Hard Rock Poppies

This time, guest blogger Richard came up with a genre I had never expected to see here... Over to him:

A few months ago, I put together a special on Belgian New Wave. It featured the song “You” by Scooter. That gave me the following idea: Power Pop from the Low Countries. And since I don’t know much about Belgian Power Pop, I decided to limit myself to the Netherlands.
I’d quickly selected about a hundred LPs and singles when I realized that Power Pop also had a harder side. Bands like Kiss, Europe, and Survivor scored global hits with Power Pop from the hard rock scene. That’s why my first selection comes from that unexpected direction.
Hard rock. Actually, we weren’t supposed to like that. We were punks, new wave fans, New Romantics—and anything that even smacked of hard rock was a no-go. Motörhead. That was it.
In the early 1980s, there were a lot of hard rock bands, and things quickly shifted more toward metal and away from pop. Still, there were many bands that wanted to make a run at the charts and so used their talents to create pop-oriented hard rock. Who wouldn’t want to ride the wave of success of, say, Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock & Roll”? The first approach is the ballad, which I’ve left out here. You won’t find Vandenberg’s “Burning Heart” or Vandale’s “Complete Kick”—which is actually pretty awesome. Up-tempo power pop. And if you’re going to listen to this, be warned: it can be addictive.
I had almost finished putting together the playlist when I realized I didn’t have an opener. No smash hit, no chart-topper, no “je ne sais quoi”—a song that grabs you right away and, breaking through all barriers, hits the right note perfectly. It wasn’t until then that I thought of Vandale. A band from Limburg that was active between 1979 and 1983. They were later reformed. It turned out I couldn’t find them anywhere—but then I realized I actually owned those LPs myself. Ha. “Geitenwollensokkenrockers” is a smash hit. It never made it onto the charts. Neither did any of the other songs in this playlist, for that matter. “Woolen Socks Rockers”—a term used for those old hippies who try to make heavy music but end up being really long-winded. Think Grateful Dead.
Once I had Vandale, the rest fell into place. I quickly went through my own collection, and here it is. The one and only Hard Rock Poppies collector’s edition.
Featuring, among others, Vandale, Teaser (with Ad Vandenberg from The Hague, who later named a band after himself—see further down in the selection—and played in Whitesnake for a while starting in 1987), Hollander (featuring Tony Vandenberg—no relation?), Turbo (a transitional band, good folks from older bands who wanted to give it a try together, later branching out into other bands), Picture—now we’re really getting into the Dutch Wave of Hard Metal, from the Rotterdam area, very successful with singer Shmoulik Avigal. Bodine (The Hague), Seducer (Amsterdam), Vengeance (Waalwijk)—all hard rock/metal bands with varying degrees of success. Frankenstein and Exiter didn’t get much further than a single or contributions to compilation albums. 

Gems that have remained unjustly unknown.
Last but not least, Highway Chile—one of the first wave of heavy metal bands from the Netherlands. I found two songs on their album Rockarama. I don’t own that album myself, so I compared several different downloads. And they all listed the same incorrect song titles on the cover and on the album… I’ve corrected them as I saw fit.
Enjoy this piece of music history carved into hard rock.