EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT ROBERT-JAN RIETVELD
BERTUS AKA THE BLOODY BUTCHER WITH REX.A.C.SILVER
This is the last of 4 instalments with Bertus the Bloody Butcher of Rotterdam as our European correspondent, it’s been an honour to have him with us this year. We’ve managed to cover many aspects of what this very busy Barber does throughout his work year and what a whirlwind it’s been. Music has always been a huge driving force for Robert when it comes to finding, and being a source of inspiration for his creativity, he touches on this in detail in this piece. Each year Schorem produce a rock show for their customers friends and fans. Last year with all the lockdowns they had to do a live streaming event but this coming February it’s back on, I’m talking about Scumbash 2022, Let’s check that out before we get to hair. On Music… Music has always been there. The backbone of the thing that we do you know, because most of our haircuts are subcultural. So next to being classic, there’s a lot of rock and roll influences, you know, I love writing about it too. You know because it’s about tribes’ man, it’s about street tribes, urban tribes. Back in the day a haircut would really show from a distance, what tribe you were, especially in rock and roll. That was very important you know, it’s not just the leather jacket, it’s the haircut that goes with it. So, when we started, most of our clients actually played in bands and stuff. It was all small (the scene) so when Schorem Became a little bit more successful and with people knowing us, like your everyday Joe, they saw the haircuts that we were doing and they were like, oh my God, these are excellent. So that’s pretty much how we lost a lot of our original clients from all the bands… because of the waiting times, the barbershop became so busy we just lost those guys. So, we were like what can we do to give something back to the subculture, the subculture we love and believe so strongly that really helped us become who we were, so then we organised the first Scumbash. This will be a 6th one, even with the lockdowns last year we went ahead with an online event because we really wanted to celebrate our 10th anniversary of Schorem. It wasn’t the real thing, but we did it and we all know there’s nothing better than a live event. Live music and the band saying we were into is what really binds Leon and myself, it was always about going to gigs, that was our whole life since we were 14. It was all about the gigs. We used to go to gigs all over, we were a little crazy back then ,actually we were really crazy! We would drive for 12 hours to go to a festival, and it just wasn’t about the gigs and the festival, it was the whole experience. The road trip… getting buzzed about what we’re about to do, what we’re about to see and what we’re about to hear…We would make these playlists you know, of the bands that we were going to see 22 Barber Shop Year 10 Issue 3
