Photo and graphics by: Bas Spierings
The following was written by Bas Spierings, one of this sites biggest contributors as well as a long time supporter of his hardcore scene over in The Netherlands. Bas told me about the local Café De Pompe club in the town of Goes and how it was closing down for hardcore shows and this special surprise they were trying to put together for the guy who has been booking shows there for quite some time. A pretty cool story with some pictures and video to boot. Special thanks to Nous Daovise for the use of his photos as well.
We start off by looking back to the morning of December 11th, 2014 when ZLHC (Zealand Hardcore) founder Edmond Spelier told us that February 8th would be the last hardcore show at our beloved Cafe De Pompe in the town of Goes. For those who live outside of our area Zealand is one of the 12 states that make up our country. He was informed by the owner that there will be renovations made to the club and after the renovations there would be no more room for our hardcore shows which have been going on there since 2009. This definitely was some sad news to hear because this space was practically a living and breathing thing for us locals with a very confined space, freedom, no stage and a group of loyal fans who would run through a wall of fire for the ZLHC.
So we now knew that the next show Edmond booked there would be the last hardcore show there and we also knew that it was always his dream to have his favorite band Slapshot play this small venue. Unfortunately this dream was about to go up in smoke.
Initially for the last show the plan was to have a Slapshot cover band headline to send Cafe De Pompe off in style but things can get done pretty quickly these days on social media sites like Facebook and the response right away from most people was "Why don't you try and get the real Slapshot to play this final show?" I thought to myself why not? The channels were there for me and I was happy to take on this challenge. My next steps were to send messages out to Edmond’s close friends and also to a girl in Belgium (An Maes) who is close with Slapshot to see what could be done and everything started falling into place as we were easily connected with the Boston crew. Less than 10 minutes later we got the response we were hoping for... "They'll do it!"
The following months are a wonderful spectacle of ideas, enthusiasm, STRESS, fun and lots of preparation. A private Facebook page was created in which everything can be shared without Edmond being able to see what we are planning behind his back. We all had to keep our mouths shut because to us this was the surprise of the century. We needed about 90 people to pay up front to secure the money we needed to fly Slapshot over and pay them. Ultimately we got around 100 people to pay and 10 days before the show it turns out we had a few bucks left over which we used to create a special shirt for the show. When you have an enthusiastic group behind you almost anything can get done and that's what we had!
After numerous problems with Slapshot's flights the band still had plenty of time when they arrived in Brussels. After that they were to go to Antwerp and then arrive in Goes the next day around 5pm.
If you take a look at this video we posted to You Tube you can see how we ultimately surprised our friend Edmond. Edmond actually burst into tears when someone in the crowd yelled out "Edmond, this is our gift to YOU!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqzGIlHFpaA
So... SLAP SHOT is finally in Goes and the party gets crazy as this was quite possibly the highlight of ZLHC's existence and a great day for all. The band as a whole seemed pretty impressed by the whole thing and singer Jack Kelly told Edmond that he should be happy with such a good group of friends. He also said a normal person can count on one hand his closest friends and then went on to say that Edmond needs 25 hands to count his
We would also like to mention the bands that opened up this show, all of whom who played for free to help make this happen and some who even donated money to make this great show a reality. Thank you!
Run Like Hell, Intense, Running Out, 18 Miles, Get Some, Defy The Crown,
From The Heart, Scallywags, Rites, and Faith Ends Here.
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