Mental - Heavy Mental - Rob van |
|
| Heavy Mental (later rechristened Mental) was the name of my band in the early eighties. Let me tell you their tale. | |
|
I'm standing on a stage at the annual fair in Hoorn. Behind me two
guitarists who have not taken the effort to tune their guitars. There is no
bass player, but I don't realize this is abnormal. I start a cassette tape
containing a pre-recorded rhythm box and synthesizer. I cannot sing so I
declaim, I cannot write so I use slogans from Charles Manson, I cannot dance
so I stand stiff as a rod on the stage.
The guitarists turn their their back to the public. I seek confrontation with the audience by staring at them as vacant as they stare at me. Our sounds are thrown against the big brick buildings across the square, everything comes back to us resulting in a delay system that confuses everyone. Most of the public runs away, protecting their grocery bags and baby-filled prams. Some stay, on a safe distance. I have forgotten my lyrics so I start improvising. After some minutes we get a response: tomatoes are thrown to us. But even when I am the target of this fruit bombardment I do not doubt myself. They do not understand, but that will come in time. This is the future of music and to that everyone will admit. I am right and they are wrong. I am Ultra! * How this way was possible, and what has become of it later, is the subject of this site. There are many tales concerning Ultra, the most probably more captivating than mine. I was standing in the slides, far from the Ultra's magical centre Amsterdam. Yet I cannot imagine that my experiences was less intense than that of the Ultra Leaders. This is the tale about the ultra Boy from Enkhuizen. |
 Rob van Wijngaarden wearing his Sony Walkman Headphone in this photo from Vinyl Magazine (Issue 8, Nov 1981).
|
| * Ultra is the name of the Dutch Post Punk musical movement, somewhat reminiscent of the No Wave music movement in New York. |