Dec 14

Shocking Blue

SHOCKING BLUE
 
 
Shocking Blue  was a Dutch rock band from The Hague, the Netherlands, formed in 1967. Their biggest hit, “Venus”, went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970, and the band had sold 13.5 million discs by 1973, but the group disbanded in 1974 because Mariska Veres looked to start a solo career.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
To begin with, there are other songs in the “Stars on 45 Medley” besides those by the Beatles.  I brought it up in the first place because the opening chords of the Shocking Blue hit “Venus” are given at or near the beginning of the song. 
 
(September 2012)
 
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I spent a good part of last month’s post extolling Shocking Blue and managed to do so without ever mentioning Mariska Veres, the lead singer on “Venus” and nearly all of their songs.  Few rock bands had female lead singers in those days, though there were a few, notably Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane.  Another Dutch band of the same time period, Earth and Fire also had a fine female lead singer, Jerney Kaagman. 
 
Like the rest of the band, Mariska Veres was born in the Netherlands, though her father was a Hungarian Romani (gypsy) violinist.  Their debut album, Beat with Us (also named Shocking Blue in some countries) was released in 1968 before Mariska Veres joined the group.  Not surprisingly, it is their rarest album; I have only ever heard the two tracks from their first single, “Love Is in the Air” b/w “What You Gonna Do”, but they are great songs. 
  
(September 2012)
 
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I was first introduced to the raw 1960’s sounds of Dutch rock when I was fortunate enough to find a copy of a compilation album called Searching in the Wilderness in about 1987 in a fondly remembered basement-level New York record store called Underground Records in the Village.  (There was at least one and maybe two other record stores in that same space over the years).  Though much of the early output from Dutch bands was heavily influenced by Merseybeat sounds almost to the point of aping them, that was most definitely not true of two of the tracks on that album:  “Chunk of Steel”, an early single by Golden Earring; and “For Another Man” by the Motions, which included the future bandleader of Shocking Blue, Robbie van Leeuwen.  Wilderness was also my first introduction to other excellent Dutch bands, like the Outsiders (not the American band called the Outsiders that is best known for “Time Won’t Let Me”) and Cuby & the Blizzards. 
 
The three Dutch albums in The Continent Lashes Back sub-series within the Pebbles albums put me onto several more, and I found some other real rarities via the Bomp! mailorder store.  I just cleaned up a second 10-inch album among several that I mail-ordered years ago out of an extended series, Beat Express Series.  I even picked up some “Nederpop” records on my trip to Europe (and not just in Amsterdam), including several by Shocking Blue of “Venus” fame, and a band that I have written about several times previously. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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As I have mentioned many times before, I am a major fan of Dutch rock music from both the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Some of the bands have non-English names, like Ekseption (which is not the Dutch word for “exception” as I had always assumed), Groep 1850 (also known as Group 1850) and Bintangs (which means “stars” in Arabic, I’m told) – the latter band being a future UARB (as it turns out, I waited too long; Bintangs have a nice Wikipedia article now) – but most have English names (or just initials) and perform in English also, with some of the biggest being Golden Earring, Shocking Blue, Focus, Q65, and the Outsiders. 

 

Shocking Blue frontman Robbie van Leeuwen has been quoted as saying that he doesn’t know how to write songs in the Dutch language.  Originally, vocalist Mariska Veres could not speak English and was singing phonetically; this was the reason for her occasional stumble over the lyrics, such as the opening line of their 1970 hit song “Venus”:  “God-ness on a mountaintop . . .”. 

 

Also, while bandleader Kurt Cobain wrote most of their music, the first single by grunge pioneers Nirvana was a fairly obscure Shocking Blue song called “Love Buzz”.  Their version of this Robbie van Leeuwen song (Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” only used the first verse and chorus) is included on the band’s little-known 1989 debut album, Bleach. 

 

(April 2013)

 

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Unbeknownst to most of us, some bands stayed together for decades:  Status Quo is known in America only for their 1967 psychedelic hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men”; but over the course of their career, they have released 60 songs that charted in the U.K. (the most recent in 2010) – more than any other rock group – and 23 of these were Top 10 hits.  One of my long-time favorites, the Dutch band Shocking Blue released a huge hit in 1970, “Venus”.  Featuring striking lead singer Mariska Veres (though she was not an original member), the band released 25 singles and 11 albums, though I had to go to Europe to find their albums. 

 

(April 2014)

 

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After being dropped by Capitol Records, Crystal Mansion finally added a bass guitarist, Billy Crawford and released a single in 1970 for Colossus Records, the same label that released records in America by the Dutch band Shocking Blue, including their mega-hit “Venus”, also in 1970. The 45 was released under the name Crystal Mansion Featuring Johnny Caswell, with the “A” side being the James Taylor song “Carolina in My Mind” and an original song (by Johnny Caswell and Sal Rota) called “If I Live” on the flip. When Collectables Records reissued the 1971 album The Crystal Mansion on CD in 1994, “Carolina in My Mind” was included as a bonus track.
 
(August 2015)
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I have previously posted the opening track on the Thomas Anderson album Blues for the Flying Dutchman, “Bill Haley in Mexico”, which I just have to hear again (sorry, Phil Gammage!). As almost everyone knows, Bill Haley and His Comets had the first big rock and roll hit with “Rock Around the Clock” (1954, though it did not become a hit until 1955). I am not sure what the chorus is talking about when it goes: “I wanted to know / I wanted to know / What happened to Bill Haley down in Mexico”. But I cannot recall a more insistent chorus with a better instrumental follow-up than this one. I am reminded of the first time that I played the American album by the Dutch band Shocking Blue, The Shocking Blue, which naturally includes their big hit “Venus”. I simply could not believe how good the opening song, “Long and Lonesome Road” was, and I actually got up from my chair and restarted the album.
 
(Year 10 Review)
Last edited: March 22, 2021