Amsterdam's First Punks

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Punk came to Amsterdam around 1977, and the epicentre of the first punk wave was on the Rozengracht, where 'No Fun' – a record store founded by Hansje Joustra – was located. Hansje had visited CBGB in New York, and returned to Amsterdam with the hunch that punk was going to be huge. He decided that his record store would be the place where it should happen so he founded the first Amsterdam Punk labels – Plurex and No Fun.

The first Dutch punk bands (like Tits, the Helmets, Meccano Ltd., Mollesters and Subway) all signed with these labels, which was the start of a brand new punk scene in the Netherlands. This was before "punk" meant mohawks and safety pins: A leather jacket was considered pretty punk at the time.

That first wave didn't last very long: Soon most of those bands moved on to genres like post punk and new wave, and Plurex and No Fun started putting out more experimental stuff. No Fun changed its name to Torso.

The pictures below are from the archives of Martijn de Jonge – one of the photographers who showed at a recent Amsterdam exhibition honouring No Fun, Plurex and Torso. Some of his pictures were taken during the first punk wave, others are from a later period, when Amsterdam punks started wearing a lot more studs, safety pins and buttons to express their punkness.