(Columbia Records, 1989)
THE PREFACE
In addition to reviewing this Nits live compendium, I’m also connecting this recorded live experience to my own recent live experience with Nits in Amsterdam, which I attended in April of 2024. Urk contains a total of 28 songs, while the concert I attended featured 25 songs, with nine of them also performed on Urk.
I’d like to think this suggests that the band are in fact still very fond of and proud of the strong repertoire they’ve amassed over the decades, but in truth the similarity of the lineup (four members back then, three members and three backup vocalists now) likely made them easy to recreate on stage, some even with similar arrangements.
It’s amazing to think that Nits songs from the 80s are still so beloved by the hometown audience and still routinely performed by the band. Some, like “Walter & Connie” and “A Touch of Henry Moore” were never singles.
Speaking of singles, the band has had an astonishing 72 singles issued as this is written in mid-2024, with only two of those being collaborations with other bands (and none of them are remixes or re-releases or live versions, to the best of my knowledge). There aren’t many bands — and even fewer still around — that could match that track record.
THE MUSIC
Disc 1 of Urk is mostly comprised of well-known, popular songs from the group, but the “deep cuts” start to surface for the last three songs on that CD. We kick off Disc 2 of Urk with the band exploring some of their most playful and musically adventurous songs.
Continuing with the less well-known numbers, Disc 2 kicks off with “Port of Amsterdam” from 1986’s Henk album — a delightfully oddball song that for me resembles various song fragments cleverly cobbled together. The live performance here relies heavily on live mic effects and a new arrangement compared to original version, which had fewer vocal effects (other than echo) and more instrumentation. Towards the end, it gets much more like the original version.
“Bike in Head” is another song from Henk that really shows off the talents of all four members: Hofsted’s singing and (in this case) gentle guitar, Stips’ synth, Kloet’s inventive and varied percussion (never to be confused with “rock drumming”), and Geraets’ understated but present acoustic bass playing.
Following this was “Mountain Jan” — I’ve always loved this In the Dutch Mountains track for its touch of (synth) orchestral classical whimsy. The audience on the disc clapped along with the the brief bits of semi-classical overture, which was just lovely.
While this concert was turning out to be full of surprises, I don’t think anything surprised me as much as the inclusion of “Walter & Connie,” an instrumental number. It’s got a great “travelin’ music” vibe, with a driving melody that’s really brought to life in the live performance. Not to repeat myself, but you can tell by how enthusiastically the song is performed that the musicians enjoy it, and really enjoy playing together.
What’s interesting (to me, at least) that this song debuted as “Walter and Conny” on the 1983 album Omsk. For the Urk release, the spelling got changed to “Water and Connie” because that was the original name of the show. I suspect Nits first heard of it from German TV, where the hostess’ name might have been spelled Conny as that’s more common there.
Just in case you’ve ever wondered, Omsk the third largest city in Siberia. Its religious buildings and related architecture are a tourist draw, I am told. At the right time of year, this would probably be a very interesting place to visit.
In any event, “Walter and Connie” was an early 1960s B&W show designed to help non-English speakers learn English. This live version plays around a bit with the original album arrangement of the instrumental.
A different and longer opening starts the next song, another favourite among fans — “A Touch of Henry Moore,” again from Omsk. This version is quite different than the album version — this time, the chorus is skipped entirely, which was surprising, and there’s no double-tracking of Henk’s lead vocal (which isn’t surprising in a live setting). As a result, the Urk version is substantially shorter and somewhat unsatisfying, since the title of the song is never uttered.
Thankfully, the 50th anniversary concert I attended use the three female vocalists, so we got the full version of the song (with Stips doubling Henk’s vocal and the chorus). The truncated “Moore” on Urk is my least favourite version, but the video is nonetheless interesting.
Next up was “The Bauhaus Chair” from Hat — another song based on memories, a song I’ve always loved, and I was thrilled to hear it at the Amsterdam show. The Urk version was sparser than the original version, as you might expect with only four musicians and no overdubbing, but you can’t perform this song poorly no matter what you do to it.
“Under a Canoe,” originally from Henk, is another exercise from the period where two (or sometimes more) musical styles are jammed together. As for the lyrics, abut half the song is a series of non-sequiters starting with “I roll up the sleeves,” while the other half is a gentler recitation of “Shirt’s waving in the meadow.” Not one of my favourites, but the audience seemed pleased that it was included.
The Nits’ formula of forging two song fragments together works better on Omsk’s “Shadow of a Doubt,” the next track, mostly because the main melody and lyric go so well together, and blend better with the “I’m undecided” lyric, which I am unsure counts as a verse, chorus, or just Henk’s mantra.
At long last, one of my favourite songs and one of the earliest one I ever heard from them appears: “Mask,” from Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof. The version on Urk is the usual way it is played live, with a protracted instrumental prologue (from the Amsterdam Saxophone Quartet, when available). It’s an angrier song about having to hide your true feelings, but offset (in the live version) but gentle, stately instrumentation that suggests an orchestral version is dying to be made.
The original single version had a video made for it, and it was that video that Canadian station MuchMusic* played, my friend Ron Kane (a big fan and friend of the band) recorded the video on Betamax (iirc) and sent it to the Post-Punk Monk, which is I think how I came to see it. I was very struck by it at the time, and my impression was that Henk sounded like Elvis Costello — not correct really, but not a million miles off either. It’s still a thrilling number to me, with some forceful emotion bubbling up in the performance.
*MuchMusic was, essentially, Canada’s successful attempt at aping early MTV.
From there, we proceed to “Home Before Dark,” originally from Henk. The lovely arrangement here features Stips on (synth) accordion, which is just perfect to accompany Henk’s gentle guitar, and superior in my opinion to the album version. Once again, he uses the technique of expressive lyrics married to a beautiful chorus, with Joke coming in on backing vocals for that.
The start of “The Panorama Man” gets the audience clapping in time for this In the Dutch Mountains song, and it’s a fun chance for the whole band (and extra vocalists) to move along sharply to a catchy, light-hearted song. Nobody’s doing any deep reflection or confronting their doubts on this one, for a change.
This proceeds straight into another fast-moving song, “Slip of the Tongue,” originally from 1981’s Work album. Reflecting that earlier period, it mixes a really lively, pull-out-the-stops arrangement and upbeat style with lyrics about how dangerous it is to speak your mind in a corporate environment. I have the sneaking suspicion this was based on a job one of the band members had where things didn’t work out, but it’s just as true as ever today.
A crude edit in the recording takes us back to a different concert’s finale, where the band played Dutch Mountains’ “An Eating House,” another swinging number about a man on a road trip with his family and the kids want to eat, so he remembers a restaurant he had been to in years past that was nearby.
The song takes a break to proclaim “I am an eating house” a few times, eliciting laughter from the audience, with a short history of the restaurant before getting back into the crowd-pleasing big beat and joyous performance. This being a Nits song, the fun takes a dark but humourous turn, a play on the term “eating house.”
The audience is very much with them at this point, and the penultimate song for the evening is “Red Tape,” the only other song from Work. It’s a song about the tough life of a working mother, but it is unquestionably the catchiest song on this topic this side of “9 to 5,” and far better as well, come to that.
The finale, with the audience still clapping along, is Omsk’s “Tons of Ink.” Another big-beat song, this time about journalism. What other band could get away with this? No other band. The rapturous applause at the end fades softly away, and two hours of great music is done.
THE BOTTOM LINE
For the record, the nine overlaps at the 50th anniversary concert I attended were: The House, Henry Moore, Nescio, Two Skaters, Walter & Connie, J.O.S. Days, Dutch Mountains, Adieu, and Sketches of Spain. The magnificent composition that is “Cars & Cars,” a deep favourite of mine, was the last song of the regular set.
The first of the two encores was “Ivory Boy,” played live for the first time since 2012, followed by “Dutch Mountains.” After a brief break, they came back to finish off the night with “Adieu” and wrapped up with “Sketches.”
Urk was the first live album from Nits, and for a long time it was the only official one. This changed in 2015 with the release of Hotel Europa, which I haven’t listened to as of this writing. The only real criticisms I can level at Urk are unfair ones: the setlist is too heavily dominated by what were at the time the most recent albums, and didn’t include what I consider to be their most thrilling single, the New Wave-influenced “The Young Reporter” from 1980.
Nits have a remarkable knack for coming up with certain songs that get stuck in my mind and won’t let go. Certainly not everything they do, but their singles and other tracks that resonate with me have been living in my head rent-free for many, many years, and are recalled often. Although Henk is the lead singer and primary songwriter, he knows it just wouldn’t work without the other two, especially at this stage of the game.
They are far too “gentle” a band to ever be rock, but too ingenious and artistic in their music to fit alongside the usual definition of “pop” or “soft rock,” so of course they have trouble finding an audience outside Europe. If you are ever find yourself looking for superbly poetic and well-crafted (and beautifully arranged and played) “art pop” I guess I’ll call it, Nits deliver those goods on a routine basis more than any other band still playing, at least in my view.
Next month: The Primitives!
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