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An Ashgate Book
PJ Harvey and Music
Video Performance
This page has been left blank intentionally
PJ Harvey and Music
Video Performance
Abigail Gardner
University of Gloucestershire, UK
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Abigail Gardner 2015
Abigail Gardner has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Gardner, Abigail, author.
PJ Harvey and music video performance / by Abigail Gardner.
pages cm. – (Ashgate popular and folk music series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-2418-1 (hardcover)
1. Harvey, Polly Jean – Criticism and interpretation.
2. Music videos – History and criticism. I. Title.
ML420.H174G37 2015
782.42166092–dc23
2015014013

ISBN: 9781472424181 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781315600536 (ebk)
Contents
List of Figures vii

General Editors’ Preface ix
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Why PJ Harvey? Why Music Video? Why Now? 1
1 The Trouble with Polly 15
2 Harvey and Music Video in a Digital Age 47
3 Harvey’s Memorades 69
4 Harvey’s Serious Camp 95
5 Harvey as Deathly Diva 115
6 Harvey, Place and Englishness 139
7 Afterthoughts 163
Bibliography 165
Index 185
List of Figures
3.1 C’MON BILLY, official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=pr1j3GfJuR4, uploaded 23 November 2010. © 1995 Island
Records Ltd 80
3.2 THE LETTER, official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=XwJk2wXsIZI, uploaded 26 June 2009. © 2004 Universal Island
Records Ltd. A Universal Music Company 89
3.3 THE DEVIL, still image available at http://popbytes.com/pj_har
vey_returns_with_a_new_album_white_chalk/ 92
4.1 MAN-SIZE, official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=WuJE40OBt48, uploaded 17 November 2010. © 1994
Universal Island Records Ltd. A Universal Music Company 101
5.1 DOWN BY THE WATER, official video at http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=lbq4G1TjKYg, uploaded 23 November 2010. © 1995
5.2 DOWN BY THE WATER, official video at http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=lbq4G1TjKYg, uploaded 23 November 2010. © 1995
5.3 THIS IS LOVE, official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=STxXS5lLunE, uploaded 26 June 2009. © 2000 Universal Island
5.4 THE LETTER, official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=XwJk2wXsIZI, uploaded 26 June 2009. © 2004 Universal Island
5.5 WHEN UNDER ETHER, official video at http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=lnUQwE0YhZo, uploaded 26 June 2009. © 2007
6.1 THE WORDS THAT MAKETH MURDER at http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=Va0w5pxFkAM, uploaded 17 January 2011. © 2011
Universal Island Records Ltd. Universal Music Company 153
viii PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance
6.2 THE LAST LIVING ROSE at http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=CWBrWhrKchQ, uploaded 17 December 2010. © 2011 Universal
Island Records Ltd. A Universal Music Company 156
6.3 LET ENGLAND SHAKE at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=I2Qlb0qFLFE, uploaded 14 February 2011. © 2011 Universal
Island Records Ltd. A Universal Music Company 160
General Editors’ Preface
Popular musicology embraces the field of musicological study that engages with
popular forms of music, especially music associated with commerce, entertainment
and leisure activities. The Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series aims to present
the best research in this field. Authors are concerned with criticism and analysis
of the music itself, as well as locating musical practices, values and meanings
in cultural context. The focus of the series is on popular music of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, with a remit to encompass the entirety of the world’s
popular music.
Critical and analytical tools employed in the study of popular music are being
continually developed and refined in the twenty-first century. Perspectives on the
transcultural and intercultural uses of popular music have enriched understanding
of social context, reception and subject position. Popular genres as distinct as
reggae, township, bhangra, and flamenco are features of a shrinking, transnational
world. The series recognizes and addresses the emergence of mixed genres and
new global fusions, and utilizes a wide range of theoretical models drawn from
anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, media studies, semiotics, postcolonial
studies, feminism, gender studies and queer studies.
Stan Hawkins, Professor of Popular Musicology, University of Oslo and

Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds
Preface and Acknowledgements
This book is the product of over a decade of watching and listening to PJ Harvey
music videos. Over many of these years a number of colleagues and friends
have been hugely supportive of the project. Thanks in particular go to Joanne
Garde-Hansen at Warwick University for invaluable academic advice and to
my co-researchers and friends Ros Jennings, Eva Krainitzki, Sherryl Wilson,
Josie Dolan and Estella Tincknell at the Research Centre for Women, Ageing and
Media (WAM). Thanks also go to colleagues at the University of Gloucestershire
Media School – Freya Billington, Paul Zinder, Justin Crouch, Robin Griffiths,
Tracy Symonds, James Dalby, Anne Dawson, Tom Soper, Mike Smith and Ben
Calvert – and to Joe Wilson at Leeds College of Music. I would also like to thank
the librarians at FCH, University of Gloucestershire, who provided me with a
quiet desk in a room where I could hide away and work. Thank you to Carol
Vernallis at Stanford University, Howard Price, Fran Malyan and Leah Webb at
Sony ATV for advice on copyright. Thanks, too, to Lee Marshall and Sarah Hill for
encouraging emails when editing. The book has emerged from a PhD thesis, and
I would like to thank Jan Campbell at the University of Birmingham for starting
me out on it. If Chapter 2 has a whiff of a literature review about it, this is perhaps
because of its genesis. Thanks, too, to my family for putting up with a mum/wife
who has loud music tastes and fought them for use of the laptop.
I grew up on the Dorset–Somerset border a few miles down the road from
PJ Harvey, although I wasn’t aware of that until I started out on this project. I
also now work with a colleague who is producing her latest album. This is mere
coincidence; the book is not biographical and it is not based on interviews. It is
about PJ Harvey’s music video performances. As a matter of courtesy, I wanted to
let her and Maria Mochnacz know that this book was being written and approached
those who knew them to let them know about the project. Neither expressed an
interest in the book and, although I was left disappointed, I can understand. An
academic may be seen as the vulture, picking over scraps of works of art that
the artist should not have to explain. But these music videos showcase Harvey’s
performances at specific times over her career. They are, both in their content and
context, rich sites for investigation. They exist out there online and I can (and do)
keep on watching them. They are audiovisual texts that this book approaches and
unpacks and for that I make no apology.
Introduction
Why PJ Harvey? Why Music Video?
Why Now?
Bridport rock star PJ Harvey is among the proud recipients from Dorset to be
recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. The Bridport singer was
delighted to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for
services to music in her 20 year long career. (Gerryts, 2013)
In the summer of 2013 PJ Harvey was awarded an MBE. A Dorset musician whose
work has considered infanticide, abortion, murder, desire and war, found official
acceptance for her contribution not only to the ‘nation’ but also to its empire,
recognised by ‘Her Majesty’ herself. A local newspaper, The Bridport and Lyme
Regis News, reported the fact by noting that she (the home-grown ‘rock star’) was
rewarded for her contribution to music over a 20-year period. This is a fanfare for
a local, if not national, ‘treasure’ – an artist whose work over the years has ensured
that she be commended for her ‘services’.
This book is about one aspect of her ‘services’, ten of her music video
performances from that 20-year period. It may seem odd to excavate such a long
and hitherto underexamined body of work through the lens of her promotional
music videos when there is so little in the way of academic accounts of her music
– perverse even. But far from being tangential or secondary to an understanding
of Harvey’s work, my contention is that these music videos are an important part
of her artistic footprint.
Harvey is a critically acclaimed and commercially successful British musician,
the only artist to have won two Mercury awards (in 2001 and 2011), arguably
the gold standard of a particular section of the British music industry. She has
been recording since 1992, but to date there has been no single critical account
of her or her music. This book is the first to do so, and uses her music video
performances to unpack her work in relation to memory, archives, ‘diva-ness’
and Englishness. Its aim is to focus on one of Britain’s most pre-eminent musical
performers and, in particular, to use her music video performances as a starting
point from which to tackle an underexplored subject (Harvey) through a perhaps
unexpected prism (music video). This focus on Harvey’s music video performance
opens up room to consider how she plays around with stock images of femininity
that haunt the cultural landscape, how she extends and problematises, indeed
upsets, concepts that have underpinned theoretical approaches to image, such as
masquerade and camp and how she re-imagines nation. This engagement with
one of Britain’s leading singer-songwriters is therefore a timely intervention that
2 PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance
not only extends current debates in popular music studies, but also furthers work
in the interconnected fields of feminist media studies, cultural studies and music
video studies.
As the first academic study to address Harvey as a performer through the
analysis of her music video performances, the book offers valuable insight into
the work of one of Britain’s most prolific female artists within the independent
rock medium. Concentrating on her performances in a selection of music videos,
it argues for a reframing of some of the key central conceptual tools that have
been deployed to read subversion, disruption and ‘challenge’. The contention
is that there is something new at play in Harvey’s performances that cannot be
theorised within the predominantly psychoanalytical models of gendered identity
construction hitherto deployed to read women in popular music. Concepts that
feminist media theorists have used to unpack film and popular culture are no longer
fit for purpose. Rivière’s (1986) work on masquerade, Irigaray’s (1985[1977])
work on mimesis, Doane’s (1991) work on double mimesis and Butler’s (1990)
work on gender ‘trouble’ go only so far to account for what she does. Whilst they
have been fundamental to feminist popular music accounts of challenge within
the music industry in relation to potential ‘disruptions’ to established models
of gender/performance, including work on Harvey (Burns and Lafrance, 2002;
Whiteley, 2000), they fall short of speaking to what she does. This book argues
that reapplying such models only serves to offer a ‘theoretical feedback loop’ – a
circuitous process whereby Harvey may be considered ‘disruptive’ because she
does not conform and vice versa. These approaches fail to capture what is original
about her music video performances.
Harvey’s work not only challenges our understanding of models of gender
but also our understanding of the past as it might be presented online and on
video. Memory plays a part in Harvey’s ‘masquerades’ (in relation to archives
of the self and archives of nation) and her recent work asks questions about
past, place and nation (in relation to representing ‘Englishness’). These new
insights advance debates within the popular music studies field by building on
established work from within feminist popular music studies by incorporating
work on media and memory (Van Dijck, 2007; Garde-Hansen, 2011) and national
identity (Cloonan, 1997; Kallioniemi, 1999; Aughey, 2007; Featherstone, 2009) to
present new theoretical insights that move away from the resistance–recuperation
model towards the adoption of the idea of Harvey the archivist. This new and
interdisciplinary theoretical approach, coupled with the methodological focus on
music video, opens up fresh avenues into exploring what is at stake in the work
of one of Britain’s premier singer-songwriters. Existing studies of Harvey have
tended to concentrate on her live performances in the early 1990s, her lyrics and
on how she has been represented (Reynolds and Press, 1995; Burns and Lafrance,
2002; Whiteley, 1997, 2000). They have focused on a particular track (Mazullo,
2001), a particular album (Burns and Lafrance concentrate on Is this Desire, 1998,
Island Records) or on her as part of a trend, where she is considered within a
contextualised historical account of the interventions that women musicians
Introduction 3
have mounted (Whiteley, 2000). Nothing has been written on her music videos.
Examinations of sexuality, identity and disruption have surfaced as significant
strands of inquiry in these studies, with feminist debates focusing on Harvey’s
potential to ‘disrupt’ (Burns and Lafrance, 2002; Whiteley, 2000). Some of
these works have foregrounded the concept of the ‘diva’ (Doty, 2008; Burns and
Lafrance, 2002), a term that privileges notions of a star persona and a particular
configuration of performative strategies: this book argues that Harvey reconfigures
all of these. It asks for an extension and review of concepts that have been the
bulwark of feminist popular music critiques of women in popular music and
argues that Harvey’s artistic contributions within her music videos (many of them
directed by Maria Mochnacz) showcase ways of being – feminine, troublesome,
diva, English, poet – that are important to mark out as different.
Appearing on the independent music scene in the early 1990s, Harvey has
produced 10 albums. Her official site’s profile indicates that ‘From the outset PJ
Harvey has commanded attention’, and the review quoted below from the Times
Metro in 1999 uses language that has come to be typical of media discourses that
her official site provides links to:
Polly Harvey is without doubt one of the most important British female artists
of the decade. When she emerged from her native Dorset in 1992 with the album
Dry, her sandpaper voice, intense and erotic songs and a jagged and rumbling
soundtrack that seemed to draw upon the Delta blues, Captain Beefheart
and grunge in equal parts, announced the arrival of a truly subversive talent.
(Williamson, 1999)
She is often mentioned ‘alongside’ Nick Cave and Patti Smith and generates the
same kind of critical acclaim in the mainstream and niche press as these two:
intellectual, maverick, eccentric (Whiteley, 2002; Burns and Lafrance, 2002;
Davies, 2001; Railton and Watson, 2011). Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s
her work mined a seam of Gothic blues, garage punk or ‘extreme blueism’
(Christgau, 2000). There were glossier production values on her 2001 album
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, which won the Mercury Prize, and
then a shift to sparser, folk-influenced work on her later albums, White Chalk
(2007) and Let England Shake (2011). Throughout all of these, she has drawn on
various musical traditions and genres to offer a singular vision of desire, sexuality
and, more recently, nation.
As an artist on the independent British scene, she has come to occupy a position
of unassailable respect, having worked also with other leading figures on that and
the American scene (with Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age on a track
called ‘Crawl Home’ on The Desert Sessions in 2003; in duet with Nick Cave
in 1996 on ‘Henry Lee’ from the Murder Ballads album; alongside Lou Reed in
1997 on September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill). She is therefore impeccably
connected to a specific type of male rock artist, Reed, Homme and Cave, covering
between them transgression, eccentricity, talent and longevity. All, like her, started
out on the margins of the rock scenes in which they found themselves, all are
now raised by death, film and continued critical acclaim, emerging from the indie
and punk scenes to become figures who have enjoyed broader literary and artistic
success.
This book understands ‘indie’ as a generic category within the British popular
music industry that has an associated aesthetics, politics and culture. Originally
a shortened version of ‘independent’, and equated with music that might be
considered ‘alternative’ and now present within the ‘mainstream’ (Hesmondlhalgh,
1999: 34), it has generated rich and ongoing debate within popular music studies
(Leonard, 2007a; Bannister, 2006a; Hesmondhalgh, 1999; Keightley, 2001;
Shuker, 1998, 2013). In her book on gender in the music industry, Marion Leonard
clearly indicates that there are a number of problems when trying to delineate a
working definition for the term since ‘its exact definition and its boundaries are
open to dispute’ (2007a: 4). Her assertion that it is allied to a sense of independence
at the level of production and distribution and to punk as an aesthetic legacy is
useful for contextualising Harvey’s work, particularly in the early 1990s. She
writes how indie is
… associated with certain local or translocal ‘scenes’ or cultures, with

independent record labels, distributors and retailers, and with particular
(though diverse), stylistic characteristics drawing influence from an eclectic
range of sources, including electronic, 1960s psychedelia and punk. In the
early 1980s there appeared to be a ‘fit’ with the musical style of indie bands
and their industrial means of promotion via independent record and distribution
companies. (Leonard, 2007a: 4)
It is a genre that has had a ‘strong investment in difference’ (Bannister, 2006a: 58)
and has played a ‘counter-cultural’ role (Bannister, 2006: 78) where, as has been
noted, it has provided space for women to perform and produce (Kruse, 2003;
Reddington, 2007; Schilt, 2004; Leonard, 2007a). Illustrative of the movement
in the debates on this term is Bannister’s 2006 intervention that narrows down
‘indie’ to ‘indie guitar rock’, which he does because, in his view, most indie is
typified by the use of the guitar and by an ‘affiliation to rock tradition’ (2006: 78).
This more specific genre is also, he argues, predominantly white and masculine
(see also Leach, 2001). Polly Jean Harvey has been highly successful in this genre
as PJ Harvey. Subsuming her gender under a nom de plume perhaps wrested
her away from expectations within such a world as to what a woman might do
within it, offering her a space from which to comment on gender and other topics.
Similar to blues singers (BB King, LV Johnson) and American rockers (ZZ Top)
it masculinised her persona and allied it to genres within which men have been
dominant.
This short overview of some of the interventions is by no means exhaustive
but goes some way to define the term within which this book places Harvey and
which looks to understand her and indie as ‘linked to a set of dominant musical
Introduction 5
values with authenticity at their core’ (Shuker, 2013: 18). This is foundational as
it grounds what I want to argue Harvey does when she plays around with the idea
of authenticity (itself a much rehearsed and contested term – see Moore, 2012) in
relation to femininity, which occupies much of the initial chapter.
Chapter 1, ‘The Trouble with Polly’, establishes the core theoretical
underpinnings of the book. My claim is that most, if not all, of the critical
approaches under review have produced work that has positioned the ‘disruptive’
feminine by drawing on psychoanalytical and critical work of the mid- to late
twentieth century. Perhaps inevitably, theorists in popular music and music video
theory have engaged with the resulting debate couched within the binary of
resistance versus recuperation that this book argues is unhelpful to a reading of
Harvey’s performances and does not sit well with how theorists have positioned
music video as an ambiguous object: slippery, difficult to pin down. Furthermore,
my assertion that Harvey is doing something different through her use of memory
and archives necessitates a short review of relevant work on media and memory.
Chapter 2, ‘PJ Harvey and Music Video in a Digital Age’, tackles the question
of how: how the videos were chosen, how they were viewed and how they are
accessed and archived. It is a methodology, a defence of a feminist, textual
analysis when the ontology of music video is so questionable. Continuing with the
concern over challenge, it reviews key interventions from music video theorists
who have written on women in music video. Railton and Watson claim that music
video ‘operates as a complex form of cultural representation’ (2011: 142), and this
chapter goes some way to outline this complexity, which is apparent in both its
content and context.
Chapter 3, ‘Harvey’s Memorades’ is the first of four chapters that are in-
depth readings of specific music videos. The chapter focuses on C’MON
BILLY (1995), THE LETTER (2004) and THE DEVIL (2007) and argues that
Harvey’s performances might be considered archival and that she is acting as the
archivist. I put forward the concept of the ‘memorade’ which is a rethinking of
the masquerade that allies it to cultural memory, precipitated by my claim that
Harvey’s performances are conversations with the past, specifically with visualised
memories of archetypes of femininity. Here I draw on recent work on memory
that is pertinent to reading Harvey’s masquerades (Van Dijck, 2007; Grainge,
2002; Pentzold, 2009). I also propose how Harvey’s masquerades emerge from
her conversations and renegotiations with both national and transatlantic musical,
visual and lyrical heritages.
Continuing on with the concern that a binary model of resistance and
recuperation does not allow for a flexible reading of Harvey’s video work, in
Chapter 4, ‘Harvey’s Serious Camp’, I argue that her video performances in MAN-
SIZE (1993) and 50FT QUEENIE (1993) are ‘seriously camp’. They foreground
a mimetic and wicked sense of humour that allows her to subvert and challenge
dominant tropes of femininity while also continuing to hold such archetypes in
affection. In relation to this sense of humour, the concept of ‘serious camp’ is a
development of the term (Robertson, 1996; Michasiw, 1997) that takes account of
the independent rock genre within which Harvey operates. Generic and aesthetic
contexts are foregrounded in this version of camp.
Chapter 5, ‘Harvey as Deathly Diva’, is concerned with Harvey’s performances
of the diva and how they foreground loss, specifically in relation to domesticity
and desire (Leonard, 2007a; Bradshaw, 2008; O’Neill, 2007). In DOWN BY
THE WATER (1995), THIS IS LOVE (2001), THE LETTER (2004) and WHEN
UNDER ETHER (2007), Harvey’s divas are both haunted and amused by death,
and in two performances Harvey flirts with the idea of killing off the figure entirely
(THIS IS LOVE, THE LETTER). Harvey struggles with the ‘divine’ aspect of the
diva, choosing instead to perform her as ordinary and mundane, specifically in
relation to musical production and creation.
Chapter 6, ‘Harvey, Place and Englishness’, interrogates Harvey’s relationships
with place, specifically with England, and focuses on three of the accompanying
‘short films’ shot by Seamus Murphy for the most recent album Let England
Shake. Focusing on THE WORDS THAT MAKETH MURDER (2011), THE
LAST LIVING ROSE (2011) and LET ENGLAND SHAKE (2011), the chapter
illustrates how Harvey’s lyrical preoccupations with place and nation add to
debates on national identity and belonging specifically in relation to archives of
national identity and war (Bracewell, 1997; Bennett and Stratton, 2010; Elliott,
2010; Winters and Keegan-Phipps, 2013; Wiseman-Trowse, 2013; Morra, 2014).
The concluding chapter, ‘Afterthoughts’ reviews the core claims of the
book in the light of Harvey’s current position within the contemporary cultural
establishment. What is of interest to me is that although she is written into the
canon of English rock music, traces of her previous challenges remain. Her back
catalogue is well documented for its unconventional treatment of sex, desire,
abortion and relationships, and even if she has moved away from these topics
as an artist, her presence within the establishment to some extent affords these
some measure of if not approval, then a degree of acknowledgement. Her work
has suggested that there might be a different way to be a mother and diva; that
Englishness has an ordinariness and bravery to it that does not get circumscribed
into contemporary readings of nation. Her work has been troubling and challenging
and hers is a critical voice that merits sustained and continuing analysis.
All of the routes that I have taken into looking at Harvey’s performances are
premised on the core contention that she is somehow causing ‘trouble’, by refusal,
parody, mime, exaggeration, exposure. That she does this in music video, that
these performances swirl around YouTube and Vevo, that no one has really paid
them that much attention, that music video itself languishes in the shadow of the
album, the live performance, the sound, in turn troubled me and made me want to
somehow resurrect them. In this respect, the question below should not be ‘Why
music video?’ but ‘Why not?’.
Introduction 7
Why music video?
At the time of writing, Railton and Watson (2011) were the most recent contributors
on music video, concentrating on its politics of representation. It is their comment
that music video is a ‘pervasive’ and ‘ubiquitous’ cultural form, one which is far
from being the disposable ‘Kleenex of popular culture’ (Ellen, 2007: 5 in Railton
and Watson, 2011: 1), that has convinced me that analysis of this area of Harvey’s
work is valid. Music video surrounds me at work and home. It pops up on my
Spotify playlists; YouTube offers me a huge database of videos when I want to
choose music clips for lectures, and my students send me links to them so I can
learn about new bands. This is my most frequent way into music now. As Railton
and Watson write, marketing music digitally for different platforms means that
‘sound and image are now frequently welded together in the very acts of purchase
and consumption’ (2011: 143). The music video is digitally flexible; it can be
saved, stored, mashed up and, at the same time, it is accorded an ‘emerging sense of
artistic respectability which is part and parcel of the process of institutionalization’
(2011: 1), courtesy of being ushered into the halls of artistic fame of the Museum
of Modern Art in New York and the British Film Institute (2011: 7). The music
video is therefore a promotional product, marketing tool, artistic artefact and
representational text. It represents the artist, but it is also an audiovisual trace of
their performance of a song at a particular time. It is both a memory prop itself,
a remembering tool of past songs, and a contemporary presence online. It is
part of a swirling library of audiovisual delights, what Gehl (2009) has called a
‘Wunderkammer’, a cabinet of wonders.
In addition to this, the proliferation of Harvey’s video work as part of a number
of online digital archives such as official and unofficial fan sites, or her music
video directors’ websites, mean that there is an accessibility to these texts that has
re-energised music video and reconfigures it as a digital artefact as well as the
promotional tool and artistic device that writers have claimed it to be (Vernallis,
2004, 2013; Williams, 2003). This new development brings into play questions
on archiving that this book begins to address and illustrates the timeliness of this
project since it is congruent with recent interventions on online music video. Some
of the debates on this subject coalesce around music video in relation to archives
(Snickars and Vonderau, 2009) and interactivity (Van Dijck, 2009), and highlight
the concept of embeddedness and what this might mean for understanding music
video as a discrete ‘text’ (Vernallis, 2010, 2013).
From the beginning of music video analysis in the early 1990s, questions
have been posed about whether we watch or listen to a music video, and where
it belongs. These continue. Where music video sits, how you access it, what you
might glimpse while watching it, what you might be doing while you watch it, on
what platform you watch it – all this is changing, and no doubt by the time this book
is published there will be more developments. What is clear is that the ontological
status of the music video continues to be questioned; the music video might be
considered to be part of an archive, but, if so, who curates it? Or, indeed, does
it need curating (Gehl, 2009)? It has been emblematic of a commercially driven

consumer culture and thereby denigrated due to its alliance with the promotional;
it can now be edited or ‘mashed’ (spliced with other visual media) and so be altered
to such an extent as to raise questions over originality and textual security.
Alongside this awareness of the speed at which music video might morph into
different versions of its original self and of what it might be, the ten videos that I
came to analyse and have spent over seven years accessing are still there. I may
have to search somewhere else for them, but they remain, and this sense of music
videos existing as some form of audiovisual documentation of Harvey’s work will
be gathered up in Chapter 2. It is this sense of them as some sort of testimony to
her performances that is important because it is clear to me that an analysis of her
music videos provides an angle that has not been hitherto considered. What this
book opens up for debate is that Harvey’s music videos are not only ambiguous in
their cultural place and format, but have also now potentially become something
that they did not set out to be. They are no longer promotional videos made
to accompany a single for sale, but archive material as accessible as our own
family photos. Something that would previously have been lost over five years
ago, accessible only via negotiation with a video production company executive,
now sits at a click away, on official and unofficial sites. This accessibility is also
constantly mutating, with videos appearing and disappearing on a daily basis. This
sense of the video becoming a transient and shifting digital text also needs to be
addressed in terms of what it means not merely for access but also for how to
consider them as movable digital artefacts. Music videos are slippery. They are
both there (somewhere online I know I will find DOWN BY THE WATER), but
on a different URL maybe, perhaps with Dutch subtitles. They get passed around,
commented on; fans post their admiration. So what I watch, what I save as an
URL may shut down one day, and the video gets taken up somewhere else. Record
companies may claim ownership of them and close down the versions uploaded
by individual users; the version of THE LETTER I watched five years ago is ‘no
longer available’ and I go elsewhere, to the official video. What I watch could
therefore be considered as a version of the original music videos; it is the same
performance, the same edit, but the comments below are different. They are both
the same ones I watched before and new. This has proved to be a complex area
when negotiating copyright permission and clearance.
The uncertainty over copyright might be seen to be mirrored in how music
video has been theorised and, in turn, how Harvey’s performances might be read.
Music video has long been argued to contain a degree of ambiguity that is integral
to understanding what might be at stake in Harvey’s performances. Writers in the
field have long considered music video to be ambiguous in both its status and its
internal meaning (Cubitt, 1993, 2002; Vernallis, 2004). These debates have looked
into what video’s function is and have seen it as a medium that delivers a product
to a market, a ‘star’ to their audience. Critics, too. have noted how features that
often resist any definitive meaning populate its internal landscape; it can be, on
many occasions, a mystery. This is part of a promotional rhetoric whereby the
Introduction 9
audience is encouraged to view repeatedly, to try to ‘work it out’. The ambiguity

that has been claimed for the format is inherent within Harvey’s performances and
it is this key aspect that makes it difficult to claim her as ‘disruptive’ (Burns and
Lafrance, 2002) in any final sense, since this presupposes a binary that does not
account for the nuances of Harvey’s complex music video performances. I am not
alone in being weary of such an either/or approach.
The complexity inherent within music video that Railton and Watson refer to
is also apparent, as their work details, with respect to representations of gender.
They, too, are unconvinced of a binary approach to representation, seeing attempts
at claiming resistance or recuperation as flawed, oversimplistic and ignorant of the
nuanced complexity of music video (2011: 28). They argue, following Richard
Dyer’s (1993) argument, that representation takes place within a complex nexus
of instances, resistant to closure, which makes its relationship to the world ‘too
complex, too messy, too elusive and in the end, too interesting to be explained
by an either/or logic’ (2011: 28). There is therefore a complexity within the form
and the function of music video and in its representation of gender. Railton and
Watson’s work concentrates specifically on sexed, raced and gendered identity in
music video, and their work is timely.
At the time of writing, Rewind&Reframe, a one-year funded project dedicated
to campaigning against sexist and racist videos, had been active in its criticism of
popular music videos like Robin Thicke’s BLURRED LINES (2013). Drawing
on industry and academic research on affect and harm, it claimed that music
videos have the potential to harm young women, especially through stereotypical
representations of gender and race (Rewind&Reframe).
This politically active, youth-oriented site (most bloggers on there were
teenage girls) drew on and validated an established, if unresolved, debate within
media studies, and specifically music video studies, around impact and effect
that is an extension of media studies ‘effects’ debates (see Kalof, 1999; Emerson,
2002; Wingood, Di Clemente et al., 2003; Plough, 2004). However, this book is
not concerned with impact or effect; it is not a reception study beyond a formalist
and contextual analysis of Harvey’s music video performance. What is important
about Rewind&Reframe is that, like Railton and Watson, it sees music video as
important within a broader politics because ‘representations are political in so far as
they allow us to think and say something new’ (Railton and Watson, 2011: 37). For
the activists and bloggers on Rewind&Reframe the trouble is that nothing ‘new’
is being offered; tired old sexualised and objectified images abound. In contrast,
Harvey’s performances do say new things – about sex, stardom and patriotism.
Far from being a stale topic of inquiry, Rewind&Reframe shows how the images
out there coming at us on YouTube at the hairdresser, in the bar or in our living rooms
remain important. They are part of a representational regime whose constitution
remains contentious and is considered significant by both activists and academics.
Harvey’s video work and the manner in which it foregrounds images of femininity
are, by extension, still far too important to be relinquished as part of an academic
trend that in some cases has seen gender set aside because it has already ‘been done’.
Work on gender in popular music has more recently coalesced around more
specific areas: on a ‘type’ of male persona (Hawkins, 2009 on the British Pop
Dandy), genre and gender (Bannister, 2006 on white boys’ and indie guitar rock)
on a particular artist (Dibben, 2009 on Bjork) or band (Cope, 2010 on Black
Sabbath; or Welberry and Dalziell, 2009 on Nick Cave; Jarman-Ivens, 2007 on
masculinities). But gender is never ‘done’. Indeed, this book’s central concern can
be traced back to Betterton’s (1987) work which, though considering the topic of
codes and conventions of Western art and thus different in terrain, forms part of
the background against which this research is conducted. Her approach, 23 years
ago, was to consider that what was ‘at stake is the power of images to produce and
define the feminine in specific ways’ (1987: 5). This claim remains cogent when
thinking through what might also be ‘at stake’ in Harvey’s online music video
performances. How she performs various types of woman, how her earlier work
was focused on the body, which, has now moved to the background, means that it
is time to review this particular body of work.
It is hard to pin down how gendered narratives operate in Harvey’s work. It is
not always clear from which position she is singing. She delivers narratives that
are sometimes, but not always, in keeping with the singer-songwriter tradition.
In 2000 Sheila Whiteley defended her focus on women singer-songwriters
for whom the ‘telling of the tale is as important in the 1990s as it was in the
1970s’ (2000: 8) against writers who see a ‘problem’ with ‘female activity in
rock’ (Reynolds and Press, 1995: 387). This ‘tale’ could be personal and thereby
political. But writers such as Reynolds and Press (1995: 387) see a ‘problem’ with
‘female activity in rock’ because it has ‘remained mostly at the level of content
(lyrics, self-presentation, ideology and rhetoric expressed in interviews) rather
than formal advances’. Reynolds and Press immediately go on to ask: ‘Where
are the great female sonic wizards?’ (1995: 387). Indeed, there is in Reynolds and
Press’s question an inherent sexism in that their expectations for innovation lie in
the desire for women to be sonic ‘wizards’ and thus co-opted into a masculinist
discourse that does not accord value to female self-expression. Harvey tells
tales, but not always in the way that Whiteley ascribes to the female singer-
songwriters she discusses (for example, Joni Mitchell). Harvey may or may not
be the confessional storyteller – most often she seems not to be – but. again, this
is nuanced and complex; her early work clearly details her female characters’
problems with desire and appropriate feminine behaviour but her recent work
narrates the desires and experiences of soldiers at war. Whiteley’s point is that
there is an ongoing complex relationship between women and society and that
negotiations over image and self-expression remain as cogent as ever. This, I
argue, remains the same and, as Harvey ages, there will be issues to discuss over
how her image is presented (Jennings and Gardner, 2012). Harvey is also, if not a
‘sonic wizard’, a female Aphex Twin, a questing musician whose ability to try out
different forms of music to suit different narratives shows an ability to experiment
that may go part way to answering Simon Reynolds and Joy Press’s question,
especially with her use of the autoharp and piano on her later albums.
Introduction 11
Finally, there is, in the access to Harvey’s videos, a confusion of time in relation
to ‘age’. The images of Harvey from the early 1990s within the digital archive
remain perpetually youthful: distant yet constantly retrievable. Her appearances in
the 2011 Let England Shake films, an older version of herself, preserve her at that
age, too. The issues of the relationship between her present ageing and her digital
youthfulness are important to consider, specifically in relation to performing the
age-appropriate feminine, a point considered in the final chapter with respect to
musical genre.
Focus
For this book, I viewed all the ten videos on YouTube on my laptop, where Harvey’s
music videos were accessible. Some of them are also available on the website of
Maria Mochnacz, who has worked with Harvey from the beginning of her career
and is the director of the bulk of her music videos from 1993 through to 2007.
Vernallis (2004) discusses the importance of directorial input and collaboration
with regard to the aesthetics of the video, and in Reeling with PJ Harvey (1993),
a film shot by Mochnacz that follows Harvey on tour and is interspersed with
1993 promotional videos for MAN-SIZE and 50FT QUEENIE, it is clear that the
two share a close working relationship. Videos have also been directed by Sophie
Muller for the Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea album (2000). For
Let England Shake (2011) Seamus Murphy, a war photographer, shot the DVD,
a series of 12 short films to accompany the album, a change of terminology that
indicates a move towards the artistic and away from the commercial (discussed in
Chapter 6).
There are clearly visual differences between the three directors but each video/
film is congruent with the album’s audiovisual aesthetic; where videos for Stories
From the City, Stories From the Sea (2000) share high production values and gloss,
videos for tracks on Dry (1993) by Mochnacz are shot in black and white and in
keeping with the audio aesthetic. Similar themes occur across the videos from
1993 to 2007, and interviews with the directors may have yielded information on
why Harvey returns to these, especially with Mochnacz. Email interview requests
went unanswered, which, though mildly disappointing, did not stop the project.
The book is about Harvey’s performances and where they sit. It is not about their
genesis or authorship. My focus is on her in performance, in video, online; it is that
specific. In this respect it is in firm agreement with Railton and Watson’s view that
the focus should be on the performances (2011: 68).
A note on referencing
As Goodwin (1992) and Railton and Watson (2011) have noted, music videos
share titles with song tracks and referencing conventions are still emergent with
respect to distinguishing between them. This book will follow their lead, so a
music video title will be in capitals (LET ENGLAND SHAKE), album titles will
be in italics (Let England Shake) and a song track from an album will be set within
quotation marks (‘Let England Shake’).
Parameters of the book
It is worth establishing what this book’s parameters are by saying what it is not
doing. It is not directly concerned with the music video industry and Harvey’s
place within it. It therefore shies away from industry details and accounts since
its concern is with how Harvey’s presence in her music videos problematises how
‘disruption’ has been theorised. Its focus is on Harvey’s performances and their
circulation within a digital sphere. So it does not attempt to ‘read the producer’
by focusing on interviews with the director of the videos but turns instead to
the videos themselves, because I am interested in their role as floating texts and
potential archives within a moving digital audiovisual economy. Second, it does
not offer musicological or notational analyses of the music videos beyond musical
dynamics, idioms and instrumentation that are referred to in order to provide
contexts, using similar methods to other music video scholars (Goodwin, 1992;
Vernallis, 2004, 2010, 2013; Railton and Watson, 2011). This moves the analysis
across to popular music/popular media studies which is my background rather
than musicology and, putting aside my inability to score, it offers up readings that
are based on representations within the music videos. These readings are clearly
subjective but they are considerations of my encounters with her performances.
Although the book refers throughout to the term ‘performance’, it does so with
specific reference to Frith’s (1996) reading of it as contextualised within music
video. It does not therefore seek to open out into discussions on the nature of the
term in its relation to theatre or art (see Harris, 1999) and does so in order to limit
the understanding of the term to its operation within music video. This is because
the term is ‘very difficult to define’ (Carlson, 1996: 100 cited in Harris, 1999: 30)
and this book needs to use a mobilisation of the term that has a resonance to the
project, which Frith’s reading offers.
Frith’s argument is that ‘performance’ is a communicative process, which in
music video becomes dependent on rhetoric and gesture (1996: 205). These in turn
are utilised within a rubric where the performer is involved in a double enactment
in which she enacts both the star personality and the song personality at the same
time (see also Goodwin, 1992). Seen through this lens, Harvey can be performing
as herself (the star that is PJ Harvey) or as the protagonist of the lyrical narrative
that is being expounded in the music video performance. It is this emphasis on
gesture and ambiguity of identification that is helpful to a reading of Harvey’s
video performances.
Furthermore, Frith identifies music video as foregrounding the performance
of music as opposed to the music itself and so shifts the attention away from a
Introduction 13
preoccupation with the audio and the musicological to the body and the ‘star’.
This then frames my route into thinking about how to approach music video and
Harvey’s performance. Over and above this is the pertinence of Frith’s argument
on the eroticism inherent within the music video performance and the seductive
nature of the video star to Harvey’s work. Writers have noted her unease and
obsession with the body and its erotic potential (Reynolds and Press, 1995; Burns
and Lafrance, 2000) and I return to this on a number of occasions when reading
her performances as both erotic and commentary and critique of such eroticism.
These are the parameters of the book and they are in place to keep the discussions
centred on to Harvey’s music videos. The book’s contention is that these are
complex and important ‘sites of meaning’ that present us with a ‘range of ways of
being in the world’ (Railton and Watson, 2011: 1, 5, 11). In particular, Harvey’s
performances in these music videos circulate around questions of belonging
and self in relation to femininity and nation; they reflect on how to fit in to such
categories by remembering them, reframing them and negotiating them. Like
Railton and Watson, I take music video ‘seriously not only as a distinct form of
popular culture with its own complex set of structures and conventions but also as
an important site for the representations of cultural identities’ (2011: 12).
What drives this book is the contention that there is value in analysing the
content and context of Harvey’s video performances. Her early and mid-career
video work has repeatedly mined stereotypes of femininity that circulate within
Anglo-American popular culture, specifically the (monstrous) mother and the
diva. Her mimetic, exaggerated and critical performances of these figures require
a rethinking of some of the key concepts within which those figures have been
framed and discussed. From 1993 to 2007, Harvey is prominent in these videos,
her body takes up the screen, and her face is shot in many a close-up. In her
recent performances for the audiovisual material for Let England Shake there is
less of her on show. The album marks a noticeable shift away from comment on
gender and desire, a move mirrored by Harvey appearing less in the films and,
when she does, appearing as musician and narrator. There is a shift away from
comment on the gendered to the national self, which pushes Harvey towards
the background of her audiovisual output. This raises questions related to the
increasing absence of an ageing female body (Harvey’s) within a representative
audiovisual currency operating within a popular music industry that arguably
remains predominantly preoccupied with youth. Throughout her career, Harvey’s
music video performances have questioned what it is to be feminine, to be
maternal, to desire. Her music video performances upset accepted conventions of
‘disruption’ in relation to femininity that force a reconsideration of the term and
the foundational concepts upon which it is premised, Her work has now turned to
questioning what it is to be English, what hold history has over us in terms of a
national identity. To further understand how we might approach her music video
performances, a number of different disciplinary areas need to be acknowledged
and these are the concern of the following chapter.
Chapter 1
The Trouble with Polly
Mapping any disciplinary field involves a process of both selection and delineation.
Deciding where to draw the map’s boundaries and to what scale is the role of any
mapping exercise. When this ‘map’ is made up of a number of differing areas this
process becomes more complex. To provide a foundational map of literature that
speaks to PJ Harvey and music video performance means that we need to look
at (feminist) popular music studies and music video studies and, in turn, to the
philosophical and methodical works on which they have relied. Emerging from
those enquiries, like spokes from a bicycle wheel, is a diverse literature at the
centre of which is the connecting theme, ‘trouble’. Harvey is a troubling presence
and positioning her music video performances within a body of work that might
elucidate and provide a basis for analysis of what she is doing is itself troublesome.
Ontologically and representationally, music video, too, is problematic; what it is
and what it does, particularly with respect to sexuality and gender, continues to
be contested.
Harvey as disruptive
In accounts of Harvey and many other female musicians, there is an emphasis

on how images of femininity have been utilised and mobilised as a vehicle for
subversive dissent, if not disruption (Burns and LaFrance, 2002; Whiteley, 1997,
2000; Rodger, 1994; Shugart and Waggoner, 2005; Leonard, 2007a). Whilst
taking account of these interventions and being in agreement with the spirit of
their findings regarding the nature of such challenges, this chapter argues against
two of the premises inherent in much of this literature. Most, if not all, of the
critical approaches under discussion have produced work that has mapped out a
dissenting or disruptive feminine that draws on the mid- to late twentieth-century
psychoanalytical work of Rivière (1986[1929]), Irigaray (1985[1977]) and Butler
(1990, 1993) to do so. Perhaps inevitably, theorists in popular music theory,
cultural theory and music video theory have engaged with a resulting debate that
is couched within the binary of resistance versus recuperation on which these
concepts are premised. This dialectic seems too rigid to account for Harvey’s
work within music video performance. My initial premise is that Harvey’s video
performances are somehow ‘archival’, first in so far as they are indebted to past
imagery and a stockpile of stereotypes and, second, by existing as archivable
digital artefacts. Positioning Harvey’s performances as archival – that is, how
her performances are conversations with the past, specifically with visualised
memories of archetypes of femininity – opens up a more flexible approach that is

applicable to understanding her music video performances. These performances
sit outside that rubric of resistance versus recuperation and are too ‘complex’ to be
situated as a binary (Railton and Watson, 2011), which would not allow for nuance
both in form and format or allow for the ambiguous spaces that Harvey opens
up in her work. Harvey’s performances are ironic reviews of past stereotypes
of femininity, which she then humorously and ambiguously reflects upon. They
are a ‘miming’ and ‘displacing’ tactic (Butler in Kotz, 1992: 84) but cannot be
easily accounted for within a binary dialectic. This is because they foreground
a wicked sense of humour that allows her to subvert and challenge dominant
tropes of femininity while also continuing to hold such archetypes in affection
through the constant audiovisual evocation of the past. It is difficult (and possibly
unproductive) to make any final claims for what Harvey is doing, whether her
performances might be potential ‘tool[s] for social conformity or an avenue[s] for
alterity’ (Shugart and Waggoner, 2005: 79), and this in-between space that refutes
the dualism of an ‘either/or’ position can be read through Robertson’s (1996)
‘feminist camp’ because her theories of camp utilise parody and irony, linking
camp to a reconfiguration of the past.
Much of the work on women in music who have been argued to push the
boundaries of acceptability is imbued with the rhetoric of ‘progress’, or of the
‘positive’ (see Whiteley, 2000; Burns and Lafrance, 2002). This is understandable
when many of these discussions are concentrated on the practical realities of the
contemporary Anglo-American music business and related media discourses
(Raphael, 1995; Kruse, 1999, 2003; Schippers, 2000; Leonard, 2007a). They
address issues of presence and production, and of material progress within the
industry. Whiteley’s work, in particular, has been foundational to thinking through
gender in relation to popular music studies (1997, 2000). Her 2000 account maps
out the ‘challenges’ that have faced female artists who have transformed ‘gender-
related boundaries’ (2000: 9) by ‘mov[ing] the goalposts’ (2000: 1) of a male-
dominated industry. Driven by an avowedly feminist agenda that is couched
within a rhetoric of struggle, she also acknowledges the complexity central to
a contemporary feminism influenced by postmodernism (2000: 2–3). This
complexity is where Harvey sits.
The debates on Harvey, such as they are within popular music studies, establish
that she is something of a troubling and provocative presence, a ‘problem’ for the
‘minimal interpretative resources’ (Burns and Lafrance, 2002: 176) of mainstream
media. She has been described by feminist and non-feminist writers alike as
‘visceral’ (Whiteley, 2000: 5; Reynolds and Press, 1995: 339) and as ‘intellectual’
(Davies, 2001) – as someone who, through her ‘exploration of female subjectivity
and angst’ (Whiteley, 2000: 18), has ‘challenged the extreme frontiers of gender
and sexuality in the early 1990s’ (Whiteley, 2000: 207). The most detailed work
on her to date discusses how she ‘disrupts’ ‘dominant discourses of sex, gender,
race and creed’ (Burns and Lafrance, 2002: xi), but this disruption, for the most
part, concentrates on her music. As I set out in the Introduction, this book follows
Another random document with
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hij als jongere en zwakkere op hun avontuurlijke tochten in gevaar
verkeerde.
„Dat zie je,” zei Piet nijdig. „Al drie middagen heeft ie z’n tijd verknoeid.
Dan wandelt ie zeker met z’n schoone jonkvrouw!!”
„Nou, ik vind ’t niet zoo’n naar kind,” zegt Chris. „En ze brengt altijd
appels voor hem meê.”
„O, doet ie ’t daarom,” zegt Puckie vol minachting. „Die kan ie van mij
ook krijgen, we hebben er genoeg thuis.”
„Neen, niet alleen daarom,” verdedigt Chris hem. „Hij vindt haar heel
lief. Hij heeft warempel al drie weken z’n zakcenten gespaard om d’r
een doosje chocolade te koopen.”
„Wat een halve gare!” roept Karel. „Niks voor Ambro! Maar wedden,
dat ’t hem gauw gaat vervelen!”
Chris begint ’t nu ook jammer te vinden, dat Ambro door dat meisje
niet meer in hun midden is en hij, die Ambro’s geheim eerst zoo goed
wist te bewaren, hij stemde nu met de jongens in, dat Ambro’s gedrag
zeer was af te keuren.
„Ik stel voor,” zegt Karel, „hem weer voor ons te veroveren en dat zal
ons lukken ook. Ik weet zeker, als hij moet kiezen tusschen ons en dat
malle kind, hij ons zal kiezen.”
„Hoe wil je dat dan aanleggen?” vraagt Piet. [121]
„Wel, door hem op te zoeken en hem voor de keuze te stellen.”
„Best,” zegt Chris. „Dan zal ik zeggen waar hij is.”
„Nou, waar dan; zeg op!”

„Op het weiland, achter den Provenierssingel. Daar laat hij een vlieger
met d’r op.”
„Vooruit jongens, we gaan er heen,” roept Puckie.
Behoedzaam sluipt de bende het Hol uit, en in looppas gaat het den
tuin uit naar het weiland. Bij den overweg van het spoor gekomen,
roept Piet plotseling: „Ja, hoor, ik zie ’m staan!”
„Wie zie je staan?” vraagt Paul.
„Wel, dáár, kijk dan!” en hij wijst omhoog, waar tegen den blauwen
hemel een groote witte vlieger onbewegelijk staat.
„Ik herken hem aan den staart. Die heeft ie vol gekke tierlantijntjes
gedaan.”
„Ja, dat is Ambro z’n vlieger,” roept Chris. „Ik zie het roode hart in ’t
midden.”
De vlieger wijst hun den weg en al heel gauw zien ze in de verte twee
kleine figuurtjes die op een berm zitten.
Ambro, in z’n blauwe trui, Margootje, in haar matrozenjurk. Haar

groote stroohoed ligt naast haar, en de wind speelt met de lange,
blonde krullen, die aan weerskanten van haar gelaat hangen.
„Wat een lol, om daar met dat schaap te zitten,” zegt Piet met de
diepste minachting.
„Hij let meer op den vlieger, dan op haar, zie je wel!” spotte Puckie.
[122]
„Vooruit jongens, nou voorzichtig omloopen en dan gaan we achter
den berm zitten en kunnen we afluisteren wat ze spreken.”
Zoo gezegd, zoo gedaan.
In minder dan geen tijd ligt het vijftal op hun buik achter den berm. Ze
houden zich muisjesstil. Ambro, zich van niets bewust, haalt langzaam
z’n vlieger in.
„Vin-jij ’t hier leuk?” vraagt hij.
„Och, jawel,” zegt zij.
„Maar we moeten nu eens ergens anders heen. Altijd op dat weiland

gaat zoo vervelen,” zegt Ambro.
„Mij ook goed,” zegt Margootje, tamelijk onverschillig.
„Vragen je vriendinnen nooit waar je uithangt?”
„O, die weten ’t wel. Ze hebben me genoeg uitgelachen.”

„Dan hengst je d’r op,” zegt Ambro.
„Wel zeker! dat doen wij nooit.” [123]
„Lam genoeg van jullie!”
„Vragen de jongens dan nooit waar jij bent?”
„Ze moesten ’t lèf hebben,” snijdt Ambro op. „Dat gaat ze immers niks
aan.”
„Vin-jij ’t leuk zoo met z’n tweeën,” vraagt ditmaal Margootje.
„Leuk, dàt is ’t woord niet,” zegt Ambro meer oprecht dan beleefd.
„Me neefje heeft ook een meisje … enne … ik dacht dat ’t aardig was.”
„Jakkes! wat ben jij een hark van ’n jongen.”
„’n Hark! Als je een knul was, kreeg je een opstopper.”
„Zeg es, je bent niet onder je vriendjes.”
„Nee, jammer genoeg,” zegt Ambro nu heel nijdig.
Achter den berm klinkt een onderdrukt gelach, dat gelukkig door het
tweetal niet gehoord wordt.
„Jij bent altijd zoo kattig,” zegt Ambro.
„Da’ ben je zelf,” vinnigt Margootje.
„Een jongen doet nooit kattig.”
„Dan ben jij een meisje.”
„Och, loop rond, saai schaap!”

„Ik heb je altijd een echte nare jongen gevonden.”
„Maar me chocolaadjes die lustte je wel.”
„Nou, ik gaf je toch appels.”
„Poeh! drie rotte waren er bij.”
Margootje begint te snikken.
Ambro schrikt van dien plotselingen tranenvloed. Hij wil haar eerst
uitlachen, maar nu hij tusschen de blonde krullen die met tranen
gevulde kijkers [124]ziet, wordt ’t hem toch te machtig en terwijl hij lang
in z’n broekzak zoekt, diept hij er eindelijk zijn kostbaarsten schat uit
op, een grooten glazen knikker met prachtige gekleurde strepen erin,
dien hij haar voorhoudt met de woorden:
„Hou nou op met janken, Go. Kijk eens, wat ik daar voor je heb?”
Maar het geschenk werd niet aanvaard.
Ze schudde koppig met haar hoofdje en duwde de hand met den

knikker weg.
„Nou, graag of niet,” zei Ambro wiens medelijdende stemming van

korten duur was. „Met jullie meisjes is niks te beginnen.”
„Ik maak ’t uit,” zegt Margootje.
„Dat heb ik allang gedaan,” spot Ambro.
„Naarling!”
„Mal schaap!!”
De tranen zijn verdwenen en ze is weer het kleine katje van straks.

Ambro haalt intusschen zijn vlieger in, die met duikenden zwaai naar
omlaag komt. Hij ontdoet hem van den staart en maakt het touw los.
„Nou, ik smeer ’m,” zegt hij. „Go, laten we nou niet als kwaje vrienden
van mekaar gaan. We vervelen ons samen toch maar. Geef me de
vijf.”
„Nee, hoor, nee!” en het kleine juffertje stampvoet van nijd.
„Dàn niet!” En Ambro loopt fluitend weg, Gootje aan haar lot
overlatend.
Hij loopt in de richting van den Overweg en als hij heel ver is, staat
ook Margootje op en [125]begeeft zich langs denzelfden weg
huiswaarts.
Als ze ver genoeg verwijderd is, richten de jongens achter den berm
zich voorzichtig op.
„Hoe is ie?” vraagt Chris.
„Heb ik ’t je niet gezegd, dat ’t niets voor Ambro is,” vraagt Karel.
„Hij verveelt zich immers dood met zoo’n kind.”
„Ik wed, dat ie nou naar ’t Hol is,” zegt Puckie.
„Laten we dan ook gauw gaan,” zegt Paul.
„Wel neen,” antwoordt Piet. „Nou mag ie es voor niks komen.”
Maar de anderen zijn ’t niet met hem eens.
„Ga mee, jongens,” zegt Chris. „Als we hard loopen, kunnen we hem
nog net inhalen.”
En dan gaat ’t met een spurtje over de wei, den Diergaardesingel
langs, naar den Dierentuin.
En ’t was zooals ze dachten, in het Hol vonden ze Ambro.
Chris had ze onderweg bewerkt om nu toch geheel onbevangen te

doen en niets te laten merken van wat ze gezien en gehoord hadden.
Dus begroetten ze Ambro heel gewoon en vroegen niet waar ie al dien

tijd gebleven was.
Ieder maakte het zich weer gemakkelijk in ’t Hol en de meesten gingen

lezen.
Ambro lag languit op den grond. Die stilte beviel hem niet. ’t Ergerde
hem, dat ze hem niet gemist schenen te hebben.
Een paar maal trachtte hij door het vragend optrekken van z’n
wenkbrauwen de aandacht van Chris op zich te vestigen. Maar deze,
ofschoon hij [126]dit gebaar zeer goed zag, deed, alsof hij hem niet
begreep en ging voort met zijn Buffalo Bill te verslinden.
„Waar zijn jullie al dien tijd geweest?” waagde Ambro het eindelijk te
vragen.
„Nou is t’ie goed!—Hij zeit wat!—Mot je nog boontjes, of lust je niet

meer!” riepen verschillende stemmen.
„Wij??… Jij!!!… Dàt mogen we jou wel vragen.”
„Ik … ikke … ik heb gevliegerd.”
„In je eentje?” vroeg Puckie met een doodonschuldig gezicht.
„Chris, jij hebt me verrâje! En de beloofde opstopper zal je niet

ontgaan, man!”
„Dat lieg je! Jongens, heb ik ’m verrâje? Puckie wou naar je huis gaan
om te vragen waar je bleef en toen heb ik ’m bij z’n poot gepakt.”
En Chris vertelde de heele toedracht der zaak.
Onmiddellijk was Ambro ’t er mee eens.
„Nou, ik ben blij, dat ik er af ben!” zei Ambro met een zucht van
verlichting. „’t Is niks gedaan, ’t kost je al je weekgeld en je verveelt
je.”
„En je schoot er bijna nog je mooien knikker bij in,” barst Puckie in een
schaterlach uit.
„Verroest! hoe weet jij dat!” valt Ambro uit.
„De berreme hebbe oore, jongeheer!” zegt Piet hoogst theatraal.
„Wat ’n vuile streek! Jullie hebben geluisterd,” en een blos van

schaamte kleurt Ambro’s dikke wangen.
„Ja, jôh, nou zit je d’r in,” plaagt Karel. [127]
„Toch naar voor Margootje,” zegt Paul weekhartig.
„Laat ze voor mijn part ophoepelen,” zegt Ambro. „Nogal een lief ding
om partij voor te trekken. Je mag ze van me cadeau, Paul.”
Nu wendt zich de spotlust tot Paul.
„Hèèèè! Paul met een meissie! Zou je wel durreven, Paultje?”
„O, ja,” zegt Paul parmantig. „Maar ik zou niet willen. ’t Is niks echt.”
„Ik heb honger,” zegt Ambro. „En ’t is vijf uur. Ik ga naar huis.”
„Ik ook.”
En ’t heele stel stapt op. Allen zijn innerlijk dol verheugd, dat Ambro
niet verloren ging voor de bende.
„Ga je met ons mee morgenmiddag,” roept Puckie. „Of ga je weer

vliegeren in de wei?”
„Met jullie mee,” zegt Ambro en met een vaartje rent hij op z’n huis
toe.
[Inhoud]
KAREL’S EERSTE OPTREDEN.
„Karel, wanneer is je concert?” vraagt Ambro op zekeren dag aan zijn in het Hol vergaderde
kornuiten.
„Me concert!!” lacht Karel.
„Nou ja, die uitvoering dan, waar je op speelt.”
Chris kijkt belangstellend op.
„Speel je op een uitvoering?” vraagt hij.
„Ja,” zegt Karel kwasi-onverschillig. [128]
„Ik speel op een uitvoering van de muziekschool, over een week of drie, geloof ik.”
„Moet je alleen spelen?” vraagt Paul, die het geval zeer huiverig vindt.
„Nou alleen! Natuurlijk met begeleiding van piano.”
„Jôh, wat keetig,” vindt Puckie.
„Zeg, mot er een snaar springen!”
„Liever niet,” zegt Karel. „Dan kan ik de fiedel wel meteen neerleggen.”
„Kan je dan niet op drie snaren spelen?” vraagt Puckie.
„Nee, man, dat gaat niet. Ik lap ’t ’m tenminste niet.”
„En wie speelt er piano?” vraagt Piet.
„O, een van de oudere leerlingen, een meisje, geloof ik.”
„Hm, hm!” laat Ambro veelbeteekenend hooren.
Karel vat direct vlam. „Toe, schei uit, flauwerik!”
„Ik zeg niks,” beweert Ambro, maar z’n ondeugende kijkers zeggen genoeg.
„We moeten er allemaal heen,” zegt Chris.
„Natuurlijk,” beaamt Ambro. „Zeg, jôh, kan je ons kaarten bezorgen?”
„Ik denk ’t wel,” zegt Karel met het air van een groot artist.
„Dan gaan we met z’n allen boven zitten en we zullen voor je klappen, jôh, dat hooren en zien
je vergaat.”
„En als ik nou slecht speel, of in de war raak,” twijfelt Karel. [129]
„Bê-je! Jij krijgt geen plankenkoorts,” zegt Ambro, die veel vertrouwen in Karel’s spel schijnt te
hebben.
„Wat speel je,” vraagt Chris.
„Een viool-concert van Seitz,” zegt Karel gewichtig. „Drie deelen, jôh, moet je niet
uitparemesanen!”
„Wel een beetje lang,” vindt Puckie, die niet erg muzikaal aangelegd is en een gramophoon
veel mooier vindt dan zoo’n lang concert.
„Dan ga je niet,” zegt Karel beleedigd.
„Zal je gewaar worden! Als ’t me verveelt ga ik maffen.”
„Nou, Paganini, ik ga naar huis,” lacht Ambro. „Wie gaat er mee?”
Het heele troepje volgt hem en het Hol is weer voor een poosje verlaten door zijn bewoners.
Een paar dagen later loopen Chris en Ambro na schooltijd samen een straatje om.
Ze hebben iets gewichtigs te bespreken en Ambro’s kop neigt zich geheimzinnig naar Chris
over.
„Weet je al wat?” vraagt hij.
„Hij is van den bakker, hoor!” zegt Chris vol pret. „Ik heb er m’n zus voorgespannen, die d’r
vriendin is ook op de muziekschool.”
„Fijn, man, fijn!” juicht Ambro. „Wie is het?”
„’t Is een meisje van zestien jaar, ze heet Dina Terlaken.”
„En je weet zeker, dat die Karel begeleidt?”
„Vast en zeker, me zus wist zelfs te vertellen, wat ze speelden.” [130]
„Oei ha! Nou kunnen we hem er tusschen nemen.”
„Zouden de anderen mee willen doen?”
„Vast hoor! En als ze ’t niet doen, kan ’t me nog niks schelen, want dan geef ik er den riks voor
dien ik van Opa kreeg.”
„Nou, ik heb er graag een gulden voor over, als de anderen niet mee doen. Ik heb m’n eene
verfdoos verkocht an me neefie en nou heb ik weer lood.”
„Wat zal ie fijn worden! We motten er bijtijds voor zorgen.”
„Laat dat maar aan mij over.”
De volgende dagen wordt er door alle jongens, behalve Karel, hevig beraadslaagd en ’t is een
vreeselijk geheimzinnig gedoe, waarbij telkens onderdrukte lachjes weerklinken.
Veertien dagen later.—In den huize Boekers heerscht een gejaagde drukte. De avond is
namelijk aangebroken, waarop Karel’s debuut zal plaats hebben. Deze loopt, in een
fonkelnieuw pakje, gejaagd door de kamer. Telkens werpt hij tersluiks een blik in den spiegel
om zich ervan te overtuigen, dat zijn kuif nog even mooi zit als straks, toen nicht Marie hem
met veel moeite in orde bracht. De twee zussen, in mooie witte jurken, zitten met hoogroode
kleuren aan tafel, in afwachting van het rijtuig, dat de familie naar de concertzaal zal brengen.
„Jongen, is je viool heelemaal in orde?” vraagt moeder bezorgd. „Heb je wel snaren in je kist?”
[131]
„Ja, moeder, heusch, heusch,” zegt Karel gejaagd.
„En ligt je muziek klaar?” klinkt vader’s zware basstem van achter de courant, waarin hij nog
gauw even zit te lezen.
„O, da’s waar ook, m’n muziek,” schrikt Karel op.
De zussen hollen al naar den muzieklessenaar, doch „Seitz” staat er niet op.
Karel kijkt wanhopig. Het stond er toch altijd op.
„In de muziekkast misschien?” vraagt moeder.
Karel rommelt in angstige haast de heele kast omver—doch „Seitz” is niet te vinden.
„Op de piano,” zegt nicht Marie en haast zich er naar toe.
„Het rijtuig,” gillen de zussen er tusschen door.
„Moet maar even wachten,” kalmeert vader.
Allen zijn nu aan het zoeken, doch het verloren schaap komt niet terecht.
„Wat moet ik nu beginnen?” jammert de ongelukkige solist.
„Kalm blijven en eens goed bedenken waar je het ’t laatste zag,” zegt vader.
Nicht Marie heeft intusschen op Karel’s kamer gezocht, doch zonder resultaat.
„Heb je ’t ook in je overjas gestoken?” vraagt moeder.
„Ja, ja,” roept Karel blij. „Nu weet ik ’t. Uit angst, dat ik ’t vergeten zou, heb ik het er in
gedaan.”
En jawel! In Karel’s overjas, zit heel veilig het muziekrolletje.
Nu gaat de heele familie haastig naar het rijtuig, dat ze vlug naar de concertzaal brengt. [132]
De zaal is stampvol. Familieleden en vrienden der jeugdige executanten zitten allen in

spanning te wachten op de dingen die komen zullen.
Op de galerij zitten de roovers uit het Hol van Kaan allen naast elkaar. Ze wisselen groetjes
met schoolvriendjes en gedragen zich zeer behoorlijk.
„Daar heb je Karel,” roept Ambro, als hij de familie Boekers de zaal ziet binnentreden.
„Tsjonge, wat ziet ie d’r piekfijn uit,” zegt Puckie bewonderend.
„Kijk es, hij heeft een lèf-doekie in z’n jaszak!” lacht Chris.
„Da’s om z’n viool af te vegen,” verdedigt Paul direct.
„Nou, ik begrijp wel, dat ie d’r zijn gaffel niet in snuit,” zegt Chris beleedigd.
Het concert wordt geopend met een vierhandigen marsch, gespeeld door twee kleine meisjes,
die als ze voor de piano zitten, als twee druppelen water op elkaar gelijken.
„Kijk daar es,” galmt Puckie.
„De Siameesche tweelingen!”
„Hou je kop,” roept Ambro.
„Straks worden we d’r nog uitgetrapt.”
„Ik had een strikkie aangedaan als ik haar was,” fluistert Piet, doelend op een reusachtig
haarlint van een der spelende slachtoffers, een lint, schier grooter dan haar kopje.
„Karel krijgt straks ook een lintje in z’n kuif,” grinnikt Ambro. [133]
„Sttt,” roept nijdig een zenuwachtig heertje, dat dichtbij ze zit.
„Vast d’r pipa,” waagt Ambro het te fluisteren.
De Siameesche tweelingen spelen niet onverdienstelijk en als het nummer uit is, zijn ze in de
achting van de bende boven gestegen, maar, als ze, dankend voor het hun ten deel gevallen
applaus met een stijve „kniks” bedanken, beginnen de jongens onbedaarlijk te lachen.
„Wat een aanstelsters,” hoont Ambro.

„Dat hebben ze vast bij die lieve juffrouw Hesterman geleerd.”
„Wat krijgen we nou?”
„Gedresseerde honden!”
„Nee, eerst Maciste, de krachtpatser!”
„Wie heeft een programma?”
„Hier,” zegt Paul schuchter.
„Waar is het mijne?” zegt Piet, terwijl hij overal rondzoekt.
„Bijna beneden,” is het antwoord van Ambro.
Deze laatste heeft van het zijne een proppenschieter gemaakt, terwijl hij dat van Piet voor de
munitie-aanmaak gebruikte.
De rakker is met den grootsten ijver bezig een kaalhoofdig heer onder hem, onder vuur te
krijgen.
Af en toe ziet hij een dame verbaasd een propje uit haar schoot opdiepen, doch als ze naar
boven kijkt, trekt de schelm zoo’n onschuldig gezicht, dat niemand hem van kwaad zou
verdenken. [134]
„Pas op,” waarschuwt Piet. „De zaal-chef staat vuil op je te loeren.”
Ambro, uit angst de zaal uitgezet te zullen worden, alvorens Karel het glansnummer van den
avond gespeeld heeft, houdt nu zijn gemak een beetje.
„’t Hoeveelste nummer komt Karel ook weer?”
„Het derde gelukkig,” zucht Paul, die erg in angst zit voor Karel.
Het tweede nummer is een van de oudere leerlingen, die een aria zal zingen.
Het is een tamelijk corpulente jongedame, die met alle allures van een groote concertzangeres
het podium betreedt.
„Wat een Paasch-os,” zegt Chris.
„Ze lijdt aan ondervoeding,” smaalt Ambro.
Net zal de juffrouw haar aria inzetten, als Ambro, die den lust tot kattekwaad niet kàn
weerstaan, plotseling Paul een hevige kneep in z’n zitvlak geeft, waarop deze met een gil van
pijn „Au” schreeuwt. De pianist houdt op en de geheele zaal werpt verwoede blikken naar de
plaats, waar de gil vandaan kwam.
De directeur van de muziekschool loopt
vertoornd de trapjes op naar het tooneel en zegt:
„Jongelui, wanneer jullie niet [135]kalm kunt zijn,

zal ik je er uit laten zetten, begrepen? Als je nog
te klein bent, om je op een concert behoorlijk te
gedragen, dan moet je de zaal verlaten. Dit is de
eenige waarschuwing die ik jullie geef.”
M
et
ko
rte
,
dri
ftige pasjes verlaat hij het podium en de

jongens blijven met beschaamde gezichten
zitten.
Het nummer wordt nu onder doodelijke stilte

afgewerkt en als het uit is, zien de jongens Paul
zitten, met betraande oogen.
„Ben je ontroerd?” vraagt Piet.
„Neen, van die kneep,” hapert Paul.
„Gemeen van je,” zegt Piet tegen Ambro. „Als

we straks buiten komen zal ik je afknokken.”
„Ik wist niet, dat ie zoo hard aankwam,” zegt

Ambro berouwvol en reikt Paul een halve Kwatta toe.
Paul, altijd vergevensgezind, neemt het geschenk dankbaar aan en lacht door z’n tranen, die
meer hun oorsprong hadden in de berisping van den directeur in het openbaar, dan om de
kneep zelf.
„Ze zullen toch wel op tijd komen,” zegt Chris bezorgd.
„Wie?” vraagt Ambro.
„De …” fluistert Chris. [136]
„Natuurlijk, ik heb die vent een fooitje gegeven.”
Dan komt het groote moment … Karel’s optreden.

„Daar heb je hem,” zegt Paul zacht, met een stille bewondering in zijn stem en, als gold het
hen zelf, zijn ze nu allen, stil als muisjes.
De jongedame, die Karel begeleiden zal, tikt zacht een a op de piano aan, en Karel stemt nog
even zijn viool, die door de temperatuursverandering alweer ontstemd was.
Dan speelt ze de eerste maten en valt Karel mooi op

tijd en met krachtigen streek in.
„Hij lapt ’t ’m!” fluistert Ambro.
„Ik vind ’t prachtig,” zegt Chris.
„Ssst!” zegt Piet, die over de balustrade hangt, om

toch geen nootje te verliezen van het ten gehoore
gebrachte.
Het eerste deel is ten einde en alvorens het tweede

te beginnen, heeft Karel al een flink applaus te
pakken. Dat geeft hem moed en met nog meer durf
begint hij aan het tweede deel. Dit, en het laatste,
loopen dan ook best van stapel en het publiek is
klaarblijkelijk zeer ingenomen met de vorderingen
van het jeugdig violistje. [137]
Boven van de gaanderij weerklinkt zoo’n salvo van

toejuichingen, met uitroepen als „leve Karel”, dat
ditmaal het publiek niet vertoornd, maar lachend
naar boven kijkt.
Temidden van dit tumult verschijnt eensklaps de

zaal-chef op het podium, die het meiske, dat Karel
begeleidde, een mooien bouquet aanbiedt.
Het meisje is geheel verlegen door deze bloemenhulde en neemt den bouquet aan, als ware
het een natte parapluie.
Dan verlaat het tweetal, onder hernieuwde toejuichingen het podium.
Ze nemen hun plaatsen op de daarvoor gereserveerde eerste rijen weer in.
Het meisje wordt direct door de andere meisjes-leerlingen bestormd met de vraag van wie ze
die bloemen wel heeft. ’t Is immers een gebeurtenis dat iemand op een uitvoering van de
muziekschool bloemen krijgt.
„Toe Dien, zeg dan eens, van wie heb je ze,” zegt haar buurvrouw.
„Gut kind, ik weet ’t niet, ik ben zelf zoo verbaasd.”

„Daar hangt toch het kaartje!”
„Dat had ik niet eens gezien.”
Dit heele tooneeltje wordt van boven, door de bende, met speuroogen gevolgd. En al hooren
ze niets van het gesprek daar beneden, de drukke gebaren zeggen hun genoeg.
Intusschen heeft Dina met bevende vingers het kaartje uit de enveloppe gehaald, en tot groote
[138]hilariteit van de anderen leest ze de in sierlijke letters geschreven naam …
Karel Boekers
en in kleine letters staat er onder:
„Uit dank voor uw heerlijk spel.”
Dien kijkt eenigszins teleurgesteld, ze had de hulde hooger-op gezocht. Even had ze … aan
Frits gedacht … die al een lange broek draagt … en die den laatsten tijd opvallend veel haar
huis passeert.
Haar buurvrouw, die haar ontstemming opmerkt zegt:
„Vin-je ’t niet eenig van dat joggie?”
„Wat verbeeldt ie zich wel, die aap!”
„Hè Dien, wat onaardig,” zegt valsch-verontwaardigd buurvrouwtje, die diep in haar hartje een
gevoel van innig leedvermaak verbergt, voor Dien’s teleurstelling.
Dien, die haar doorziet, neemt zichzelf voor, te doen, alsof ze zeer blij is met de bloemen-
hulde en zegt liefjes:
„Ik moet hem toch eens even toeknikken.”
Ze draait zich om en knikt allervriendelijkst naar Karel, terwijl ze de bloemen in de hoogte

houdt en er eenige keeren haar neusje in laat te gast gaan.
Karel, die niets van die manoeuvre begrijpt, lacht verlegen terug en geeft door een
handbeweging te kennen hoe mooi hij de bloemen vindt.
Boven, op de gaanderij, duiken vijf jongenskoppen [139]weg, krimpen de roovers in mekaar van
ingehouden lach.
„Hij is alweer reusachtig,” grinnikt Ambro. „Zag je wel, Karel snapt er niets van.”
„Straks gaat ze hem bedanken, en dan is ie heelemaal fijn.”
„Laten we nou koest zijn, want ’t begint weer,” zegt Piet waarschuwend.
Ze hooren nu dit laatste nummer voor de pauze rustig aan.
„Hè, ik ben blij dat het pauze is,” zegt Puckie. „Ik zit toch liever in het circus. ’t Is eigenlijk
allemaal één pot nat zoo’n uitvoering.”
„Nou opletten, wat er verder gebeurt,” zegt Ambro, die geen oog afliet van Dina en Karel.
Laatstgenoemde is van zijn plaats gegaan en bij zijn familie gaan zitten. Juist is ie bezig aan
een glas limonade als plotseling Dina voor hem staat, hem hartelijk bij de hand pakt en deze
zóó krachtig schudt, dat de limonade naar alle kanten vliegt.
„Wat aardig van je,” zegt ze, hem liefelijk toelachend.
„Hè,… wat bedoel je …,” zegt Karel bedremmeld.
Mijnheer en mevrouw Boekers buigen zich vol aandacht naar het tweetal over.
„Ja, hou je nu maar niet van den domme,” lacht ze schalks. „Ze zijn prachtig, hoor! Mijnheer
en mevrouw, u wordt ook vriendelijk bedankt.”
„Ik begrijp je niet, ik weet nergens van,” zegt Karel. „Je bedoelt toch niet de bloemen? die zijn
heusch niet van mij.” [140]
„En je kaartje dan,” zegt Dina ongeloovig.
„Wat is dat allemaal,” zegt mijnheer.
Nu mengt mevrouw zich in het gesprek.
„O, dacht je dat de bloemen van Karel waren? heusch niet, hoor Dien.”
„Och mevrouw, en zijn kaartje hangt er aan!”
Dan gaat Karel plotseling een licht op en als hij naar boven kijkt, pal in de glundere tronie’s
van de bende—weet hij genoeg.
„Nu begrijp ik ’t,” zegt hij lachend. „Dat hebben de jongens me geleverd.”
En als mijnheer en mevrouw Boekers met Dina eveneens naar boven kijken, is er geen roover
meer te zien.
„Da’s kras,” giert Karel. „Net zitten ze er alle vijf en nu zit er geen een!”
„Of hun geweten ook kriebelt,” lacht mijnheer.
„Wat een deugnieten,” zegt mevrouw. „Dat heeft bepaald Ambro weer op touw gezet.”
Met een blik op het half verlegen gelaat van zijn zoontje, zegt mijnheer: „Nou, van die grap
heb jij geen nadeel en Dien alleen maar voordeel gehad.”
„Ik moet ze toch even zien te vinden,” zegt Karel. „Mag ik bij ze boven zitten?”
En als zijn vader hierin toestemt, gaat hij vlug op zoek naar zijn kornuiten, blij, eindelijk verlost
te zijn uit zijn benarde positie. [141]

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PJ Harvey and Music Video

Performance 1st Edition Abigail

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Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Abigail Gardner 2015

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

ISBN: 9781472424181 (hbk)

List of Figures  vii

Introduction: Why PJ Harvey? Why Music Video? Why Now?  1

1 The Trouble with Polly  15

2 Harvey and Music Video in a Digital Age  47

4 Harvey’s Serious Camp  95

5 Harvey as Deathly Diva  115

6 Harvey, Place and Englishness  139

3.1 C’MON BILLY, official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?

6.2 THE LAST LIVING ROSE at http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Stan Hawkins, Professor of Popular Musicology, University of Oslo and

… associated with certain local or translocal ‘scenes’ or cultures, with

Why music video?

it need curating (Gehl, 2009)? It has been emblematic of a commercially driven

audience is encouraged to view repeatedly, to try to ‘work it out’. The ambiguity

Parameters of the book

In accounts of Harvey and many other female musicians, there is an emphasis

memories of archetypes of femininity – opens up a more flexible approach that is

„Hoe wil je dat dan aanleggen?” vraagt Piet. [121]

„Wel, door hem op te zoeken en hem voor de keuze te stellen.”

„Best,” zegt Chris. „Dan zal ik zeggen waar hij is.”

„Nou, waar dan; zeg op!”

„Vooruit jongens, we gaan er heen,” roept Puckie.

„Wie zie je staan?” vraagt Paul.

Ambro, in z’n blauwe trui, Margootje, in haar matrozenjurk. Haar

Zoo gezegd, zoo gedaan.

„Vin-jij ’t hier leuk?” vraagt hij.

„Och, jawel,” zegt zij.

„Maar we moeten nu eens ergens anders heen. Altijd op dat weiland

„Mij ook goed,” zegt Margootje, tamelijk onverschillig.

„Vragen je vriendinnen nooit waar je uithangt?”

„O, die weten ’t wel. Ze hebben me genoeg uitgelachen.”

„Wel zeker! dat doen wij nooit.” [123]

„Lam genoeg van jullie!”

„Vragen de jongens dan nooit waar jij bent?”

„Vin-jij ’t leuk zoo met z’n tweeën,” vraagt ditmaal Margootje.

„Jakkes! wat ben jij een hark van ’n jongen.”

„’n Hark! Als je een knul was, kreeg je een opstopper.”

„Zeg es, je bent niet onder je vriendjes.”

„Nee, jammer genoeg,” zegt Ambro nu heel nijdig.

„Jij bent altijd zoo kattig,” zegt Ambro.

„Da’ ben je zelf,” vinnigt Margootje.

„Een jongen doet nooit kattig.”

„Dan ben jij een meisje.”

„Och, loop rond, saai schaap!”

„Maar me chocolaadjes die lustte je wel.”

„Nou, ik gaf je toch appels.”

„Poeh! drie rotte waren er bij.”

List of Figures vii

Introduction: Why PJ Harvey? Why Music Video? Why Now? 1

1 The Trouble with Polly 15

2 Harvey and Music Video in a Digital Age 47

4 Harvey’s Serious Camp 95

5 Harvey as Deathly Diva 115

6 Harvey, Place and Englishness 139