Dutchtek 2002 party report
Dutchtek was wicked this year… Although it was predictably a lot smaller then last year (this year only about 3 foreign systems made it, last year you couldn’t count the walls) but it was nice though. It was near the German border in a small nature conservation but the field which has been chosen had nothing special, just weed. It had trees surrounding it and you couldn’t hear any music in the places nearby. Unfortunately our truck (a huge rented one) loaded with the speakers of 3 systems got nicked before the teknival had begun. It got stuck with one wheel in a ditch making it an easy target for the “fastly got together” riot squad who was thinking they had the “organisation” of the party when they were holding the truck. A pity for them that all the other systems were able to drive on the field behind their backs and they start building up their systems right away. While the police still was holding the truck the first sounds starting pumping on the field. Saturday during they day the police started spreading almost the same flyers as they did in Moerdijk in 2001, pointing us on the fact that we are attending at an “illegal houseparty” and basically that we had leave immediately…
Of course, no-one did, but we were afraid that the same would happen as last year (Last year a lot of systems were nicked and it was a bitch to get em back .. it took about a month!). They police threatened to clear the area but we didn’t see many coppers around so no-one stopped and when the hours pass we realized we would have a Saturday night this year. It became darker and darker and we had a really wicked night with sounds pumping all over the place, beautiful lights, happy people and that in a nice nature environment. It was really cool. In the morning we have this feeling “they can’t take this from us anymore” but slowly it became clear that the police was setting up something and yes, riot squad officiers were all over the place. Why? No-one knew, there had been no incidents and no complaints (maybe only from people who were bothered by all the party freaks parking their cars in the neighborhood because the police had closed some of the gates (you could enter the party through the forest anyway).
At about 11:00 the teknival stopped and everybody started to pack. A line of riot squad forced us to get the hell out. We didn’t start a riot or whatever but calmly we moved out. Like always, no aggression. Unfortunately they decided to steal our equipment again, and every car was searched while getting out of the area. Speakers, amplifiers, trucks everything was taken. Goddamn!! Not like last year nooooo! Gladly it became clear that the police didn’t have any legal ground to hold our stuff and I guess they just want to get rid of everything so everybody was allowed to get his rigs and everything back. Quite a happy end compared to last year. This year there also was a lot of media attention. I guess there was no other news because it was on the front-page of almost every newspaper and in the news of national TV stations. The whole Netherlands did hear of those strange, international, illegal events now, but still no-one knows really knows much more than that they’re called “illegal house parties”. One time a year the Dutch (and Europe) underground steps into the light and that’s it.
Too bad our new right winged cabinet is starting to ask questions already and wants to create measures to prevent this from happening again. Well I think they already did take those measures while taking our rigs again and blowing it up in the press. All together you start thinking “is it worth it” and I think it’s not. But we’ll see next year if we’re doing another Dutchtek (and maybe this time organised different).
Greetz, Henry
