vinyl records; 45s, eps, and lps, a.k.a singles, extended plays, and long-play albums. Two Dutch radio pirate stations, Veronica and Noordzee, were of utmost importance as they were often first playing new exciting rock and pop songs.

Dutch TV only had 2 channels and there wasn’t that much shown regarding ‘pop’ music… Fast forward to 2024 when we are literally swamped with instant access to streaming music courtesy of the internet, forget about cassettes, CDs, or even mp3s.

The first to be played from my vinyl collection that evening was Dank U!, a 1970 lp of Dutch artists under the banner of Radio Veronica (a well-known pirate station in those days), which was released for two purposes: the 10th anniversary of the station & raising funds for charity.

Later I realized that it gives an excellent (though short) overview of the Dutch Nederbeat at that time, from The Tee-Set to Golden Earring!

And since this lp was never released on CD, I decided to make a digital version of it for your listening pleasure!  The zipfile also includes a history of Radio Veronica and a detailed pdf with background info on this album and the artists.  

And for a bonus share, since we missed two days of posting this week, 12 Jaar Radio Veronica is (as you may have guessed) more Nederbeat gems compiled to celebrate the pirate station's 12th anniversary.

PREVIOUSLY ON JONDERBLOG: jonder reminisces about Q-Wave, a Milwaukee radio show that introduced a lot of punk and New Wave music to an impressionable teen.