Thursday, November 29, 2012

Your Thursday Moment of Shocking Blue

Woke up this morning and for some reason my first thought was -- hey, you haven't posted anything about Shocking Blue in years.

So -- from 1970, please enjoy my bizarre obsession/greatest Dutch rock band of all time (yeah, yeah, I know about The Outsiders) the aforementioned Shocking Blue and their utterly magnificent "Never Marry a Railroad Man."

Featuring haunting vocals by the unfortunately late Mariska Veres and the song's composer Robbie Van Leeuwen doing a pretty funny impression of a guy playing an acoustic guitar on a Telecaster.



This is their best song, in my book, and they had a lot of hot ones, not just the ubiquitous "Venus." Of course, "Venus," which has been running continually as the soundtrack to some TV commercial somewhere since, oh, the late 80s, has ensured that the aforementioned Robbie Van Leeuwen never had to work a day in his life since then, so I won't dispute you if you prefer it. I should also mention that the equally late Kurt Cobain probably favored" Love Buzz," if Nirvana's cover of same is any indication.

In any event, there are quite a lot of Shocking Blue best-of CDs out there, and if you don't own one your life is the poorer for it, trust me.

8 comments:

FD13NYC said...

Shocking Blue were a cool band. I have a good best-of somewhere in the collection. Venus of course being timeless. One of my faves is Inkpot, an interesting song. Railroad Man is also intriguing.

JZ said...

A criminally forgotten, band, Shocking Blue did way more than "Venus". There is some nice history available here;

http://www.geocities.com/ofmang/greg/shockblu.html

I still adore both their first album and one of the later ones, "Dream On Dreamer" which I think is their best; "Devil's Suite" is a killer track.

MJConroy said...

They were good. But I'm obsessed with another Dutch band - Golden Earring. They've done a lot more than Radar Love and Twilight Zone. As a live band, they are hard to beat.

JMGray said...

Thanks for the reminder. My personal favorite was "Oh Lord".

Anonymous said...

My favorite: Hot Sands

ROTP(lumber)

GLLinMO said...

Dutch bands may be a great secret in this country. Currently like Vol Beat (not a Power Pop type) and also Diesel and Kayak

Anonymous said...


My fave - "Send Me A Postcard"

Here's the singer shortly before she passed away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTb1LYaFV8I

Anonymous said...

ever heard the origin of "Venus," the "Banjo Song" by the Big Three?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOVv43DJdrQ

and yes "Hot Sand" is awesome.