As I’m writing this I’m listening to my all time favorite Hith track ‘Escape from squaresville’ and I’m thinking of the time I interviewed Mich for a school assignment about 6 years ago. Hitch was about to celebrate their 10th anniversary and I interviewed them for my school newspaper. I didn’t know Mich well when I interviewed him. I remember I looked up to Hitch. They were my favorite local band ever since I first saw them with some metalcorebands in 1997. They stood out for me because they were different. They actually got me into some bands that became all time favorites. I read an interview in ‘Lost in the dark zine’ (what’s up Kluze!) and they mentioned bands like Texas Is The Reason, Quicksand and Sense Field. Being 15 years old and quite impessionable I decided to check those bands out. They remained favorites ever since then, just like Hitch.
Fast forward to december 2010. Hitch plays their final show. I’m standing in De Kreun in our hometown Kortrijk together with about 400 other people, saying goodbye to Hitch. It’s great. I enjoy it. And I think about what this band has accomplished over the years. And I think it’s amazing. These are guys from my hometown, I got to know Mich over the years so these are guys that I hang out with on shows and in bars, guys I run into on the streets in Kortrijk,… But I felt like the impressionable 15 year old again watching them. Amazed by the power of their songs, the original hooks, the powerful drums and bass, the cutting riffs,… I felt that same admiration again I felt so many years ago. And it felt great.
Goodbye Hitch!
Fast forward to december 2010. Hitch plays their final show. I’m standing in De Kreun in our hometown Kortrijk together with about 400 other people, saying goodbye to Hitch. It’s great. I enjoy it. And I think about what this band has accomplished over the years. And I think it’s amazing. These are guys from my hometown, I got to know Mich over the years so these are guys that I hang out with on shows and in bars, guys I run into on the streets in Kortrijk,… But I felt like the impressionable 15 year old again watching them. Amazed by the power of their songs, the original hooks, the powerful drums and bass, the cutting riffs,… I felt that same admiration again I felt so many years ago. And it felt great.
Goodbye Hitch!
(introduction by Thomas)
HITCH : BLOEMEN NOCH KRANSEN (1995-2010)
Some time ago Thomas asked me to write a few lines about my band Hitch for this zine. As I’m a big fan of paper zines, I was happy to do it.
It’s kinda feels weird writing about something that is no more. I know, it’s just a band, but it always felt like it was more than just a band. I definately feel I took more out of it on a personal level. For me personally it made me who I am today, at least for a big part. No need to bore you with an extended band biography here, but I did feel like writing some stuff about how I got involved in music back in the days and how it affected me as a person and some lines on that last show. Here we go.
When we started out this band, 15 years ago, we had no ambitions at all, hell, we could hardly play an instrument. It was all about the fun. We were all heavily into skateboarding. It kept us busy day and nights, hell, we practically lived for skateboarding. At the time I lived in Aalbeke (‘Shitcreek’), a little town close to Kortrijk. There was pretty much nothing to do. We were not the kind of kids that joined the local Chiro on Sunday afternoons, hell no, we used to hang out in the streets skateboarding, building quarter pipes and small ramps and doing things normal teenagers would do like getting into trouble and smoking way too much weed.
Through the skateboarding came the music. The skateboarding was essential. I was listening to utter crap before as I didn’t know any better. My brother who was into his twenties at that time was really into new wave, and industrial shit, but it didn’t do nothing for me, at least at that time….Later on however, my brother got me into so many good bands as he moved away from the new wave and got into other styles of music.
We used to watch these skateboardmovies - like the H-Street video “Hokus Pokus” - we must have watched that particular movie a 1000 times, or “Video Days” (the Blind movie). These movies featured music of all these cool underground bands that we would get into later on. It was our first introduction to punkrock music and it opened up a brand new world that appealed to us immediately. Through these movies we would got to know the music of bands like Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr, Minor Threat, Slayer, Seaweed (the defunct Sub Pop band), Fugazi etc … The music fitted the skateboarding perfectly as it embodied the zest, energy and spirit of skateboarding perfectly. It would give me goosebumps to watch these kids do these amazing and mindblowing tricks to this hard, aggressive music. It was just the perfect combination and for us it was mindblowing.
I remember us sitting on our boards, smoking a joint on a summer night and talking about all these amazing bands and how cool it would be to actually be in these bands … it looked so simple and in many cases, it actually was. We got into Ramones awell. Bands like the Ramones showed us u could actually be in an amazing band and only know 1 or 2 chords.
My brother had this cheapass black electric Ibanez guitar lying around that he hardly used. It was just siting there along with this tiny Fender amp, ’till I picked it up and starting playin it. (He later on picked up the bass guitar and till this day he’s into making music.). I actually learned to play it by playing along with my first CD’s. I remember sitting on my bed in my room for hours, playing along to the music of bands like Slayer or old Sepultura (yeah, I was quite into metal at the time)…Offcoure I would play the rhythm guitar and not the solo parts, I wasn’t that talented, but it worked and it helped me to learn and play my chords tight and abbrassive.
At the same time we were jamming around with some friends and started this band called Bionic Germ. (Coming up with a good bandname was not an issue back then as u can see.)
We all lived close to eachother, our mothers knew eachother, and we were all hanging out at this youth club called ’t Skut. It was walking distance from our houses and it was very important for me. For all of us I guess… It would become our number one hangout spot and later on we would do our first rehearsals there…Life was good. In the years to come we would gradually take over the club, we would run the bar, play the music we liked, organise some local shows and small festivals etc … At that time you also had La Gare (rip) in Lauwe and The Pit’s (still alive and kickin’) in Kortrijk, 2 amazing clubs that were totally into the DIY way of running a music club. In the early nineties these 3 places would make up “the golden triangle” : These were the three places where we would see alle these amazing touring bands, some of them which would influence our band in a very solid way. Those were the places where we would play our first shows with Hitch.
I remember these times as being very exciting. We were teenagers, it was all new and exciting and we actually managed to break out of our rehearsal space and play for a live audience which was already a small victory for us. We didn’t really care if people liked us or not. We probably sucked really hard, but we had the time of our lives. We couldn’t care less.
…
On december 18th 2010 we played our very last show with Hitch at De Kreun in Kortrijk. We realized it was 15 (fifteen!) years ago when we started out. Time sure flies.. Looking back at it today, I feel accomplished, proud and happy. It sure was an amazing ride This band has given me opportunities that I could never imagine. I got to know people that would turn out to be friends for life, eventhough they lived across the ocean. I genuinly believe it made me a better person.
The moment in time I decided to actually quit the band, was after we recorded and released the Clair.Obscur album. I still think it’s the best thing we have done so far…not only in terms of production but also in terms of making a truly honest record that captures some essential moments in time. That’s what it ’s all about, right ? After the recordings of that album I felt like i had never felt quite before : empty and exhausted, yet …excited and eager to play all over the place. It was a feeling that i could not really explain in words, but that was very ambiguous. At the time we were supposed to promote the record by playing live shows – the more, the better – but … the shows didn’t come, although we got shitloads of raving reviews and quite some media coverage. It was weird. We were in a position that we hadn’t experienced before and it made me think …
Stubborn as we have always been, we decided not worry too much about it and we moved on to making new tracks. But it felt different now. We made about 4 or 5 new tracks after that album but they didn’t last … most of them were thrown in the bin the next rehearsal, and so it continued. At a certain point I realized we were driving in circles and I remember I thought it was weird that I was the only guy in the band who actually felt like this band had lost a bit of its heart and soul. The drive was gone. Where rehearsal should be fun and exilerating, they became frustrating. I remember this one rehearsal where i actually told my bandmates I considered quitting the band …it was not a fun thing to tell the people who you have been playing with for 15 years that you’re planning on quitting. I could see they were in shock and disappointed. A normal reaction I guess.
But so I did ... a year passed. No rehearsals, no shows. It was a weird time. I had just become a father and this took up a lot of my free time. It’s the biggest cliché ever, but it sure is live altering, and .. in a good way. It really puts some stuff in perspective. I enjoyed spending time with my son Onno and watching him grow, change as a tiny person, …
But, I hardly saw my bandmates and I didn’t touch my guitar for about a year. It felt weird, unsettling and akward. I felt liberated in a sense but also nervous and anxious. At one point I was about to sell my guitars and amps, I’m glad I didn’t now… In september 2009 I emailed my bandmates and asked them to talk. The idea would be to do one last show, here in our hometown, for our friends and families. It would give closure to all of us and in this way it would be clear to everyone that after that last show the band would be no more … Both Paul and Olivier agreed and it felt good talking to them so openly as I knew they were confused on how to proceed this ‘relationship’.
We booked the show in december 2010 and started rehearsing at the end of october. It was a pain in the ass to find nights we were all free and available, but we planned about 6 or 7 rehearsals. We made this playlist that consisted of what we and “our fans” considered the best Hitch songs, covering 4 of the albums we did along the years. We called it our ‘greatest Hitch’ set.
It was nice to do the rehearsals. The vibe was totally different from the last rehearsals. The atmosphere was relaxed, we laughed, cracked jokes and some old tracks brought up some great memories and stories. It felt like this weight was falling of my shoulders.
I remember being nervous as fuck for this show. We sarcastically named it ‘Bloemen noch kransen’ and made a fitting poster for it. It has been a constant through our musical euh …‘carreer” not to take us nor this band too seriously, not that we are not serious about what we do, cuz we were, but we thought it was a healthy way of coping with the more “serious side” of being in a band. I remember other bands I love doing that aswell, such as The Metroschifter, Jezus Lizard or Melvins, I always found that a quite charming aspect of a band. And while I’m at it : There were some other “principles” we held on too aswell, like never playing encores (how lame is that?) or never entering those rockrallies or competitions.
…
But back to that last show … Normally it’s something that doesn’t really bother me, but 10 minutes before were supposed to go on I almost lost it. We only had like 6 or 7 rehearsals and we didn’t play live for a year, so I did not feel quite sure about the set, to say the least. I calmed myself by having some whiskey shots. Lame, I know. Whatever…Rape Blossoms opened that night. They played a hell of a show. I really think it’s one of the more interesting new and local guitar bands around. I recognize the influences of the bands I really like and still like. If you have the chance to check ‘em out live, please do, you will not be disappointed.
We played a set of an hour and a half, which is something very rare for us. Normally a Hitch set takes about 30 to 40 minutes max and then we’re absolutely exhausted. Hein, who has been running sound for Hitch since we started out and whom we have always considered the 4th member of the band took out the best of us that night. I think we played a good show (not the best), but in terms of response of the audience, it was really overwhelming and very heart warming. The energy that came from the audience that night really got us pumped and the show passed in a haze of mixed feelings. After the last song my mom came up to us on stage and handed us flowers and hugged all three of us. Fuck, I could hardly hold a tear. She has always been very supportive of what my brother and me do on a musical level and I’m very gratefull for that. It’s not something one should take for granted. My mom absolutely rules.
What can I say ? It was the perfect night and the perfect ending for something that had been so present in my life for the last 15 years. After the last song people were shouting for more. Those who really know our band know that we never do encores. Again, encores are lame! People came up to me and explained how they loved our band and expressed that they will truly miss it. It feels good knowing that people have appreciated the efforts you have put in. It definetely feels like it was worth while playing these shows for 5 people and some dogs in a raunchy squat somewhere in Lyon, France, sleeping at dirty floors and sitting in a smelly van with 4 bearded guys for a month.
A great man once said: it’s better to burn out than to fade away. I fully second that !
…
I sincerely – in behalf of the band - want to thank everyone who played in Hitch and supported us in any way. You are in our hearts and minds forever. Thanks Thomas for asking me to do this. I actually enjoyed it.
Oh, and please keep your eyes open for new projects from all of us. Hitch may be fuckin’ dead but all of us are keeping ourselves busy as we speak.
Thank you.
Mich Decruyenaere (february 2011)
Ps. Feel free to contact me through this zine.
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High res pic :
Full discography : http://www.ivyagency.net/booking/artists/hitch/discography.htm
