Jan van Veen and Wayne Kramer, RIP

Jan van Veen was best known because of a horrible radio show called 'Candelight' in which he read poems from listeners with his resonant voice. I shied away from it for nearly 100%, as it was unavoidable sometimes, like in the news item obituary on national television in January, What I want to share with you, is an anecdote from my boyhood.

Jan van Veen was diskjockey on pirate station 'Radio Veronica' in the 1969. His daily show was at a time that I was mostly in school. If I remember correctly the lunch hour. We walked home for lunch and back. By the time I had discovered Veronica, it went on each afternoon of course. In the spring of 1969 Tommy James and the Shondells scored a big hit, 'Crimson and Clover'. Later successfully covered by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Van Veen thought the song to be so good, that when the song entered the top 5 he played it three time in a row, with the promise that if the song reached the top 3 he would play it five times in a row. The song reached number 3 but if he played 'Crimson and Clover' five times, I never heard. Does anyone know?

Wayne Kramer played in MC5, a short lived pre-punkrock band from Detroit. I had never ever heard music by the band until Wayne Kramer returned to the front on the Epitaph label in the 1990s. I remember not being impressed by the album at all and let's face it, Kramer was not much of a singer. All the comments around his solo album did lure me towards MC5. 'Kick Out The Jams' is one of the most excited albums out there. MC5 totally loses me in the Sun Ra exercise, but what happens before, with the title song as the summit of this peak, is close to phenomenal. On one line with Iggy and The Stooges' 'Raw Power'. For this effort Wayne Kramer and his band mates, who are mostly gone and some for decades already, will be remembered for a long time. As far as music can be dangerous, and many parents at that time definitely perceived it that way, this is the real thing. Excitement seldom sounded so exciting. The two albums that followed can't even stand in the shadow of 'Kick Out The Jams', let alone bask in its light. Noticeable is that most members of the band, and its manager did run into the strong arm of the law and most likely because of their music, stance and performance. Come 2024 and all generations find each other in all sorts of music. Something that was unthinkable in 1969.

Wout de Natris