Thursday, March 06, 2008

Big Noise From Jakarta

From Dutch TV in 1960, here's The Tielman Brothers and possibly the most astounding thing I have ever seen.

Re-write all previous rock history now.



Dutch Indo-rock? Seriously -- WTF?

I won't pretend I had ever heard of these guys, and so a big tip of the PowerPop hat to Frankie O'Malley of the great Chicago indie rockers The Safes, who hipped me to them.

I've been meaning to write about the Safes for ages -- have I mentioned they're my new favorite band? -- and I'm going to next week, but in the meantime it's Frankie's brother and bandmate Patrick's birthday, and in his honor here's the video for their killer "Since Trust Went Bust."



Meanwhile, for the entire incredible story of the Tielman Brothers, click here. Words fail me, frankly.

8 comments:

The Kenosha Kid said...

That first video - WTF? - the missing link between Carl Perkins and Husker Du? Were those guys downloading the future on their Mosrite™ 32 baud modems?

steve simels said...

Nicely put, Kid.

I know -- isn't it fucking amazing?

Anonymous said...

Yes, that was fucking amazing!


They could teach every single one of the wimpy rockabilly revivalists of the 80s and 90s a thing or three...

Gummo

Anonymous said...

Now I know where Brian Setzer got some of his shtick.

Anonymous said...

Way cool! But it needs to be said that T-Bone Walker was doing much of that stuff (albeit not the acrobatics) before anybody.

Anonymous said...

I stumbled on these guys on youtube about a year ago. I was equally amazed. I found them by accident and sort of forgot about them till now.

I remember thinking "I wonder if Jimi Hendrix saw these guys while stationed in yurp?" Could explain a lot.

Anonymous said...

The first Rockabilly Revivalists!!! Are they still alive? Can We get them to the States? Was this performance/music thought out or just happened?

I also hear some early (65 - 67) Who.

Return of the Plumber

TJWood said...

The Safes song is really good, really lush sounding for a trio. But I took a look at one of the other videos and saw four members. Are they now a trio or quartet? However many of them there are, I'll check them out.

As for the Tielmans, WTF? just about covers it. I won't pretend I've ever heard of these guys either, I would have expected someone like yourself or David Fricke to have spreading raves about these guys sometime before now. Makes you wonder what else is out there that we don't know about.