Easy to Whistle, Hard to Forget: Welcome to Idiot Records!

Trust the Dutch to come up with weird concepts… At the end of the 1970s a couple of Dutch punks from Twente decided to start their own record label and called it De 1000 Idioten. Their marketing ‘strategy’ was to have at least a thousand idiots buy their product(s) to break even and perhaps even make a profit!

 

With that in mind, they released the first punk song, Van Agt Casanova, in Dutch by an artist called Paul Tornado. To their surprise, more than 5.000 copies were sold via mail order only! When the number of copies exceeded the estimated one thousand, they changed (slightly) its name in 1981 to Idiot Records.

Although set up as a punkish label, they soon started releasing other genres as well: pop, new wave, big band, rockabilly, and hard-to-classify weird sounds, sung not only in Dutch, but also in English, German, and even in French.

Their first bunch of records was either released as 7 or 10 inches, another quirky distinction from other labels… Dutch artists and bands included KEWI University of Swing, Wisselink, Fay Lovesick/Lovsky, Mathilde Santing, Joep Bruijnjé, Boulevard of Broken Dreams Orchestra, Gigantjes, Stephen Emmer, Smithereens, Nils Wieland, Jump! Dickie Jump!, Bram Vermeulen, Siobhan, and others.

Idiot lasted only until 1990, but luckily, it was taken over by Basta Records, another independent Dutch label.  Only 1 compilation CD was ever released, 1997’s First Idiots, which focused mainly on the early years. That same year Basta Music Sampler - Sense & Sensitivity was also released, which included several Idiot artists.

Of all those artists, only Mathilde Santing really broke through; she had a few hit singles, covered Randy Newman, and in 2012 collaborated with Todd Rundgren and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra.

No matter their lack of success, Idiot Records pumped out a pretty cool selection of music which i.m.o. is still worth listening to and perhaps will pique our visitors' interest in checking them out for more! 

Plenty of original songs, including a quirky tribute to fictional British flying ace Biggles and a weird cover of the old classic Woolly Bully!