Nits Stayed On To Find Europe – Dedicated to my Dad

50 Shapes of Nits: The 24th shape is the shape of Mrs Robinson

As a young girl I watched The Concert of Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park on tv with my dad. My dad loved their music and was always saying to me how well both their voices matched and how wonderful the harmonies were. I agreed. I think I still know the concert by heart including all the lines they spoke and the reactions of the crowd. “This was America”, my dad said, he loved America, went there often on business. He relished the music of Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen (I know he’s not American) and Johny Cash. He met Cash by accident once in a hotel somewhere in America, told me how tall he was, an impressive looking man …

The Central Park concert started off with well yes, “Mrs Robinson”, a great enthralling opening of the set which immediately sent sparks into the crowd. Little did I know that my favourite band-to-be would one day write a song inspired by this Paul Simon number and by the movie it featured in. I kept on listening to these songs regularly in the years that followed and I always thought that this music was indeed the sound of America. … Just like now so many years later I tell myself that the music created by Nits is the sound of Europe. Paul Simon on the other side of the big blue ocean … and then on this side, a little more to the north there are Nits with Henk Hofstede, Rob Kloet, Robert Jan Stips and Michiel Peters writing down in music what Europe sounds, feels and looks like.

Mrs Robinson is of course just one of the many female figures in the Nits world. Woman Cactus, Typist of Candy, Das Mädchen Im Pelz, Ice Princess, Christine’s World, The Chameleon Girl, Sister Rosa,The Strawberry Girl, Walking with Maria, Espresso Girl, Mrs Sunlight, Lina Bo Bardi … these are some of the main female characters in the Nits world, with songs named after them, all of them sound like really fascinating personalities. They are not the usual kind of women that pop bands or singer-songwriters write about, they are not the iconic mythological figures on whom classical music or opera tend to focus either. On the album Alankomaat, Mrs Robinson finds herself in the good company of Sister Rosa, three sisters, a woman named Flavia and a whole circle of women whose name ends with an “A” . But I gave the honour to Mrs Robinson to form the 24th shape, probably because of her connection with Paul Simon, but also with Anne Bancroft I presume. And then she is also one of the oldest I guess … her blue hair deserving our respect and consideration… And I love the song: this nonchalant and clever way that Henk Hofstede and Nits have to approach or enter in a dialogue with other pieces of musical writing, with men and women of the cultural or arts scene, people that have fascinated them one way or the other.

The Nits song “Robinson” plays with some of the lyrics of Paul Simon, rephrases them or changes them into their opposites: “Hello sunlight my new friend”, Henk sings with a wink to the opening line of “The Sound of Silence”. So we have two Mrs Robinsons, one American, one European. They somehow sound different, though it’s hard to tell how and why they differ. The spirit of a continent or a country how does it translate into music?

The concert in Central Park was a clever piece of perfectionism – according to my dad – the staging of a perfect show and all the while the audience are enjoying themselves and getting this feeling that they are an intrinsic part of something bigger than themselves. That’s indeed the magic of a good live concert. The music is self-confident as if you could almost sense how it was supported by this vast and beautiful country, an immensity that offered a steady foundation to the music developing itself into this air of grandness. As if the music felt itself enveloped by a whole country … Look at Paul and Art, they look like gods, so sure of what they are doing. As if they shaped this country along with the music.

Nits they are somewhat more like the knight Don Quixote de la Mancha. They undertake many a quest and adventure and don’t take themselves too seriously. They operate under the sign of the question mark (NITS?) and they always embrace difference, different languages, different countries. Instead of being accompanied by a band almost as large as an orchestra they play against the backdrop of brightly coloured fish swimming to and fro. It reminds me of the scene in “The Graduate” where Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin is sitting in his room in front of an aquarium, sort of not really knowing what to do and what to think while the soundtrack plays “The Sound of Silence”.

Nits are making their way along many a different path. As if they still needed looking for this so-called unity that is our continent while expressing its identity in a variety of different idioms. Of course I don’t mean to sketch here a black and white picture, but I’m sure the reader will see what I mean. Paul Simon is a hero of mine too. His song “America” is an absolute wonder! ( … I wonder which Nits song might be its European counterpart: “Adieu Sweet Bahnhof” maybe?) Mrs Robinson and Kathy … or Mrs Robinson and Flavia … Simon and Hofstede they travel on a greyhound bus or by train … Simon sitting in a railway station too recording images and thoughts. And just like Henk Hofstede Paul Simon “looked at the scenery” … only for it to culminate in one of the most expressive lines in pop music: “And the moon rose over an open field”. Maybe the scenery of Nits and Simon and Garfunkel is not so different after all …

And the concert in Central Park found its equal – the European way – in the live album of Nits called URK. The roar of the crowd when Art sings the line “looking down on Central Park” in the song “A Heart in New York” much the same as the one coming from the audience in the Ancienne Belgique when Henk sings “and I’m riding through Brussels in the rain” in “Adieu Sweet Bahnhof”… What a great pity indeed we don’t get all the images with it too …

The magic of Being-in-the-World … through pop music … almost never surpassed!

“And we walked off to look for America” …

Joke Roelandt, March 2025