Hi Eleanor

 
Claude van Heye was one of the, or the first dutch photographer I became aware of.

He worked for a hipster Amsterdam magazine which I stumbled upon at the age of eleven in 1965 called ‘Hitweek', which then cost a staggering 28 cents a copy.

I still remember clearly seeing it for the first time. I noticed its striking presence in the magazine corner at Albert Heijn supermarket at Linneausstraat and was deeply intrigued by it .

It had a wonderful photo of Paul McCartney on the frontside with some interesting one liners scattered around the page heading various articles. It was clearly modelled after weekly pop newspapers like ‘Melody Maker’ & ‘New Musical Express’ from England, but it had a hard to describe vibe of its own going which I dug at first sight. Even though less slick & professional then the english music magazines it was hitting a very Amsterdam hip tonality.

Later, during the hippie years, they renamed it ' Aloha'; I still read it then but I didn’t like the tone of the articles as much anymore because they were written in too much of a hippyesque preachy kind of vein.

In the beginning it was simply a ‘hip’ magazine without the religious overtones.

Ofcourse I was facinated by the hippie thing like everybody else, extremely young as I was, but subconsciously I didn’t feel part of it as much as of the the more 'beatgroups-long hair-anti establishment-approach' it had in the beginning.

They then for instance started a movement called ‘S.P.L.H.’; ‘Stichting Pro Lang Haar’ through which lists of schools, even of individual teachers that discriminated against youngsters sporting long hair, were published on a weekly basis; I really liked that.

I remember ordering stickers with crazy one liners like: ‘Hitweek, ook in Sneek!!!’(‘Hitweek also in ‘Sneek’; pronounce: ‘snake’) which is a village in the province of Friesland with a name that sounds weird even to dutch ears. Then again provincial small town 'Sneek' probably had the first hip dutch music festivals within its boarders during ‘de Sneek-Week’, an event organized around a sailing event there. This part of the Netherlands is actually a sort of mini ‘Great lakes district’.

The hippie movement & the ‘Aloha’ version of it, soon became too rigid & too vague to my taste. Then again I dug their search for freedom which it was basically all about. Especially the drug thing though never really appealed to me, like it was a ‘must’ to take drugs.

I felt then already that real hipness came from within & not necessarily from using drugs, no matter how much they all said that there was no way of going around it if you wanted to develop your level of 'cosmic' awareness.

Later it turned out that in the first years of Hitweek ( let's say roughly all of 1965 & 1966 ) just about everybody who was leftist & artistic in Amsterdam & went on to become 'somebody', participated in that magazine. Photographers, columnists, designers, even a leftist, (later on very well known) politician, André van der Louw, was part of it; eventually he was even in charge of 'Hitweek'.

This particular guy later became the leader of PVDA, Holland’s most moderate, yet most popular & biggest socialist party.

Before ‘Hitweek’ I only read typical teenage magazines like 'Muziek express', 'Teenbeat',  'Muziek Parade' & 'Popfoto', which lacked any kind of intellectual depth, but I loved them anyway.

Another magazine that I read in those days was 'Ticq' which didn't have a newspaper format like Hitweek but looked more like a 'normal' kind of magazine; it appeared on a monthly basis. Even though excellent of quality, full of fine interviews with musicians, writers & 'okay' artistic photos in it, it didn't survive much more then six months.

I recently found back two copies of 'Ticq' and I still liked it; it paints an excellent picture of youth culture of that particular period in Holland.

When Hitweek appeared on the scene the average teen magazines lost a lot of their attraction for me, still I kept buying them for the great photo material they sometimes published.

My life was deeply influenced by those early Hitweek weeklies and my musical taste of those days never really changed; since then it just became wider, more fine-tuned & more of just about everything that was already there in that so divine & unforgettable year 1965.

Talk soon

Nils

Het ingaan van het nieuwe decennium, de jaren 2010, leek me een juist moment om eens een merkwaardig idiotie in het nederlands aan te kaarten. Sinds 01-01-2000 spreekt men hier te lande, met name in de media, van 'de jaren 90 van de vorige eeuw', of de jaren '80, '70, '60 etc. 'van de vorige eeuw'.

Zelfs 1999 heette, herinner ik mij, een paar weken na het ingaan van het jaar 2000 al 'de vorige eeuw', en dat was vaak niet of ternauwernood ironisch bedoeld. Een klassiek voorbeeld van een overspannen neiging tot historiseren dunkt me.

De engelsen zeggen gewoon 'the 1960's','the 1970's' en zo voort . De duitsers spreken van 'die 1960-er' etc. Meestal is, of we ons nu uiten in het nederlands of in een andere taal, uit de context volstrekt duidelijk dat we het so-wie-so over 'de vorige eeuw' hebben.

Laten we dus voortaan de jaren '60 en '70 etc. gewoon laten voor wat ze waren en er alleen 'van de vorige eeuw' aan toe voegen als er onduidelijkheid is over de eeuw in kwestie. Of anders zouden we gewoon de term 'de jaren 1960', '1970' etc. moeten gebruiken, maar laten we in godsnaam niet meer spreken van dat onzinnige: 'de jaren '60 (etc.) van de vorige eeuw'. Ik dank u voor uw aandacht.