At Home [Extra tracks, Import]

Shocking Blue | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 25, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks, Import
• Label: Red Bullet
• ASIN: B00005YVYF
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #522,893 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Reissue of the Dutch rock quartet's 1969 album for the PinkElephant label with four bonus tracks added, 'HarleyDavidson', 'Fireball Of Love', 'Hot Sand' & 'Wild Wind'. 15tracks total, also including their smash hit 'Venus'. Alsocontains the original cover art. 1989 Repertoire Recordsrelease. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars it was there before all times, December 5, 1999

By 

Herbert van Lynden (Prague, Czech Republic) - See all my reviews

This review is from: At Home (Audio CD)

It is certainly not an intellectual experience to listen to this terrific album of Shocking Blue, but these are songs from all times: when you hear it you know somehow that this music has always been around and it needed to be brought into this world by Robbie van Leeuwen and his excellent fellow artists. It are certainly not the words. If I rememember well, Robbie van Leeuwen once, a long time ago, probably in 1969, said in an interview that he didn't pay attention to the texts (he also told in that interview that he once had tried to write a 'serious' pop song, called 'Wasted Words' commenting on Martin Luther King's struggle for equal rights for the blacks in the USA, but that he would never try to be 'political' again and that he did not consider it to be important for a pop musician to comment on what was going on in politics, a very out of place remark in 'progressive' and leftist Netherlands of that time!), he just took a pair of scissors and a pot of glue and 'assembled' the song texts from top hits published in teenager magazines. But exactly this lack of originality of the words make these songs so timeless! The songs are all about longing for love, being lonely and blue, memories of a lost love, longing for paradise (California!) and they seem to be laments deriving from a not so happy, maybe even tormented, existence. What makes them so strong is the underlying passion, the longing for a, as it appears, very likely unattainable paradise (lover, shelter from loneliness, finding of a happier life); the songs seem to express a certain hopelessness with regard to the chance that a lasting redemption of longings will be possible in this world. We in all our strivings are submitted to Destiny. It is of course the voice of Mariska Veres which give these songs their meaning, her oriental, deep and Gypsy melodic style of singing fits wonderfully well in the simple rock melodies. Another very important aspect of these songs is the aspect of repetition: this is inherent to 'rock music' and also adopted by composers of so called minimal music: a single pattern is repeated, maybe with some slight alterations, from the beginning till the end of the song. 'California, here I come' (as also the world hit 'Venus')is thus the ultimate example of rock music and every time when I listen to it I feel like endlessly riding a camel in a desert of sand dunes, following the curves of a sinus line. Exactly: I get into a trance, a feeling older than the world, a knowing that everything always and everywhere is kept in a cycle.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, oh yes!!!, March 25, 2004

By 

Sharon Anne (Phoenix / Tucson, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: At Home (Audio CD)

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I initially only knew 'Venus' in the 1960s.

I was travelling to Greece via Italy in 1971. By the time my plane landed, I quickly heard what I was missing. I lived in Greece during the early 1970s; their rock stations played Shocking Blue songs in heavy rotation. Likewise, music programming from BBC World Service and throughout Europe included their grand discography with steady airplay. I was satisfyingly thrilled with their styles.

I picked up a few records when I travelled to the Nederlands where they were absolutely - obviously - top-of-the-charts.

I returned 'home' saddened. How disappointing travelling cross-country during these years that U.S.A. markets still limit themselves to 'Venus'! Nothing changed during my absence - and since then. How disheartening hearing deejays and so-called musicologist experts deride them as a 'one hit wonder'. I knew better. I carried a secret that everyone is eventually learning on their own.

It is a pleasant sense of satisfaction whenever I hear their music from my collection - as well as hear their music covered by other artists or used in movies and television.

The Beatles are my number one band. Shocking Blue and Focus are two outstanding Dutch bands which clearly rival the Beatles for uniqueness, variety, and ingenuity. American radio stations neglected their audiences - they denied you the treat of both of them during their prime.

Deny yourself no longer. You will be pleased with any Shocking Blue music.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A COMPLETE ORIGINAL ALBUM PLUS!, June 19, 1999

By 

F. Barton "Forrest W. Barton" (Newport, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At Home (Audio CD)

This Dutch group is probably one of the most overlooked of all time, with the exception of VENUS, which burst to Number One, then America never heard from them again. Their style and vocals are amazing, even Nirvana covered one of their songs, "Love Buzz", so if you are counting them off before you start, DON'T. YOU will be the one that's missing out. This incredible album comes with four bonus tracks, including one I've been looking for, the flip side of Venus, "Hot Sand".