"Ladies and gentlemen, we are the Doorbreakers! Blonder than Blondie and stoneder than the Stones, younger than Neil Young, and kinkier than the Kinks!" The members of the audience shift from one foot to the other, look at each other, look back at the band. It's a squatted space, and most of the onlookers are clad in black hooded sweatshirts with flashes of color in their spiked-up hair, the almost obligatory uniform of the European autonomous movement. They're blasé and think they've seen it all, from the filthiest thrashiest Polish grindcore to cheerful polder-ska, the odd American indyrock band and some hot-panted riot grrrls. Singer Jezebel raises a hand in mock impatience. "Are we ready, boys?" She turns back to the crowd and sticks her tongue out, points a finger. "Don't let your woman push you round." Jezza, the saxophonist lets out a long, sighing, unbearably drawn-out note and the punks in the pit almost seem to shiver. He launches into a swing-tango and the band follows, the whole lot of them, thrashing it out all together. Bassist Camilo can hardly stand but he's doing it. The guitarist, Bart, he's picture-perfect, on the mark, watching like a hawk. Jan, the drummer, is surly and fantastic. And Remy, the accordionist plays for dear life although he only taps his foot ever so slightly. Jezza wears a dress and his blow-job sax antics have become one of the band's trademarks.

The audience has never seen anything like it. "Where are you from?" shouts one member of the audience in between songs. "Mars," Bart shouts into his microphone. Jezebel takes over. Again. "We're from Amsterdam," she growls , "but we're all cultural refugees from elsewhere." Most of the songs are in English, but the three filthiest are in Dutch, written, as it happens, by the two non-Dutch members of the band. The titles, translated, are "Keep Fucking", "Blow-job Song" and "If I was a boy," a dirty cover of a traditonal Dutch pop song extolling the imagined joys of having a great big cock and sticking it in everywhere. "It's got to be done," explains Jezebel, "Because Dutch culture simply hasn't got anything like it, it's all so matter-of-fact and sometimes quite earthy but not really dirty, and if the provocation's going to work, it's got to be in their own language."

The Doorbreakers started as an idea of Jan's, who at the time was playing in a ska band along with Camilo and Bart. The ska band would draw huge moshing crowds, but Jan had a hankering for more spontaneity and improvisation. Bart was having a passionate romance with a squatmate of Jezebel's, and Jezebel was just starting a not-so-passionate romance with Jan. The precise details of their first night together are subject to speculation, but it can be safely confirmed that at one point there was beer, and lots of it, and that at some point Jessie let slip what she'd been doing in London for the past year, trying to make it as a singer-songwriter, and it all seemed - must have seemed - so right at the time, with the beer and all, to start a band. Bart was to play guitar and scheduled a Friday night slot at the squatted practice rooms for the new band. Jezebel always had something better to do and never turned up except for the one night when she had nothing better to do. To cut a long story short, that's how the Doorbreakers began. Jeremy, who had been drifting around in Amsterdam for ten months having moved there from San Francisco, had learned to play sax in elementary school but given it up by high school when he realized it would never get him into a rock band. When Jessie invited him to come jam with the (as yet unnamed) Doorbreakers, the little bit of practice he had been doing with improvisation clicked. Camilo rolled into the next practice session nervous and drunk, but soon came up with the bassline that grew into "Revolution Love", the original Black Block torch song. The Doorbreakers did a couple of gigs for skeptical audiences, and then just as the good gigs started coming in, Remy joined the band to fill in the sound with piano and accordion. Remy, a street musician for years, had a history of disappearing just before performances with his formative bands; on joining the Doorbreakers, Jan asked him if this tendency was stage fright and Jezebel threatened that if he ever, ever didn't show up for a gig, he'd be out on his ear. Until now Remy has never missed a show, by the way.

The Doorbreakers are starting to collect fans and a following, although it's a select bunch of musos, enthusiasts and freaks; already in the early stages, the Doorbreakers are well on their way to achieving cult status. The members argue bitterly, tongue-kiss when drunk, and act out all kinds of traumas and dramas when forced to spend too much time in close proximity, which is often, in the tour bus. There is a general agreement that there won't be any selling out or money grubbing on the way to the top and that really, after all, it's about the music.

The Doorbreakers' crusty website and sound online:
http://freeteam.nl/~jeremy/doorbreakers/