As Jerry Goossens' and Jeroen Vedder's great book Het Gejuich Was Massaal pointed out, the first wave of Dutch punk bands consisted of musicians who started playing punk, while the second wave was made up of punks that started playing music. The Suzannes, art-school punks from the Eastern Netherlands (Enschede) fall somewhere between those two categories. Reportedly they'd already started by 1976; in any case, around early 1978 their sole EP "New Disease" was released by one of the first Dutch independent labels, De 1000 Idioten (The Thousand Idiots as you might already have guessed). The label's name was derived from the fact there would always be at least a thousand idiots that would buy their records (2,000 in the Suzannes' case). I guess if they'd start their label today they should call it De 100 Idioten, being the approximate amount of copies any Dutch punk band - that doesn't do 100 gigs a year - can hope to sell. But I digress.
The Suzannes had almost a garage/60's type of sound, which might also have something to do with the 4-track studio it was recorded at. I especially like the tinny guitar sound that reminds me of Subway Sect (see under) a little. Anyway, this holds up much better than some big label stuff from the period. Another thing that sets them apart from their contemporaries is the number of songs on the EP; a whopping six; this wouldn't be standard practice in DIY/punk until 2-3 years later.


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