De Dijk euphorically takes Ziggo Dome on a journey through its musical history

“Just come around.” Huub van der Lubbe (68), singer of De Dijk, casually dropped the phrase on Friday evening at the end of the first of two anniversary concerts in Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome. The band has been introduced, the crew and management are thanked and Van der Lubbe is only now realizing, it seems, how special it is what he has accomplished with his band.

40 years of De Dijk was a great occasion, but this can be called a real milestone. For more than two hours, he took the sold-out hall – which actually shows that thanks to corona only 75 percent of the 17,000 tickets could be sold – through the musical history of the Amsterdam rock band.

An adventure that started exactly forty years ago in Paradiso as the support act for Raymond van het Groenewoud. ‘Dutch-language rock, that would never work again’, Van der Lubbe quoted the critical voices from the music industry from forty years ago as an introduction to bleeding heart, De Dijk’s first single in 1982. The start of a series of hits that all passed by on Friday evening, as befits a jubilee concert. But new was the format of the hall in which songs like Enter without knocking, I can not do it alone on Dancing on the volcano were sung along verbatim.

Small and familiar

De Dijk has always preferred long-term touring along the club circuit to large-scale one-off concerts in, for example, Ahoy or now the Ziggo Dome. That is perhaps the secret of the band’s long-term success, that they have always wanted to keep everything small, and trusted. The management has been in the hands of Jantien Keunen from day one, who, as Hugo Logtenberg describes in his brand new band biography behind the dike not so much assumed the role of regulator for the boys since the late 1970s, no ‘it was her’. And she has remained so to this day. Wasn’t it she who did a final stage check on Friday when the band members were already screaming with nerves waiting for the moment they could go up the stairs to the stage?

It must be a crazy feeling. Even though you have played 79 times in Paradiso and 75 times in Vredenburg in Utrecht, and you have driven countless rounds past all the clubs in the country, this is something different. There was not a hall waiting for you with hundreds, but with thousands of people.

Not that this was noticeable anyway. From the first song the appropriate, modest, Good to see you again everything was right and it was noticed that the band had not been tempted to make major changes. Artists who go from pop stage to arena for the first time or who want to celebrate something often have a tendency to exaggerate. Igniting fireworks, approaching dancers, choirs, and drumming up musical guests. De Dijk did not fall into that trap. The light was tasteful, the decor was limited to five removable canvases. No guests passed by to claim their part in the band’s history. What we saw were the six men from De Dijk with their two regular blazers. They carried the concert, without adding a single show element to it.

The songs, the playing and the rapture you can achieve together with the audience. That was what it was all about in the Ziggo Dome again. Apart from scaling up, however, there was another difference with previous performances: a live concert without restrictions was something for everyone that they had not experienced for a year and a half.

Euphoria

Maybe that’s why the euphoria was so great from the first minute. As often as De Dijk Within without to knock will have played, never will it have sung along so loudly. And when Nico Arzbach’s acoustic guitar sounds afterwards, the recognition applause goes ahead If she is not there immediately into the lines: ‘ten to one that I’ll keep my mouth shut/when I see you again’, which can hardly be drowned out by Van der Lubbe.

So many Dijk successes, so fast in the show, can it go well? Sure, these guys know how to build a concert. The first climax comes after 45 minutes with down, when guitarist Jelle Broek and saxophonist Roland Brunt also compete against each other after their solos. Then gas back to come to a new climax exactly forty-five minutes later with What a woman after which Van der Lubbe is allowed to put on a clean shirt. The series of encores still offers space Dancing on the volcano, perhaps the song the whole audience has been waiting for the most after abstaining from live music for a year and a half.

Van der Lubbe and his men don’t want to leave then, it seems. De Dijk has had appropriate songs for every moment. The last one is also touching. Can the lights be turned off, sings Van der Lubbe. No, not for now. Amstelveen, Arnhem and Hengelo are on the program in the coming weeks. Because as Van der Lubbe noted in his diary three years ago, and in the book rear from dike is quoted: ‘I want to sing with De Dijk in a regular tour. We have to do what we can do well, then we are at our best.’ Even after forty years, De Dijk’s light will not go out for a long time. Just get over it.