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Jaap Fischer is a singer and guitarist who became quite a phenomenon when he was studying att Leiden university in the Netherlands. He recorded four EPs full of mocking and student-like songs such as Het Ei(The Egg), De monniken (The Monks) en Cipier (Jailer). The songs from these EPs were again released in 1997 on the album De Liedjes van Jaap Fischer. This compilation was released very much against his wishes. However, by the summer of the same year it had made it high up into the Dutch album charts. More than 100 000 copies of the original EPs were sold at the beginning of the sixties. Jaap Fischer seemed to think this overwhelming success was a nightmare and thus he decided to retire from the music business shortly afterwards. Whilst working abroad and doing a PhD in social science his influence can be detected in the early works of Boudewijn de Groot and Lennaert Nijgh. Songs such as Strand (Beach) and Vrijgezel (Bachelor) clearly show in their style and content that they were based on Jaap Fischer’s earlier songs. In 1976, after years of absence, “Jaap Fischer” returned under the name “Joop Visser.” In the same year the album Live ‘61 was released. On this album, there are new songs as well as a live recording from his student days. Since he records and releases his albums on his own the availability and sales are unfortunately somewhat smaller. His more recent work is more political and more sarcastic but at least as strong as the older works. The album Langste Lied (Longest Song) is merely one song consisting of 99 stanzas. His lyrics criticise the human self-contentedness, empty-headedness and indifference. He ridicules the modern forms of class-consciousness and denounces those who sell their souls to the devil of commercialism. The mood of his songs is sometimes melancholic but never sweet. From his songs, he emerges as a man who sympathises with those in despair. His lyrics often follow a grotesque and absurd story-line. From a very ordinary and normal beginning, a situation develops into something extreme, sometimes with fatal consequences. Or when in the end, everybody seems to be best friends and appears to be happy and then all of a sudden, in the last couple of lines, fate strikes mercilessly. His use of rhymes is always surprising, his refrains are hard as steel and his play on words is subtle. His particular voice is an inextricable part of the power of his oeuvre. Apart from his work as a singer and songwriter he has also written two children books: De Olifant en de Muis (The Elephant and the Mouse) and De Grote Schilderrijenroof (The Great Picture Theft).
Als Joop Visser:
Sources:
OOR’s Eerste Nederlandse Pop-encyclopedie, 11e ed., Amsterdam, 1998 |
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