The Alternative Tentacles website blurts :
Dutch punk; the glory years! Their entire discography collected, the double LP is finally back in print! These Dutch punks offered one of the most furious and intense displays of hardcore the world has ever seen! Damn straight. I wrote all those furious and intense songs because I'm a furious and intense guy. See, that's me pictured on the cover. OK, I was still a handsome young lad in 1984, sporting stylish European headwear. Even though I did not posses all my
Super Slug Powers yet, I still got more pussy than Joan Jett backstage, while you and your friends were getting clowned by the doorman.
I'm not too wild about the title the folks at Alternative Tentacles conjured up for
this project, but nobody asked me, so what can ya do. What the hell is a "Dutch Feast" anyways ?
Released in the year 2000 as double album and in CD format, it is, as the title suggests, a retrospective, and contains the
third official re-release of
Jonestown Aloha" (1982), "Nothing Can go Wrong" (1986), the multi-bootlegged "
White Male Dumbinance" EP from 1984, all in one handy package, with a few tracks taken from compilations like the (also multi-released) "
Welcome to 1984", and "
P.E.A.C.E" record thrown in.
All this seems to imply that people
do want to listen to this stuff, and that we were doing
somehing right back then.
In pre-photoshop/computer grafix times, flyers looked like this.
Some B.G.K. flyers on my wall. Click to make them big.
If anyone wonders why the sound differs slightly from the original vinyl : the original master tapes had been gathering dust under a beat-up couch in various
freezing cold squathouses for 15 years or so before being shipped to California on
orders of Jello Biafra himself (pictured below, yelling along at our 1984 San Francisco gig). Apparently Mr. B. was able to take time off from his relentless "spoken word" tour schedule to personally re-master all this shit proper in a studio.
ROCK ME, AMADEUSAlternative location
WHO WANTS TO BUY A BRIDGE ?
AmazonArtistdirectCDuniverseRhapsodyEmusic Whoa damn, this thing is for sale all over the interwebs !
Excuse me while I whine but goddammit, IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL BITCH IF I WANT TO.
See, when the author, performer and rightowner of the songs, who has
busted his ass year after year after year playing them on tour, namely ME, gets nothing, Nada, zilch, niente, ZERO, once again, it does not make him, the starving (f)artiste
feel like a happy camper, but embittered like a dog, who never gets his day !
In all honesty, Alternative Tentacles were much fairer in their dealings with us
than other record labels, but then again that doesn't say all that much.
The band
did get
some funds eventually. Nothing like the amount we
should have gotten, as far as I can tell, but it's the thought that counts.
And seeing as how we already donated the
entire proceeds, i.e. our share from the "Nothing Can Go Wrong" album sales on A.T. back into Jello B.'s "No More Censorship Fund" in 1986 for some reason, it was about time I got a little bit of
dough at last without the band deciding it should be donated to a "good cause".
If you must know, it was enough to take the other guys to a nice restaurant and pick up the tab for everyone.
The Alternative Tentacles website blurts : 
volume two in "als je haar" compilations, released on B.G.K.'s Vogelspin label in 1983 or 1984.
Some kind of "benefit" release that came out ca. 1985 on double LP format on MDC's "R Radical" label. Contains a B.G.K. track. This this was re-released in CD format by New Red Archives records, who ever that may be. According to wikipedia : "it is not known if the benefit aspect of the original album still holds".
Originally released on "cassette only" ROIR label from New York, who brought you the Bad Brains, this thing has, unbeknownst to the band, been re-released on CD over ten years ago.
This bootleg appeared first as a double album, and was re-released in CD format on Plastic Bomb records.
Yay ! Another bootleg.
B.G.K's debut album "Jonestown Aloha" was recorded in late 1982. The title was of course an admittedly morbid play on the Jonestown Mass Suicide. This album was released in 1983 on our own Vögelspin "label" in a press run of 3000 copies. A US release followed a year later on M.D.C.'s R Radical records and that one sold a poopload more (I hear 14,000 copies, some royalties would be nice comrades, share a little of the wealth ?). The material resurfaced yet once more in the year 2001, as part of "A Dutch Feast, the complete works of Balthasar Gerards Kommando" on Alternative Tentacles records. I hate that stupid title.
Who the hell Roger Miret is and why my song appears on a 'benefit' album for him I'll probably never know.
This international compilation was first released on Maximum Rocknroll's label. I'm sure it was re-released 15 years or so on another label and needless to say none of the bands even received copies in true DIY fashion. Anywhooo, The B.G.K. track was recorded in Oktopus studio, which was feared for it's crummy sound™. I used M.D.C.'s bass because "it's a Fender Jazzbass, man!" after mine was stolen on tour in Spain.
There was some VHS footage of B.G.K. "unplugged" at Oktopus, no kidding : At one point we weren't allowed to do our normal set at regular "this one goes to eleven" sound volumes because of noise complaints. They actually insisted Marcel put a tablecloth over his snare drum because it was too loud, even without amplification ! As firm believers in the agadium "the medium is the message" it HAD to be loud. But 
much to the dismay of the crowd. They gathered to see B.G.K. in full blast mode, and got pelted with gooey brown substance instead, so that was quite amusing. If I ever find this VHS tape again I will digitize and upload it. But don't hold your breath for that to happen.
Btw, contrary to popular belief, B.G.K. were not a "crust" band. That sub-sub-genre didn't even exist yet ! I personally always held, and stand by the firm belief that B.G.K's politics and antics had WAY more in common with MC5 than say, Crass (who once pulled the plug on us opening for them in 1979 but that's another story !). Proof is this picture from B.G.K. in San Francisco, 1986. 
This 8 song 7" EP from the fateful year 1984 is considered by many to be B.G.K.'s prime moment. Check this or this if you don't believe that sucka ! Original copies of this hard sought after collector's item go for megabucks on Ebay. We pressed 1500 copies prior leaving on a spartan, gruelling 3 month(!) U.S. tour. On the second pressing the backprint is negative by mistake. Further pressings were deemed "unneccessairy" by the band at the time. Yet bootlegs of this EP appeared in the U.S.A and in Switzerland later. The anonymous Swiss enterpreneurs were as kind as to slip a copy my way with an unsigned note saying they had done it "to support the scene". 
