Doe Maar (the band name can be loosely translated as 'go ahead' or 'do as you say') recorded five studio albums, with the latter four hitting number one in the Dutch album charts.
Having emerged from a hippie community in the south of The Netherlands in the late 1970s, Doe Maar's self-titled 1979 début album was not much of a success. Founding member and original bass player Piet Dekker left the group. Ernst Jansz (vocals, keyboards), Jan Hendriks (guitar) and Carel Copier (drums) were briefly joined by stand-in bass player Joost Belinfante (of hippie/folk outfit CCC Inc.) before Henny Vrienten was recruited as the permanent new bass player in 1980.
The second album, Skunk, was released in the summer of 1981, preceded by the lead single Sinds 1 Dag Of 2, which didn't enter the charts until radio DJ Frits Spits had pretty much singlehandedly changed the song title into the more catchy 32 Jaar ('32 Years'). Single and album were reasonably succesful, but not more than that. At the end of the year drummer Carel Copier was replaced by René van Collem, who was 20 years of age at the time, more than a decade younger than the rest of the band.
March 1982 saw the release of the album Doris Day en andere stukken and the lead single, Doris Day, which - almost overnight - sparked off 'Doe Maar-mania', a craze unequaled for a Dutch band in their home country, including hysterical and fainting teenage girls during live performances and a brief domination of teen fashion in The Netherlands, with the fluorescent 'phosphor green' and 'lollipop pink' trade mark colours of the Skunk album and a huge market of Doe Maar memorabilia: pins, badges, sweatbands and what not.
Doe Maar were now referred to as 'the Dutch Beatles': very different music, but similar (if not worse) madness.
The Doris Day album had only just disappeared from the top of the Dutch album charts when the two-year old Skunk album hit number. The stand-alone single De Bom ('The Bomb') topped the singles charts in November 1982. Typically, the band's young fans hardly seemed to understand what an apocalyptic song it was: "Work on your future... before the bomb drops."
The band members were shocked and not seldomly frightened or depressed by their sudden popularity. They were in their mid-thirties; the hordes of teenage girls that suddenly invaded their private lives were everything but their peers. Doe Maar wrote particularly gloomy songs about topics that you would expect to appeal to 'thirty-somethings' rather than teenagers. Jansz and Vrienten, in particular, received tons of love letters from teenage girls, but also death threats from Dutch Neo-Nazis. They needed bodyguards. Meanwhile, the Dutch music press dismissed Doe Maar as a teenybopper phenomenon: the band was first sneered at and later mostly ignored by Holland's music critics.
In May 1982 the band fired its youthful drummer, René van Collem. His successor, Jan Pijnenburg, was involved in car accident shortly after he was hired. Somewhat bizarrely, the band then hired René van Collem as a stand-in for another six months of live concerts. The definitive Doe Maar line-up was now complete: Ernst Jansz (vocals, keyboards), Henny Vrienten (vocals, bass), Jan Hendriks (guitar) and Jan Pijnenburg (drums). Years later, René van Collem would express his bitterness over the fact that Pijnenburg can be seen on almost all of the band's famous group pictures and is generally regarded as the Doe Maar drummer (especially after the 1999-2000 and 2008 reunions), in spite of the fact that the drum parts on the studio albums are almost exclusively Van Collem's work. He also played the lion's share of the band's live shows.
The particularly dark 4us ('Virus') album was released in March 1983 and immediately rocketed to number one, just like its lead single Pa ('Dad'), a rather bitter song about generation gaps. 'Doe Maar-mania' was now at its peak and (during live shows) frequently out of control. The band decided to stop doing interviews, announced complete radio silence and attempted to focus on their next album, but had to conclude that there was no more inspiration. Doe Maar had burned out.
The announcement that Doe Maar was going to call it quits caused grief beyond belief amongst a generation of Dutch teenage girls. The Dutch Kindertelefoon ('Kids Phone') had to deal with countless brokenhearted young girls who phoned in, not seldomly to announce their imminent suicides.
The band did two emotional 'farewell' shows in Den Bosch's Maaspoort hall on 14 April 1984. Since then, Henny Vrienten and Ernst Jansz have pursued successful solo careers, mostly in the context of music composition for television and cinema. The band members remained friends and continued to play together on private occasions.
After more than fifteen years of absence - in which their work was rehabilitated by a new generation of music critics - Doe Maar decided to re-unite for one final album: Klaar (which means as much as 'finished' or 'done') was released in 2000. A string of sixteen reunion concerts at Rotterdam's Ahoy sports palace was announced. 175,000 tickets were sold in an eyewink, in many cases to the teenage girls of the early eighties, now thirty-somethings.
In 2007 a theatre musical about the band's music toured the Netherlands and won several important theater awards. The success of 'Doe Maar - The Musical' was followed by another reunion show, at De Kuip football stadium in Rotterdam. 50,000 tickets sold out within the hour, three more concerts were added... and also sold out in no-time. In an interview on 20 June 2008, Henny Vrienten said: "This is no longer a 'reunion'. Doe Maar is back, for real." Doe Maar still performs regularly in The Netherlands, mostly at festivals.
Een droom
Doe Maar Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Viel binnen in het donker en ging voor me staan
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij riep mijn naam
Zij 'ga je even schamen, jij hebt niets gedaan
Je stak geen vinger uit toen hier niet ver vandaan
De vrede verdween achter de kille maan'
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Hij zei 'ik ben de waarheid en geen gerucht
Kijk de andere kant op zie de zwarte lucht
Je bent rustig blijven zitten terwijl je wist
Dat er mensen zijn verdwenen in de koude mist'
Ik droomde de waarheid hij was hard en plat
En nooit meer werd het warmer
Hijgen, lopen, hard
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij riep mijn naam
Hij zei 'ga je even schamen jij hebt niets gedaan'
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Aa haa haa
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij kwam hard aan
Hij ging met beide benen recht voor mij staan
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij had gelijk
Zwetend werd ik wakker en
Nee
moreel in evenwicht
Deze Nederlandstalige klassieker, 'Een droom' (1981) van Doe Maar, is een van hun meest iconische nummers. Het nummer gaat over iemand die droomt van een waarheid waar hij zich niet bewust van was en hem vervolgens confronteert met zijn eigen passiviteit. De 'waarheid' is een symbolisch karakter dat representeert wat er misgaat in de maatschappij, terwijl de ik-persoon wordt geconfronteerd met zijn eigen laksheid om iets te doen aan de problemen.
In de eerste strofe wordt beschreven hoe de 'waarheid' binnenvalt in de droom en hem confronteert met zijn eigen passiviteit. Hij wijst de ik-persoon erop dat hij geen actie had ondernomen toen de vrede verdween en mensen verdwenen in de mist. In de tweede strofe wordt de 'waarheid' verder uitgediept als een karakter dat niet zozeer een gerucht is, maar echt iets wat moet worden aangepakt. Het nummer eindigt met de laatste zin, "Zwetend werd ik wakker en nee, moreel in evenwicht", die suggereert dat de ik-persoon, nu bewust van zijn eigen passiviteit, niet langer kan wegkijken van de waarheid en actie moet ondernemen.
Line by Line Meaning
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij kwam hard aan
The singer dreamt of the truth and it hit them very strongly
Viel binnen in het donker en ging voor me staan
The truth came unexpectedly and suddenly, and confronted the singer directly
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij riep mijn naam
The truth spoke to the singer personally and called them out
Zij 'ga je even schamen, jij hebt niets gedaan
The truth accused the artist of not taking action when they should have, and told them to feel shame
Je stak geen vinger uit toen hier niet ver vandaan
The truth pointed out how the artist didn't do anything when something was happening nearby
De vrede verdween achter de kille maan'
The truth exposed how peace and harmony disappeared out of sight, behind the harsh realities of life
Hij zei 'ik ben de waarheid en geen gerucht
The truth declared that it was real and factual, not a mere rumor
Kijk de andere kant op zie de zwarte lucht
The truth asked the artist to turn around and see the ominous situation developing behind them
Je bent rustig blijven zitten terwijl je wist
The truth accused the artist of being complacent and passive, even though they were aware of the situation
Dat er mensen zijn verdwenen in de koude mist'
The truth revealed how people had gone missing in the unforgiving, cold environment
Ik droomde de waarheid hij was hard en plat
The singer dreamt of the truth, which was cold, blunt, and didn't sugarcoat anything
En nooit meer werd het warmer Hijgen, lopen, hard
After the truth was revealed, things didn't get better and the artist had to work hard to keep up
Ik droomde de waarheid en hij had gelijk
The singer admitted that the truth was right
Zwetend werd ik wakker en nee
The singer woke up sweating and in denial, not wanting to face the hard truth
Contributed by Nathan N. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
AngelineMam
Dit is een geweldig nummer. De tekst is zo goed en de muziek is echt prachtig. Het mooiste en beste nummer van deze cd. Wat is Doe Maar ( en Henny ) toch goed. De beste band aller tijden.
Leon Straatman
Beste band in Nederland ALLER TIJDEN...😘😘😘😘😘😘
Ingmar van der Bent
Mijn ouders hebben deze cd, en ze draaiden dit nummer altijd toen ik klein was. Dat is nu ook alweer bijna 20 jaar geleden
anaias74
Ingmar van der Bent niet overdrijven. Hoogstens 15 jaar. Deze cd, en dit nummer zijn levens bepalende geweest voor mij.
Richard Oostland
deze komt keihard aan, als je goed luistert
NieradjNR1
Aller tijden,Maar wel een leuke reggae muziek!Echte dutch!
tam
Aaahaaaahaaaa :D Thnx voor de upload! Doe Maar FTW!!!
Googol
People that would understand this would truly defend democracy for what they know (in their hearts) true democracy stands for. Don't let it all slip by ... mean something! [UNDER CONTRUCTION] :(
legbreaker
Lekker..
richardburns1560
Lijkt wel dat ze zingen over wat Karremans moet hebben gedroomd in Sebrenica. 4 keer vroeg hij luchtsteun die nooit kwam..