THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,214) Shocking Blue — “Long and Lonesome Road”
This Dutch treat is “just as catchy, just as cool, just as memorable as ‘Venus[]’” (Brian Green, https://www.scrammagazine.com/shockingblue/) — the ‘69/‘70 hard psych A-side reached #75 in the U.S. Rob Horning tells us that “[Robbie] Van Leeuwen has a uncanny knack for concise fills and quirky musical phrases that stick with you like a jingle, most noticeably in . . . ‘Long and Lonesome Road’, which elegantly pieces together its seemingly incongruous parts in a beautiful Chinese box of a song, which keeps opening itself up to new surprises.” (https://www.popmatters.com/shockingblue-athome-2496060322.html)
As to SB, Horning explains:
The Shocking Blue achieved a blip of international fame with their single “Venus”, an irresistible and nonsensical confection that stuck them with the one-hit wonder label in America, where none of the band’ s subsequent singles caught on. . . . Formed by guitarist/songwriter Robbie Van Leeuwen after quitting the Motions . . . the Shocking Blue seem like they set out to be the Dutch Jefferson Airplane, with acid-rock guitar, a full-throated Grace Slick wannabe in Veres, eclectic instrumentation, and semi-hallucinatory lyrics about free love, voodoo, California, and the like. But unlike the Airplane, the Shocking Blue never succumb to pretentiousness through either diffuse experimentation or ponderous songwriting. Instead the band churns out pseudo-psychedelic bubblegum . . . all [with] precision and eagerness to please . . . . On At Home [their first album, which includes today’s song], the hooks are copious and clean, fashioned out everything from sinewy sitar licks to vibratoless moaning to recontextualized rockabilly riffs to well deployed silence. . . . But as crisp and addictive as the music is, Mariska [Veres] is the real attraction. Not only does she have a superlative shiver-inducing banshee wail, but she seems altogether unencumbered with a knowledge of the language she’s singing in, and when you combine that with Van Leeuwen’s own uneasy grasp of English, you have a recipe for utterly inimitable genius. Mariska delivers her lines full throttle without any regard for the words she’s saying . . . . The lack of any attempt to nuance her delivery creates some fascinating cognitive dissonance between the words and how they’re expressed, and this itself becomes a new kind of nuance to pay attention to as you listen.
https://www.popmatters.com/shockingblue-athome-2496060322.html
Brian Green dumps on Jefferson Airplane:
Jefferson Airplane is be the band that Shocking Blue mostly invites comparisons to, and it was the Airplane that veteran Dutch rocker Robbie van Leeuwen had in mind when he decided he wanted a female vocalist for his group. But while van Leeuwen may have started out emulating the Jefferson Airplane, his band quickly and permanently outclassed their predecessors. Where the Airplane’s lyrics were usually cliché-addled and verging on ridiculous, van Leeuwen offered fresh and innocent boy/girl tales and existential laments; while JA’s music often had that messy, jazzy, “let me do a solo” element weighing it down, Shocking Blue stuck to stripped-down, energy-packed Beat Club grooves; and Mariska Veres was simply a better singer than Grace Slick, more genuinely soulful, more naturally melodious. Veres was actually not Shocking Blue’s original singer. When guitarist van Leeuwen dropped out of local hitmakers the Motions to form his own band in ‘67, he did so with another Dutch scenester, Fred de Wilde, at the mic. The all-boy Blue recorded one album and some singles (a few of these minor hits in Holland . . . ) But . . . just when van Leeuwen was thinking that he wanted a chick to sing his songs, de Wilde was called off to do military service. Robbie wasted no time in finding Veres, who looked like a model and sang like a soul sister.
Steve Leggett adds:
Although Shocking Blue’s albums . . . featured progressive rock elements and inventive arrangements thanks to Van Leeuwen’s writing and production skills, the band was essentially marketed as a pop singles unit, and while they scored several subsequent hits in their homeland, none of the group’s releases approached the massive saturation success of “Venus.” Veres left Shocking Blue in 1974 to pursue a solo career . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/shocking-blue-mn0000029604#biography
Nice video:
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One of the most underrated, overlooked one-hit wonders. They have a bunch of great songs.
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Yes! Sort of like the Strawberry Alarm Clock. They both had a #1 hit in the U.S. and a lot of other great songs that no one knows about!
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