![]() 1Īcross the Atlantic Ocean that same year, southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd released their third album Nuthin’ Fancy, featuring “Saturday Night Special,” “I’m a Country Boy,” “Whiskey Rock-a-Roller,” and “On the Hunt.” Most of the numbers dealt with the white, male, working-class South’s rowdy side of life: violence, hard liquor, chasing women, picking cotton, and rambling. Haggard’s transformed song was one of the first numbers in which Normaal aligned itself with Dutch farmers. They did not sing about burning draft cards, long hair, and flying Old Glory in front of the courthouse, but about beer and the local football club: “I am proud to be a farmer in the lowlandsĪ place where even squares can have a ballĭe Graafschap is our favourite in footballĪnd Grolsch is still the biggest thrill of all.” ![]() “He was a straightforward country and western artist who sang songs that were unpolished and sounded real.” Normaal adapted Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” to reflect their life in the Achterhoek. “I loved Merle, even back then,” lead singer Bennie Jolink said. ![]() They also included Merle Haggard in their repertoire, which was unusual for a band whose front man used to be a hippie. And members of the Dutch rock band Normaal all hail from this region.īefore their first big show at Lochem’s festival, Normaal practiced songs by Chuck Berry, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Grolsch, first brewed in 1615 in Groenlo, another Achterhoek city, remains the beer of rural people across the Netherlands to this day. The town of Doetinchem boasts a football club, De Graafschap, whose supporters call themselves Superboeren (“Super Farmers”). Achterhoekers not only seem untroubled about the way they are stereotyped by people in the country’s urban west, they take a certain pride in it. From the vantage point of Amsterdam, this part of the country is indeed the back corner-dense with wild forests and even wilder peasants. Lochem is a Dutch village in the rural eastern Achterhoek region (literally, “the back corner”), nestled near the German border. ![]() In the spring of 1975, as in previous years, Lochem organized its annual music festival. ![]()
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