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Shocking Blue

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 27, 2000)
• Original Release Date: 1969
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Repertoire
• ASIN: B0000073S5
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #193,927 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Track Listings

1. Boll Weevil

2. I'll Write Your Name Through the Fire

3. Acka Raga

4. Love Machine

5. I'm a Woman

6. Venus

7. California Here I Come

8. Poor Boy

9. Long and Lonesome Road

10. Love Buzz

11. Butterfly and I

12. Harley Davidson [CD Track][*]

13. Fireball of Love [CD Track][*]

14. Hot Sand [CD Track][*]

15. Wild Wind [CD Track][*]

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

2002 reissue of the Dutch rock act's 1969 album includes four bonus tracks, 'Harley Davidson', 'Fireball Of Love', 'Hot Sand' & 'Wild Wind'. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 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

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars only half of 'poor boy', April 23, 2000

By	Peter Stanesby (England) - See all my reviews

The long version of 'poor boy' is on the '3rd album' according to Milestone Mailorder based in Hamburg. They made a mistake during the mastering process of 'at home' (you can hear their hasty fade-out!).

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shocking Me, December 12, 1999

By	Gary Ostreicher (Phoenix, az United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Their best album was the one that had Venus and all the good tunes you'll find on this CD. The version of Poor Boy really has me mad...it is the first half of the song. This is their best tune and it was stripped of it's wonderful ending (about 2 mins of a twisting end that really socks home their range). This is good in what it has from that album and it's a shame the album as a whole is not released.