Moontan

Golden Earring | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Mca
• ASIN: B000002PAU
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,535 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Radar Love

2. Candy's Going Bad

3. Vanilla Queen

4. Big Tree, Blue Sea

5. Are You Receiving Me

Editorial Reviews

Import remastered reissue of the long running Dutch rock act's 1973 album. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the finest gems of the 1970's, April 26, 2002

By 

Worgelm "The Grumpy" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moontan (Audio CD)

Purchasing an import copy of _Contraband_/_Golden Earring_ the other day, the clerk at the counter closely inspected the song lists. "Wow, no Radar Love." Too bad the Earring had the misfortune to actually pack an entire album's worth of fantastic music onto _Moontan_, because the bulk of the population never got past track one. (Okay, you can hear _Vanilla Queen_ from time to time on classic rock radio - but only during the enlightened hours of the evening.) This is the American pressing of this album, which contains "Big Tree, Blue Sea" whose original version is on _Golden Earring_, and leaves out "Suzy Lunacy" and "Just Like Vince Taylor" along with the racier cover art on the European pressing. "Blue Sea" is a fantastic, musically adventerous track by itself, almost exactly anticipating _Heavy Horses_ era-Tull by a full five years! Having indulged themselves and surprised the listener with the extremes of their artier tendencies, there are blasts of dense hard rock ("Candy's Gone Bad"), complex riffing and generous quantities of strings and well-used horns ("Vanilla Queen"). And then there's the single; its much easier to digest after all these times in the context of the rest of the album. Im constantly surprised how much this band's best output has been ignored by reviewers when considering great music in this decade; you could fit it into prog-rock or hard rock categories in equal parts. Or as another reviewer put it, the ultimate driving album. THE album to own by this band.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent representation of rock in 1973, May 3, 2006

By 

Lee J. Davito - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moontan (Audio CD)

This is a fantastic album....not just the fact it contains the bands biggest hit "Radar Love"....but also because it contains "Big Tree, Blue Sea" an extremely rare version that only exists on this MOONTAN album...and it should be noted that it is very different from the version on an earlier Dutch album. This version is a major improvement over the other.

I have been a longtime fan and have every cd they ever made...altho I consider this an excellent album....I wouldn't sell their other cd's short....Check them out while they're still available. Some I recommend are:
Live 1977...Grab it for a second...Prisoner of the night...No promises no debts...Cut...These represent GE during the 1976-82 period.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate driving album, August 15, 2000

By 

Gavin Wilson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moontan (Audio CD)

The only shame about this CD is that it doesn't come with the packaging of the original European LP. (This had a very attractive woman on front and back, together with some excellent concert photos inside.)

This is just a fantastic rock album. Hardly a moment of it is sub-par. It has no pretensions to be anything other than a thumping good listen, although that is not to say that it is all guitar riffs. Both tracks 2 and 3 feature some good synth arrangements from bassist Rinus Gerritsen (apologies if I have misspelt the name, which is missing from my CD). The drumming of Cesar Zjuiderwick (apols again for the spelling) is excellently recorded.

When this first came out, the British pop papers wrote of a Dutch invasion. Focus had just released the currently deleted Focus III, and Hocus Pocus was doing well as a single. In terms of musicianship, Focus were probably the stronger, but Earring completely outrocked them.

Twenty-seven years on, I personally don't feel this album has dated. Radar Love will always be a classic. But as a driving song, it is actually bettered by the last track, Are You Receiving Me.

The follow-up album, Switch, was a bitter disappointment. Indeed I have never found an Earring album that comes close to this one, which remains in my all-time top ten.