4US

At the height of Doe Maar's success, their fifth studio album 4US, or Virus as written on the labels, was released in the 2nd half of March 1983 on LP/MC and shortly after on CD. It is an album on which heavy subjects predominate. Attacked by a large group of young fans, they clearly tried to target a different market with this album. In contrary, the existing very young fans, especially young girls, started singing along loudly at concerts with topics such as sex and drugs. Less than a year later, Doe Maar decided to stop, mostly because of this.

Doe Maar was praised to be the first Dutch band with this CD release in stores in the Netherlands. However it was actually the Dutch band BZN with CD [r=8258196] who presented the compact disc phenomenon for the first time to the Dutch people at the Firato '82 Fair in Amsterdam from 25-08-1982 until 05-09-1982. Because it only involved a promotional CD, which could be pre-ordered at the fair, BZN is never praised for this fact, but actually they did receive an award for this, although not in stores at that time.

After the recording of the album 4US was completed, it was necessary to remix the album for CD. Normally the band worked several days on their final mixes, now they had only 1 day. Bandmembers Ernst, Henny and Jan Hendriks remixed the record with technician Erwin Musper. This mix was sent to West Germany by record company Telstar for pressing on CD. This caused major differences between the pressings on CD and on vinyl/tape. For example, the intro to ‘Doe maar net alsof’, which opens the album, is longer on the LP version and features extra guitars and the song ‘Nachtzuster’, which according to Vrienten was too slow, has been sped up on the LP version, making it a different key. Strangely enough not only the approved but also the discarded CD-mix ended up on some of the LP pressings.

There are variants for the original 1983 LP, with differences in back sleeve, inner sleeve and mixes/cuts.

To make it even more complex, some versions may also appear with a different pressing ring configuration.

[b]There are two different back sleeve variants:[/b]

1. No shadow behind the girl.

2. With shadow behind the girl.

[b]There are three different inner sleeve variants:[/b]

1. Design company as ‘Blue Studios’ logo, inner sleeve doesn’t mention bandmembers.

2. Design company as ‘Blauw Studios’ text & also a crossed out ‘Blue Studios’ logo.

3. Design company as ‘Blauw Studios’ text only.

[b]There are two different vinyl mixes/cuts:[/b]

1. Lacquer cut at ‘FOON’, runouts are etched, containing the 'approved mix'.

2. Lacquer cut at ‘TTC’, runouts are stamped, containing the 'discarded mix'.

[b]The following combinations of these 3 differences are known to exist:[/b]

[r=3597672]: no shadow, Blue Studios logo, FOON cut, approved mix.

[r=401816]: no shadow, Blauw Studios & crossed Blue Studios logo, FOON cut, approved mix.

[r=3602916]: no shadow, Blauw Studios, FOON cut, approved mix.

[r=3605123]: with shadow, Blue Studios logo, FOON cut, approved mix.

[r=3627013] and [r=34792217]: with shadow, Blauw Studios & crossed Blue Studios logo, FOON cut, approved mix.

[r=3348003]: with shadow, Blauw Studios & crossed Blue Studios logo, TTC cut, discarded mix.

[r=3627018]: with shadow, Blauw Studios, TTC cut, discarded mix.