MINNY POPS

Of all the fascinating bands to emerge from the twinned label stable of Factory and Crepuscule in the post-punk era, Dutch electro pioneers Minny Pops are probably the least understood, and least lauded. Which is a great pity, since much of their output still impresses today as powerful and original experimental music.

The creative anchor to Minny Pops was Wally van Middendorp, a key figure in Amsterdam's underground Ultra art movement, and founder of the Plurex label in early 1978. His first single, as The Tits, coupled We're Glad Elvis Is Dead with Daddy Is My Pusher, and was a fairly typical new wave record, though darkly humorous. In September Minny Pops were formed as a predominantly electronic band, taking their name from a primitive Korg rhythm box named Mini Pops, and having something in common with Suicide, The Normal and Human League. The first line-up, featuring Wally on vocals and drum machine with bassist Frans Hagenaars, guitarist Peter Mertens and two dancers, including Wally's brother Rob, made their live debut on December 12th at the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam. Wally:

A lot of people couldn't understand the visuals or the sounds because we were working with distorted guitars and bass. At that time people in Holland didn't realise there were new upcoming groups with new ways of approaching their music.

One of the first ideas was to play really mechanical music with weird noises in it. Scratching guitars, very simple vocals, and a simple bass line reinforcing the drum-machine beat. The stage act was also very strict - we didn't move, we stood like statues and occasionally moved our hands. That changed over a period of time.

Minny Pops wasted little time in recording their first single. Kojak, backed with Footsteps and Nervous, was released by Plurex in March 1979, and consisted of borrowed dialogue from the US television cop show, the whole adding up to a clever and effective parody. In June the line-up changed to include guitarists Dennis Duchhart and Stef Emmer, after which the group recorded their debut album, released in September as Drastic Measures, Drastic Movement. Much of the album was resolutely left-field, the opening instrumental Springtime sounding like an offcut from Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Wally:

It's background music which you can't ignore, new muzak. The title gives you the idea of a nice, flowing song. It's like a big drill! Actually, it fits in with the pacing of the set, which is confusing as well. The album's full of confusion - there's nice songs, then all of a sudden total distortion.

As far as gigging went, in 1979 live shows were restricted to Holland, with a major date at the Melkweg with Red Crayola and Scritti Politti in April, and a support with XTC at the Paradiso in December. The group also played a dozen dates around the country with the Comsat Angels in September as a 'Plurex promotional tour', although since the Comsats had no connection with the label the billing was somewhat bizarre.

Although both the single and album attracted limited notice outside Holland by virtue of the Rough Trade distribution network, it was not until the group linked up with Factory Records that they began drawing the attention they deserved. After being booked to support Joy Division at their dates in Den Haag and Eindhoven in January 1980, the band were then invited over to play with the band at the Factory Club (ie Russell Club) in Manchester on April 11th. While in England Minny Pops also performed at the infamous Bury 'riot' gig on April 8th, and played their own headlining show at Derby Blue Note on the 10th. By now Hagenaars had departed, and the band had recruited their first keyboard player, Willem (Wim) Dekker, who soon teamed with Wally as the musical core of the group.

NME writer Andy Gill found much to like in Minny Pops, even if their unorthodox live presentation was a little challenging:

When I saw Minny Pops supporting Joy Division earlier this year in Manchester, they adopted the odd habit of standing silently, arms folded, for as long as a minute after each song. This caused considerable confusion amongst the audience, who seemed unsure whether to clap, shout, or ask for an encore. Their expectations were confounded by a device as simple as Wally's explanation for it. Wally: 'We figured that normal rock and roll is set up as a fast-paced set - one song ends, the next starts within four seconds. I thought that if you break up the pacing between numbers, it might give people a chance to look over what you've done.'

The band returned home to play a Dutch tour with The Tapes in May, which resulted in a rush-released Minny Pops Live ep in June, featuring Night Out, Dolphin's Spurt and Mental, later recorded as Een Kus. In August the group returned to Manchester to record their debut Factory single, and complete a short headlining tour of the north of England in August, taking in Leeds Warehouse, Sheffield Blitz and Manchester Beach Club. In a cruel but amusing review of the Beach Club gig, Mick Duffy of NME had this to say:

Wally, Minny Pops' lead singer, whose height is maybe just a little extraordinary. He's a wiry, gangling figure approaching seven feet tall. Sporting an ill-fitting plain dark suit with trouser legs and sleeves desperately short, an all-American-boy haircut and large, square-rimmed glasses, he looks like a caricatured Elvis Costello on stilts. He is accompanied by a trio of seemingly undernourished dwarves who must be the proverbial Oxfam refugees. They're dressed in clothes that must have been salvaged from Oliver, or discovered in the attic of some decayed Victorian mansion, in the tea-chest marked Servants Clothes. You see, we British just don't realise how lucky we are, despite our so-called recession...

Minimalists in sound and likewise in movement, they remain almost motionless throughout the entire set. Their feet seem to be permanently glued to the ground. They never smile, never communicate with us or each other between numbers. Occasionally one member, usually the bassist, attempts some half-second clockwork-clone jerk with his rigid limbs. Then all is still once more. Minny Pops are interesting statues but alienating performers. There is no encore.

In an interview for Sheffield fanzine It's Different for Grils [sic], Wally explained some of the problems the band faced in Holland, where there was only one music magazine, no fanzines, and next to no radio play for bold electro-explorers. In short, almost total media neglect:

It's a strange situation, us being in England doing a single and hardly getting any press back home in some way. It's getting better since we're doing this Factory single, but before that people said, 'Well, you know, your music is not so good...' The music hasn't changed between April and now, but since we could tell people we're doing a single for Factory they say, 'Yeah - I always thought your music improved a lot over the past few months.'

The watershed Factory single was recorded at Strawberry Studio in Stockport with house producer Martin Hannett, at the same time as the Names cut Nightshift. The line-up featured Wally and Wim, together with new bass player Leon van Zoeren and interim guitarist Pim Scheelings. Cut in a single day, Dolphin's Spurt (Fac 31) coupled a harder version of a standout track from the Drastic Measures album with a new song, Goddess, which gave an indication of the direction the band would take on their second album. The tracks were mixed by Hannett only several weeks later, of whom the band would recall:

It's strange working with Hannett. He just lets you record whatever you want. He told us, 'Just go ahead and record whatever you think is suitable and I'll see what I can do with it.' Sometimes he laid down on the floor of the mixing room for half an hour at least, just thinking.

Released in January 1981, Fac 31 was housed in a typically smart Martin Atkins sleeve which played on the Philips corporate house style, in an ironic nod to the group's Dutch heritage. Reviews were excellent, with the band gaining a staunch ally in Paul Morley of the NME:

Daniel Miller has said that he likes music at either end of the scale - Throbbing Gristle or Silicone Tees. Nothing midway. Minny Pops are, simplistically speaking, floating somewhere in between. Intellectuals light heartedly treating serious themes or a pop group losing their trust in surface coherence: which ever way, they're wilfully retarded. They could, though, quite easily be a Mute group, and if I had a daytime Radio 1 show they could quite easily be very famous. As it is, they're on Factory, so they'll probably be treated as half human.

Here Morley identifies a core dilemma for Minny Pops. Had it not been for their involvement with Factory, it's doubtful that the band would have been heard outside Holland, where in any event they were largely ignored. Yet Factory was a double-edged sword, being a label made top-heavy by the success and legacy of Joy Division and New Order, leaving most other bands overshadowed by the main attraction. It didn't help that Hannett's cold production of Dolphin's Spurt failed to show the band to their best advantage, or that Factory's loose work ethic ran contrary to their own instincts and experience. Wally:

Factory's attitude is different from ours. They wouldn't explain exactly where and what time we should turn up unless asked. So it takes a while to get used to their way.

In November 1980 the band returned to Britain to play a London date at the LSE with A Certain Ratio and the Au Pairs, and record a four song Peel session for BBC radio. This superb session, the first by a Dutch band, comprised Dolphin Spurt, Mono, Jets and Ice Cube Wall, and captures well a line-up that is not well represented on record, with Wally, Wim and van Zoeren joined by Gerard Walhof on guitar, the latter later to become an executive editor at Vinyl magazine.

In December the band rounded off the year with a date supporting New Order at the Hal 4 in Rotterdam, then crossed the Atlantic for a short but ambitious seven date North American tour. Together with four dates in New York (at the Rock Lounge, Peppermint Lounge, Mudd Club and Hurrah), the group also played in Hoboken, Toronto and Boston. Despite the band losing about $700, the tour has to be considered a success at a time when few bands from mainland Europe not called Kraftwerk or Tangerine Dream were taken seriously in Britain and America. Whether North America was ready for Minny Pops is another matter, if the reaction of the Toronto Globe and Mail is anything to go by:

Van Middendorp chanted over a pair of synthesizers (one live, one on tape) and some simple guitar and bass riffs. When the taped synthesizer (definitely the musical star of the show) was in high gear, the outfit sounded a little like a dirty Gary Numan, When it was in low gear, the result was something resembling Nina Hagen played at slow speed. Occasionally, Van Middendorp recited some emotionally wrought free-form poetry without musical accompaniment. It was not destined for posterity. Actually, bizarre as all this sounds, the result, in some perverse sort of way, was not unlistenable or uninteresting. Although the concept was ultimately more interesting than the music itself, I didn't go away with the feeling that I had seen just another ordinary rock and roll band. There was obviously something happening there. I'm just not exactly sure what it was.

Both the band and their label appeared to be going from strength to strength. November 1980 saw a three page feature on the Dutch scene in the NME, and during 1981 Plurex would release records by a raft of challenging Dutch artists, including Nasmak, Young Lions, The Tapes, A Blaze Colour and (via the Factory connection) Eric Random. Indeed the label's high standard of packaging matched that of Factory, courtesy of designer Rob van Middendorp. Minny Pops set about writing material for their delayed second album, and as a result took on fewer live commitments, although another short British visit in April saw them play with the Comsat Angels and Delmontes in London, then support New Order in Nottingham and Birmingham. In October the band completed a Dutch tour with fellow Factory/Benelux labelmates The Names, and on the 24th even drove down to Italy for a one-off show at Gabbice a Mer. Another short Dutch tour in December would prove to be their last live performances.

In the meantime the new material was recorded on a powerful demo tape cut in July 1981. One track, Een Kus, was released as a flexi disc (FBN 13) with the Dutch magazine Vinyl in October, while Kogel (bullet) appeared in live form on a free live 7" issued with a re-release of the Drastic Measures album. The rest of the songs were polished further for release on hard plastic, and recorded at Arnold Muhren studio near Amsterdam. With Wally as the sole common denominator, and with no dedicated guitarist in the line-up, it is hardly surprising that the resulting album, Sparks in a Dark Room, sounds like a different band to the one that recorded Drastic Measures... two years earlier. As indeed it was, with Wally and Wim now joined by bassist Pieter Mulder and a real drummer, Orpheus Roovers. However, the self-produced set was a triumph, with the driving, motorik rhythms of Dream, A Feeling, Trance and Tracking rubbing shoulders with eerie, twilit essays such as Black Eye and Vital.

As well as the album (FBN 15), released in May 1982, two singles were also recorded, with the excellent Time b/w Lights released on Factory Benelux (FBN 11) in April, and Secret Story b/w Island on Factory (Fac 57) in September. A 12" version of FBN 11, backed with Trance and Night Visit, remained unreleased, while LTM later released Een Kus and Son on 7" (LTM v:iv) in May 1984. Reviewing the album in the NME, Chris Bohn wrote:

Theirs is also based around tight, slight rhythm figures, out of which half melodies and exquisite synth lines spring. Once you get over the vocalist's gregorian moan, which contributes to the overall aridity, you'll sense the sort of subtleties in Minny Pops that makes minimalism the worthwhile thing it is. On the other hand Blue Roses has the lush lurch - or should that read lurch of a lush? - of Simple Minds at their grandest and best.

In reality, Wally's 'gregorian moan' and dense Dutch accent were a deliberate ploy, partly intended to underline the jet black humour in his excellent (thought rarely discernable) lyrics. To my ears SIADR remains a truly superb album, redolent of DAF, Simple Minds and even Moroder-era Sparks themselves. In Holland, however, Vinyl magazine missed the point completely. Dick Rijken praised the polished nature of the record, and its evident danceability, but found the perceived gloom of Wally's lyrics and vocals too much to bear:

I find myself at a bit of a loss confronted with the combination of disco and doom.... Melancholia, despondency and weltschmerz are well represented. The musical structure is fairly simple on the whole - not only the tight rhythms, but also their chords and modulations are pretty predictable. Add to this the fact that the vocal, low and dark in tone, and lacking in volume, follows the tone of the musical framework and the monotony becomes tense and unhealthy.

By the time Sparks in a Dark Room was finally mixed in February 1982, the band had already begun to lose direction. Wim Dekker, Pieter Mulder and new drummer Ruben Ootes recorded an instrumental ep, Werktitels, under the name Smalts, while Wally acted a master of ceremonies on the epic Crepuscule package tour Dialogue North-South, which wound through France and the Low Countries in February 1982. Smalts also played a short set at the Amsterdam show. Some of Wally's confrontational dialogue is preserved as 'Raving Lunatic' on the souvenir LP and CD (TWI 082). Wim and Wally were then commissioned to write the score for a musical play, Poste Restante (a box number for forwarded mail), which was recorded in October and subsequently released on Plurex as an album. However, like the reunion album 4th Floor in 1985, this was a patchy affair, and rather confusing to an audience which expected a more logical progression from the artistic peaks of Dolphin's Spurt, Time and the SIADR album. In effect, Minny Pops had disbanded following a group meeting in August 1983.

Although the band were probably not aware of it at the time, their name was also problematic in the UK. While Minny Pops was a suitably curious moniker, viewed in the context of like-minded Factory artists such as Crispy Ambulance, Stockholm Monsters and The Names, in Britain it would cause a small degree of confusion with a controversial television programme aired by Channel 4 in 1982. 'Mini Pops' was an appalling childrens' show in which small children dressed as adults to sing squeaky versions of chart hits by Shakin' Stevens and Banarama. Although it's unlikely that any pre-teens ever purchased a copy of Dolphin's Spurt or Secret Story in error, the fallout did little to enhance the Minny Pops' long-term credibility.

In 1983/4 Wally and Wim returned to Factory with a brace of electro twelve-inchers under the name Streetlife, namely Act on Instinct (Fac 97) and No More Silence (Fac 124). Outside the studio, Wally continued to work in an executive management role for a number of labels, including Boudisque, Megadisc, PIAS and Sony. Suprisingly, Wim Dekker, Ruben Ootes, Pieter Mulder and Zip Boterbloem reconvened as Smalts in 2002 (www.smalts.nl), releasing a brand new CD titled It's Good to be on a Well-Run Ship on Staalplaat, which includes an updated version of Kogel, one of the great lost Minny Pops tracks from two decades before.

James Nice
September 2002


Sources:
'A lot of people...' Shades (Peter Noble), 4.81
'One of the first...' NME (Andy Gill), 22.11.80
'It's background...' NME, 22.11.80
'When I saw...' NME, 22.11.80
'Wally, Minny Pops'...' NME, 30.8.80
'It's strange working...' Shades, 4.81
'Daniel Miller has said...' NME, 7.2.81
'Factory's attitude...' Unknown (Kishi Yamamoto), 11.80
'Van Middendorp chanted...' Toronto Globe (Alan Niester), 15.1.81
'Theirs is also...' NME, 5.81
'I find myself...' Vinyl, 5.81


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