Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Song of the Day # 541 Shocking Blue


What makes this so great?  It sounds like the band have heard the Velvet's Waiting for the Man, stripped it down and reassembled it for the pop charts. The sixties almost become the seventies during the course of its three minutes and seven seconds. Dutch group Shocking Blue has a lead singer who does what Grace Slick should have done. Made the most of her imperious looks and voice, kept it simple and carried on turning out great songs rather than losing the plot after White Rabbit and Somebody To Love and wandering into pretension. 


The video has the band wandering round a zoo behind the ostrich pen.The looks on their faces give you the sense that they're singing about something adult and dangerous but at the same time it's packaged for the mainstream and utterly disposable. Sometimes the best songs in the charts stall 
at # 45, in the UK (# 43 in the States), like one did. As the follow up to Venus, which had topped both charts perhaps that classifies it as a flop. I think it's superior in every possible respect to that song.

Oh and it's another one of Morrissey's favourites. He knows what it takes. A good title. A clean and simple riff. A whiff of bruised romance. The sense that of course this is really just all about sex. Oh and a promo video with a band hanging round the ostrich pen at the zoo while its snowing. Looking like they're having a great time. 

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