Smoke on the River Amstel: A commuNITS Manifesto

Between “Penny Lane” and “Dapperstreet”, there was another milestone of “neighbourhood-street-writing”- a forgotten one – with young Henk Hofstede in ballad mode – a cross between Paul McCartney and Elton John and with the piano in a star role. A melancholy of the beginning wades through the song – so, very early on, Hofstede’s contribution to the anatomy of music melancholy takes a definitive start here on this very first Nits album. Lyrics wise the song “Fantasies and Factories” is like an embryo of the fully grown beauty that is Dapperstreet. It’s a very pensive and contemplative song by Hofstede, like a tableau of an old master with “the smoke on the river tonight” – a truly beautiful and poetic parenthesis of music and word on what would become the Nits world, a soft veil slowly to be removed -, you can imagine the dark, greyish colours, the snow or rain in the sky, the ice on the ground. Almost like a painting of L.S. Lowry, the “workman painter” of factories, mills, landscapes and buildings, the North of England in sound and vision merging with the Northern city of the Lowlands. Even looking at the grim world portrayed by Lowry, you always get that sense of fantasy coming across! And the same goes for Hofstede. His birth town of Amsterdam is about to become the center of a new, fresh world of pop music, bathing in a fantasy light: “So come and take a walk with me – I’ll show you my reality – You know the things I like to see – Stay with me”. It’s easy to see that Hofstede is not one who likes to say goodbye … A clear manifesto of what was to be: a cosy Nits community for the ears and eyes to enjoy. It has rivers and boats and buildings … We meet a man deeply attached to the city he was born in – to friends and faces – and determined to show the listener around in his world. The beauty and love for his world bring on a touching melancholy feeling that will invade the scenery of many a Nits song. The epiphany of the world of pop music that young Nits experienced in their formative years needed to be explored in the new and different surroundings of their birthplace. And, indeed, … its sound was different.
The past can be something to be honoured and cherished, it’s ok to “look behind”.

I think Nits should include this song in their 50th-anniversary setlist with Hofstede behind the grand piano. “Fantasies and Factories” is no less than the opening of the curtains of the Nits world.
And what a world it turned out to be …! Another epiphany.
I really love this song!

Joke Roelandt, December 2023