Arthur Lee’s Love was one of finest bands of the sixties, but for a variety of reasons they’ve been neglected by the oldies/ nostalgia industry. The rock section of your local book emporium holds a half-dozen tomes celebrating the dubious poetics of Jim Morrison, but so far there’s no book on the far-superior Love. That seemed about to change some months back, when news reports began circulating about a young journalist named Kevin Delaney who’d moved to L.A. to track down Love and their associates. I was curious to learn what he’d found, so I wrote to ask for an interview. Kevin replied that he’d be happy to sit down and talk, but that a Love book was no longer in the works. The institutional racism that hobbled Love in their lifetime seems still to be at work: no major publisher is willing to give Kevin an advance to complete his research. Margaret Griffis and I met Kevin for bagels and juice in Hollywood’s Fairfax District one Sunday in April. This is a story of obsession and thirty-year-old mysteries. Free Arthur Lee.

Scram: So, how did you get into Love?
Kevin Delaney: (Opening a folder and showing us a color xerox) I got into it through this illustration, the cover of Forever Changes. I saw it in a book when I was around seventeen, when I was just getting into rock and roll. This was around 1990, so my experience prior to that was the eighties; eighties Top 40 radio. I had no interest in pop music at all! But once I started to find this sort of stuff, it was like a whole new world was opened to me. They had polled a bunch of rock critics on the best albums. There was Sgt. Pepper and Revolver, and even I knew those. And then there was this. I think it was #17.

Scram: A lot of critics pick it.
Kevin Delaney: But I’d never heard of it before. Love. And just to see the logo, it just looked so weird and trippy, and this illustration I just thought was out of this world. It was reproduced real small and black and white, and I wanted to get the record so I could have the illustration. I found it on CD, which I couldn’t believe. It was actually really neat, because they still had the cardboard longboxes at the time, and this image was right on the longbox. It was kind of a bonus that the music was pretty good, too. So I got really interested in this mysterious band that nobody knew about, and yet they put out such great music.

Scram: So after Forever Changes you picked up the other records.
Kevin Delaney: Yeah, I just fell in love with this album, and obviously then I wanted to get the others. I didn’t know that anybody else even knew of this group. It was totally my own little thing. At that time I don’t think many people cared about them. In the years since then there’s been a resurgence of interest, with the box set, and Bryan’s solo CD that came out. So I was just a little fan, basically.
Scram: And at some point you decided you wanted to be more than that, you wanted to document the group.
Kevin Delaney: I said (overly dramatic voice) “I want to be more than a fan! I wanna have a real relationship!” (laughter)

Scram: So what did you do?
Kevin Delaney: I was sitting on my futon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I’m from, and — well, two things really made me wanna do more with the group. I wanted to do something. I’m the kind of person, I’m not content to just observe things, I always wanna be a part of it. That’s gotten me into a lot of trouble, I might add. Actually, it was Bryan’s CD — have you heard If You Believe In?

Scram: Yeah.
Kevin Delaney: That really intrigued me, because again it was this person who I only knew through a few songs on the records, and then to hear all of this other stuff that he had done that had been hidden away for so many years! That really fascinated me. I love that these tapes were found in his mother’s garage. Then what actually started me working on this book project was, Arthur did an album in 1974 called Reel to Real, which is a very funky, kinda soul-influenced record. There were some songs on there that had an amazing bass player. I thought, “Who is this guy? He’s incredible!” I looked at the credits, and the songs that I really liked — he used two different bass players, but the songs I really liked used this guy Robert Rozelle on bass. So I started checking on the internet. I’m a researcher; I love to find obscure things. I’d never heard of this guy before, and as far as I could tell he never played on anything of any real note. It’s not like he went on to something great, or I should say he didn’t go on to be really famous. But lo and behold, I found someone with that name on the internet. I emailed him and asked “Are you the guy who played bass on this album?” And he wrote me back and said “Yeah, that’s me. How’d you find me?!” Because I had found him, I thought I’d like to do something with him, I didn’t know what. Maybe I can write an article and interview him. And he was very agreeable to it. There’s a Love fanzine called The Castle, and I said I’d like to do an interview for it with him. So we did that, and again I was in Pittsburgh at the time. I had no intention of moving out here, but Robert and I had several phone conversations—

Scram: He lives out here?
Kevin Delaney: Yeah. And we were talking about a lot of stuff. He was surprised at how knowledgeable I was about this record. He’d played with Arthur Lee for a long time, but as far as that record was concerned it was just one thing that he did, and he was really surprised that I knew so much about it. Robert really started telling me a lot of stories. There was some amazing stuff — and remember this is all from the seventies, this wasn’t even the sixties!

Scram: I don’t think Arthur ever slowed down, though. The stories go all the way up until he went to jail.
Kevin Delaney: Oh god, the seventies got really crazy! Libel lawsuit material crazy. (laughter)

Scram: But you’re gonna tell us all those stories later, right?
Kevin Delaney: Maybe...

Scram: As long as you say “allegedly,” it’s all right.
Kevin Delaney: Right, “he allegedly—”

Scram: “I’ve heard rumors...”
Kevin Delaney: “Supposedly, I don’t know this is true—” (laughter) Robert knew some people, and he was saying, “You gotta call this woman, because she was a part of the whole thing too, you gotta call this guy, you gotta call Melvin, who played guitar on the album. And so as with a lot of things — and I’ve since learned how to keep this in check — I’ll think “Oh, I wanna do an article for a little fanzine—” and next thing I know I’m working on the screenplay, I’m doin’ the novel—

Scram: You were sucked in! It’s like you opened the tap, with these people who haven’t talked about this in years.
Kevin Delaney: That was what was so exciting about it! So I decided to move to L.A. for a couple different reasons. Some people have made it seem like I only came here to do the book, which was a big part of it, but mostly I just wanted a change. I wanted to get out of Pittsburgh and live somewhere else. I really like L.A. I’d been here before.
Scram: Listening to all that Love couldn’t have hurt. It’s a very seductive image.
Kevin Delaney: Yeah, it was somewhat. So I came out here, and I didn’t know anybody.

Scram: When did you come?
Kevin Delaney: I came in December of ‘97, a few days before Christmas. I mean, I didn’t have any friends here, but I knew Robert. And I just started working like a maniac on finding these people. I guess the big one was Bryan MacLean. I got to know him. I spent a lot of time working on it, and it was really neat, as a fan, to get to know him.

Scram: Were you basically doing this full-time, or were you doing other things?
Kevin Delaney: Well, I was an actor in Pittsburgh, and I worked it out that I did some TV commercials that would be running after I moved, so I had residuals! (laughter) I was like the alcoholic on welfare, with just no responsibilities at all! And the only problem with residuals is that they eventually run out, and then you’re kind of left, like, “Oh my god, what am I gonna do? I have no job, I have nothing!”

Scram: But you have a lot of tapes, of the people you’d talked to, right?
Kevin Delaney: Right, I have a lot of tapes and a whole bunch of friends, but not too much money in the pocket. It was an interesting learning experience. It was one of the most rewarding ways to get yourself totally financially devastated! Some other people blow it all on the lottery, or drinking or drugs — I got to meet all my heroes! That was good enough for me.

Scram: How did you meet Bryan MacLean?
Kevin Delaney: I got in touch with a writer who had interviewed him, Matthew Greenwald, because he was doing what little bit of press Sundazed was arranging for the If You Believe In CD. Matthew gave me Bryan’s phone number. So I called Bryan on the phone. This was not long after I had arrived. I was living in this little dump of an apartment up on Laurel Canyon Blvd. in North Hollywood, and I didn’t even have a sheet on my bed, and I thought “I don’t believe this; I’m talking to Bryan MacLean on the phone!” How much better could my trip to L.A. be? This guy I totally admire and and love and never thought I’d ever be talking with. The thing with all of these people is that they’ve been so out of the spotlight for years, there’s something almost unreal about it, like these are characters from a novel or something. You don’t think these people exist today. And here I was talking to Bryan on the phone, and he was totally, completely against any kind of book!

Scram: Why is that?
Kevin Delaney: Well, I don’t know, really. And I don’t even know if he really was totally against it. He was acting that way, but I can say now, now that I know he’ll never read this, that he was totally obnoxious. (laughter) And I just kept on. He was trying to convince me that nobody cared about Love. Why would he talk about this? He had no interest in opening up this old part of his life.

Scram: But he had just allowed his old tapes to be released.
Kevin Delaney: Right, but I think that was different, because that was his music, his songs. He was against the idea of going into the whole story.

Scram: Do you think that was his religious convictions, just being offended by the decadence of Love?
Kevin Delaney: No, I think he was testing me, basically. Because about eight months later, after a lot of hounding and begging and crying— (laughter)

Scram: You just wouldn’t give up!
Kevin Delaney: He finally just said, “Man, I gotta get this kid off my case!” (laughter) “This kid’s gonna kill me!” He wanted to make sure it was gonna be really good. And we also became friends, and I think he wanted me to get to know him. Maybe it had to do with him doing the press for If You Believe In, when everyone was asking him all about the sixties. It’s like, “Hello — I’m a human being — I’m alive now.” And yet all anybody cared about was the Bryan MacLean from Love in the sixties. So we became friends, and that gave me the opportunity to get to know him as a person, which is what I think he really wanted. He made it clear that he didn’t want to delve into this right away. He always kind of left the door open, that was it. When I say he was against it, he was seemingly against it but he let me know that there was maybe a possibility of it happening. (laughs)

Scram: If you really wanted it. Do you think if he had been totally opposed, without suggesting that there was an opening, that you would have backed off and left him alone?
Kevin Delaney: Oh yeah. I wouldn’t pressure anyone into doing something they didn’t want to do. He was more trying to convince me that this was ridiculous and I was wasting my time, and most of the other guys were probably dead anyway. One time, after we’d started doing the interviews, he called me up. I’d been talking about Johnny Echols, the guitar player, who has not been heard from in years. I mean the guy has vanished! All kinds of writers have been trying to find him. And Bryan calls me up for some reason, and he says, “I think Echols is dead.” I said, “Why?” “I dunno, I just think he is.” I said, “Well, that’s not that much to go by, y’know?!”

Scram: You can check the social security index—
Kevin Delaney: Well, actually we did! That’s a whole ‘nother story. I hired a private investigator. It was the only time I’ve ever done that. For everybody else, I just busted my behind to find them. Echols was a guy I just could not find. I didn’t know if he was dead; I didn’t know anything about him. I did get his social security number, though, off a session sheet. (Laughing) And I hired this private investigator.

Scram: How’d you find a P.I.? The phone book?
Kevin Delaney: Oh yeah, you know, it’s a fairly routine thing. They find people, deadbeat dads who don’t pay their child support and whatnot. And this guy is saying to me — it was comical! — he was saying, “I’ve been in business for thirty years, I have never failed once. I will guarantee—” I said, “But what if you don’t find him? Do I get my money back?” “Don’t worry about that. I will find him. I have never failed once in thirty years!” I said, “All right, fine, whatever.” He said, “What information do you have?” I have a social security number—” “That’s all I need! If we have a social security number, we’re in!” So I gave him the social security number, and he calls me back about a half hour later, and he says, “Uh... do you have any more information on this guy.” “Why?” He says, “Well, uh, I checked a couple databases here—” “What, wasn’t the social security number good?” “The social security number is good, but he’s not using it! The last time it’s been used is 1978.” So I gave him some more information, and he called me back and forth, and he ended up trying to convince me that Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols were the same person! (Laughter) I said, “You gotta be out of your mind. Are you kidding me?’’ He asked me “Well what can you tell me about this guy?” I said, “All I really know is he was a guitar player in a band called Love, and he was in Los Angeles in the sixties. I don’t know where he is today.” “Who else was in this band?” “Well, the leader was a guy named Arthur Lee.” He asks “Is Johnny Echols white?” I said, “No, he’s bi-racial, he’s part black and part white.” “Uh huh. And is Arthur Lee white?” “Arthur Lee is also mulatto.” And he goes, “Ah ha!” (Laughter) I said, “No no no no no!” He goes, “What instrument did Arthur Lee play?’’ “He played guitar.” “And what instrument did Johnny Echols play?” I was like, I don’t believe this, he’s trying to convince me that they’re the same person. He’s like, “But how do you know?!” I said, “Oh my god!” Needless to say, he was not able to find Johnny Echols!

Scram: Did you get your money back?
Kevin Delaney: I didn’t pay him anything. When he delivers the information you send him a check. But the story has a happy ending. About three weeks ago, real early one Sunday morning, I’m lying in bed, the phone rings, and I think, “Oh, I’ll just let it go.” And I got up a little bit later, checked my phone messages — and Johnny Echols called me up! He had read in Rolling Stone about Bryan MacLean’s death, wanted to find out about it, saw my name in there and just looked me up in the phone book.

Scram: Where is he?
Kevin Delaney: [gives an off-the-record response; sorry fans. But at least we now know that Johnny Echols has not yet joined the choir invisible.] He seemed to really trust me, I think maybe because of the relationship I had with Bryan, and he was interested, too, in doing an interview, which I’m really excited about. We haven’t done that yet. Even though I’m not doing the book anymore, I thought—

Scram: Oh, you might as well.
Kevin Delaney: Oh, yeah! Why not? Just as a fan. After we’d talked about Bryan, I said “Johnny, I got to tell you, there’s a million questions I’ve got to ask you!” He’s really been kind of like the mystery man. It was neat to have heard from him. So actually, I’ve talked to all the guys — except for Ken Forssi, who died — from the original band now.

Scram: How did you talk to Arthur?
Kevin Delaney: He called me up, too.

Scram: Collect?
Kevin Delaney: Yeah, of course. From prison. And it’s a total hassle, because there’s a beep going throughout, and he’s in a room where there’s fifteen other guys waiting to use the phone. And we can only talk fifteen minutes at a time, and every two minutes this voice breaks in (mock officious): “This is a collect call from the California State Correctional Facility.” It’s not exactly prime interviewing atmosphere...

Scram: Can you go up to talk to him?
Kevin Delaney: He doesn’t want visitors. He was another one that had no interest in it at all until maybe about two months ago, and all of a sudden he was totally gung ho, and wanted to be part of it. What he wanted to do was to write out his parts. The book was an oral history, so it’s stories from people, arranged in chronological order, and he wanted to write out all his stuff himself. I thought that was great. I was thrilled to have him be a part of it. Of course I had no way of calling him, so it was mostly whenever he decided to call me that we’d talk.

Scram: Does he still want to write that out for you, now that the book’s on hold?
Kevin Delaney: I don’t know. I’d been in touch with a former girlfriend of his, and I’d made the decision that I wasn’t gonna do the book anymore. I mean, I can’t, I physically can’t do this book anymore, and I told her and she told him about it. It was impossible to talk, so he says “Just write me a letter and tell me what’s going on.” So I wrote that I’m not doing the book anymore, and I haven’t heard from him since.

Scram: When’s he due out? Was it an eight year sentence?
Kevin Delaney: Who knows? He was sentenced to twelve years; he’s already done two or three. They said he has to serve at least 80% of that, but who knows? Killers get out after a ride on a merry-go-round. I don’t know.

Scram: Do you anticipate holding on to your material and doing the book at some future date?
Kevin Delaney: Oh yeah. Oh, it’ll get done, don’t worry.

Scram: Great!
Kevin Delaney: The main thing was, I wanted to get the word out about the book being on hold. A lot of people were really excited about it, waiting for it. Although this is probably gonna piss a lot of fans off, I’m really intrigued by the idea of holding onto this stuff for twenty or thirty years, and locking it away. It’s the untouched stuff. I mean, I’ve got all kinds of information nobody else has!

Scram: So you have to interview everybody who wants to be interviewed for the book now, because they might die.
Kevin Delaney: Well, I’ve pretty much already done that! I’ve interviewed over fifty people, everyone from band members to fans to groupies. My rule for interviewing was you either had to have seen the original band live or you had to know one of the members. If you fit either of those criteria I wanted to interview you. And I really got hooked up big time with the internet — still, I’ve got eyes and ears all over the world. I got some amazing interviews with peripheral people who had great stories to tell.

Scram: What are some of the more interesting interviews that you did?
Kevin Delaney: Well, I’d have to respond on a totally personal level. Definitely all the guys in the band. Finally, after eight months of getting to know Bryan MacLean, when he finally said that he wanted to be part of it. And then to come to the realization — wow! this is Bryan MacLean from Love, I totally forgot! (laughter) This guy has a million amazing stories to tell! He told me things he’d never told anybody before, new insights, new perspectives on things. And one thing I was really shocked at was how many times he would mention Arthur and his current situation. He would wonder what he did to contribute to it. In other words, Arthur being the kind of person who would do things to get himself in trouble, things that are so anti-social, things that are just not right. And Bryan, I think, was really kind of tormented by how he had very abruptly left the band, and maybe he thought that Arthur felt abandoned. And so that was incredible. Actually, they were all — I was just amazed at how even people who said they had nothing to tell me had amazing things to contribute. There was one woman — this was really weird — I was looking through a book of photography from the sixties, by a guy named Baron Wolman. Great photos. There was a section in there of groupies, and there was a picture of a woman named Catherine James, a picture of her and her little baby. And I don’t know why, but I looked at this picture and I just thought, “That woman has a story to tell me!” I had no idea who she was, even if she was alive, but I said, “That woman has a story to tell me.” And I thought, well, I’ll put her on my list of people to find. So, Pamela Des Barres called me up one night — I’d interviewed Pamela for the book — and she says, “I want you to come over for dinner at my house. Just a little thing, me, someone else, and my friend Catherine.” And I said, “What’s Catherine’s last name?” She said, “James.” I said, “I’ll be right over!” (laughs) Catherine came late, we were in the middle of eating dinner, but sure enough, it’s her. And when she walked in I almost fell out of my chair! After dinner everyone was clearing plates, and I just scooched up next to her, and said, “So, Catherine, y’know I’m doing this book about Love and the guys in the band; did you have any involvement with them?” She says, “No. I lived in L.A. for a while, but I moved to New York in ‘66, so I wasn’t even in town by the time the band was together.” And I thought, “Oh, well, that’s pretty weird. Those cosmic forces, what the hell?” “You didn’t have any involvement with the band at all?” She says, “No... I mean, other than Bryan, before he was in the band. He was just a little kid then, playing at this coffee house.” I said, “Tell me more!” Turns out, she knew Bryan when he was just starting out. So, needless to say, the tape recorder was whipped out, the interview was had on the spot, and I got about fifteen minutes of stuff I’d never heard of before, and it was pretty amazing! So that was a neat one. And Bob Pepper was incredible — and again, this is all personal for me, because I love his work so much. I was collecting his artwork. And he was one of those people, too, everyone was saying he was dead! I accepted that, I never questioned it, until one day I was walking along and thought “What if he’s alive?” And I found him in New York. I was so thrilled when I got him on the phone, it was like logic went out the window! I literally hung up the phone and started packing my bag. [holds up the Forever Changes art] I just was fascinated, because he told me how he did this, how they sent him photos of the band members and he blew them up on a Lucite machine and was arranging them, and he was torn between making it a white or a black background — and I love that kind of stuff, because I think, “Wow, what if it was a black background?” The album would have such a different look to it. And also David Angel, who did all the horn arrangements, was another really rewarding interview. He had never been interviewed, and yet his name is on the albums. He orchestrated this album, which is one of the first records with strings and horns on it, and I’m thinking why hasn’t anyone talked to this guy before?! It’s a totally revolutionary thing that he did.

Scram: Did you find that anyone had ever been to see most of these people before?
Kevin Delaney: No! I was shocked at talking to writers who couldn’t believe how many people I had found. They’d say, “You talked to that guy? I’ve been looking for him for years!” Well, I did put a lot of effort into finding these people, but—

Scram: The internet makes a huge difference, if people tried to find them in the early nineties and gave up—
Kevin Delaney: It wasn’t even so much through the internet. A lot of people did not want to be found, which was an interesting situation I’d be in, because after I’d found them I’d have to convince them to be part of this. It was mostly through personal contacts, finding a lot of these peripheral people, and then those people helped me get in touch with the people who were in the band.

Scram: You must find it hard to let go, after this being the center of your life for years.
Kevin Delaney: (laughs) No, I’m thrilled to get rid of it, really! It was like this 8000 pound spider that was weaving a web around me! I got totally sucked into it. This started out with some guy — I liked his bass playing — I’ll do a little article, right? Next thing I know I’m—

Scram: It’s because you’re an enthusiast! You have to watch out what you like.
Kevin Delaney: Well, I’m not as enthusiastic as I used to be! (laughter) I’m finally at the point where I can listen to the music again, it’s not a traumatic experience. (laughter) I’d listen to the records and I’d just see these credit card bills!

Scram: And that’s the story of the Love biography up to the present. So, Kevin, what’s next for you?
Kevin Delaney: Hyping myself as an actor, voice-over artist — basically whoring myself in any way I possibly can.

Scram: You’re in the right town.
Kevin Delaney: Oh, yeah. It’s Whoresville USA. I did a lot of really wacky shit back east, and so I’m giving it a go here. I do a lot of writing — I write for Rolling Stone Online, Launch Online — actually I’m trying to get out of the music aspect of things, because I’ve been totally branded as this sixties nut, and I’m not at all.

Scram: Is Love the only sixties band you like?
Kevin Delaney: No. I like good music, and I do like a lot of bands from the sixties, but I’m not a collector. Some people are really ridiculous about it. I just like the music. I don’t know what’s next. I don’t talk about the future anymore.

It's been said about so many of rock's giants that they were “ahead of their time” that the expression has ceased to mean much. So how about a great band that was behind their time? That would be Shocking Blue.

It was 1969 when the best version of this Dutch act gelled, and while most of the bands the Blue emulated were by then turning away from groovy and towards heavy—prog rock, early metal and pre-punk taking over the scene—Shocking Blue still sounded like they might have come out of London or San Francisco, circa ‘66/‘67.

Jefferson Airplane is be the band that Shocking Blue mostly invites comparisons to, and it was the Airplane that veteran Dutch rocker Robbie van Leeuwen had in mind when he decided he wanted a female vocalist for his group. But while van Leeuwen may have started out emulating the Jefferson Airplane, his band quickly and permanently outclassed their predecessors. Where the Airplane's lyrics were usually cliché-addled and verging on ridiculous, van Leeuwen offered fresh and innocent boy/girl tales and existential laments; while JA’s music often had that messy, jazzy, “let me do a solo” element weighing it down, Shocking Blue stuck to stripped-down, energy-packed Beat Club grooves; and Mariska Veres was simply a better singer than Grace Slick, more genuinely soulful, more naturally melodious.

Veres was actually not Shocking Blue’s original singer. When guitarist van Leeuwen dropped out of local hitmakers the Motions to form his own band in ‘67, he did so with another Dutch scenester, Fred de Wilde, at the mic. The all-boy Blue recorded one album and some singles (a few of these minor hits in Holland, most notably the decidedly West Coast-influenced “Lucy Brown is Back in Town”). But before things could go too far for this version of the act, and just when van Leeuwen was thinking that he wanted a chick to sing his songs, de Wilde was called off to do military service. Robbie wasted no time in finding Veres, who looked like a model and sang like a soul sister. De Wilde managed to get out of his military duty after just a few months, but by that time the new Blue had already scored hits with “Send Me a Postcard” and “Long and Lonesome Road.” Fred had to understand.

With musical acts things tend to either never quite happen or to happen very quickly, but they rarely happen as fast as they did for the new Shocking Blue. Before the end of their first year together, they had a number one hit in the U.S. “Venus,” their third single and the one and only song everybody remembers them for now, topped the American charts in December of ‘69.

But it's one of the great injustices of rock history that Shocking Blue should be thought of (by the few who even recognize their name) as a one-hit wonder. “Venus” is only one of several classic tracks on the Blue's At Home LP, a collection that should be near the top of critics' All-Time-Best polls, instead of remaining in the basement of super-obscurity where it currently exists. “California Here I Come” and the already-mentioned “Long and Lonesome Road” are just as catchy, just as cool, just as memorable as “Venus,” as is a song called “Love Buzz,” which Nirvana eventually covered (not too well, but they get points for having the cool to pay the tribute) on Bleach. There’s also a raga-rock instrumental, a couple more upbeat tunes just barely lagging behind “Venus” and the others, and “Boll Weevil,” the R&B-fueled album opener, which sounds like the Dead with more real spirit.

The next two Shocking Blue albums, while not as strong or consistent as At Home, were still as good as anything being put out in the first years of the ‘70s, and both contained standout tracks. Scorpio’s Dance has “Sally was a Good Old Girl,” a rockin’ version of a C&W standard, plus “Little Cooling Planet” and “Seven is a Number in Magic,” two more swanky, riff-heavy grooves that sound like California ‘67. Next was 3rd Album, which has an overall folksy feel that was new for the band. “I Saw Your Face,” the lead vocal taken by van Leeuwen, is like the Mamas & the Papas with a banjo, and “Serenade” is one of SB’s many slow-tempo'd, melancholic tracks, it being one of their prettiest ballads. But the two strongest songs on this album are both rockers: the ‘60s dance party-sounding “Bird of Paradise,” and the autobiographical anthem “Shocking You,” on which the Blue seemed to be heading to Glamsville.

Throughout these years the band, while touring over great distances at break-neck speed, also found time to record a few non-album singles, and one of these, “Never Marry a Railroad Man,” may be their best song altogether. A number one in Holland and a gold record in Germany and Japan, this mid-tempo track, with its staccato guitar riff and stays-in-your-head vocal melody, somehow didn't make any noise in America, where the best the Blue had done since “Venus” was hit the lower reaches of the Top 100, or England, where they were, amazingly, never terribly popular.

Records kept coming. A live-in-Japan set appeared shortly after 3rd Album, and in the year 1972 Shocking Blue released three long-players: Inkpot, Attila and Dream on Dreamer. Sadly, the quality-level was diminishing slightly with each new LP; but with van Leeuwen continuing to write all the original material, there was still the occasional stellar track, and nothing as embarrassing as, say, Jefferson Starship (that would come later, after Robbie left). While the albums contained too much filler to be considered even minor classics, they all had excellent singles, the best of these “Inkpot,” “Rock in the Sea,” and “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.”

Things fell apart starting in ‘73. First, the band suffered their first flop single—“Let Me Carry Your Bag” went nowhere at home or abroad, and didn't deserve to. Van Leeuwen was tired from five years of worldwide touring, non-stop recording, and songwriting responsibility, and his fatigue showed on this weak record. Things were not going well with their label Pink Elephant, and soon enough they lost a member, original bassist Klassje Van Der Wal. The band's creator, mastermind and sole songwriter to that point, Robbie van Leeuwen, gave it up shortly after that.

This should have been the end of Shocking Blue, but people need to have things to do, and in doing them often threaten to permanently tarnish something that was once precious. The absence of van Leeuwen's pen was all too apparent on the ‘74 Shocking Blue singles “This America” and “Gonna Sing My Song” and the album Good Times. While the new players were competent musicians, and while Veres' voice sounded strong as ever, the riffs weren't quite there and the lyrics were atrocious (particularly in the case of “This America,” a song on which Veres foolishly sings the praises of the country that had only recently pulled out of Vietnam).

Mercifully, the band went on hiatus after those singles failed to bust the charts. But this was still not to be the last of Shocking Blue. In 1986, the same year that Bananarama trivialized them (although thickening van Leeuwen's royalty checks) with their hit version of “Venus,” a new—and newly-schlocky—SB came out with “The Jury and the Judge,” on which they went back and proved that, yes, they actually could be as tacky and dinosaur-sounding as the Starship. This piece of soulless, formulaic glitz could've easily been the B-side of “We Built This City.”

And that ain't all. There was another single, equally bad, in ‘94, and word is that a band called Shocking Blue, with fronted by Mariska Veres, is still haunting European concert halls. Van Leeuwen is quoted as saying that this new SB “sounds good for sure,” but one has to wonder what time has done to the ears of this once classic songwriter and unsung hero of rock; Robbie hasn't played his guitar for quite some time, apparently having become more interested in the art world than that of contemporary pop music.

Recommended Listening: Singles A’s & B’s, the 2-CD collection of Shocking Blue's 45's, front and back, ‘67-‘94, contains some of SB’s best songs, and can serve as an excellent introduction to all those who think “Venus” was the only thing the band ever did. But true enthusiasts should use this only as a starting point, and go to the same label (Repertoire of Germany) that put this out for their reissues of the first three SB albums with Mariska Veres. Those totally hooked can then go on and get the three ‘72 albums, also carried by Repertoire.

Psyched Out: The Technicolor Web's Online Sound Revolution

by Tony Sclafani

What is it about the psychedelic music of the 1960s that continues to intrigue new generations of people?

Maybe it's because psychedelic music was a genre where almost anything went, and all possibilities seemed endless. Artists under the spell of psychedelia seemed blissfully unaware of commercial conventions, and were the first rockers to make full use of extra-long songs, nonsensical lyrics, massive distortion and sound effects.

Another reason for psychedelic music's appeal is that it allows you to "travel with your mind," as the Seeds put it on their psych-rock opus "Future." During the psychedelic era, artists created their own little worlds for listeners to explore. Formula love lyrics gave way to songs about everything from jolly little dwarves to 30-year-olds who still played with toys.

Psychedelic music essentially offers a vision of a make-believe world that often seems a heck of a lot more fun than the real one. In the Psychedelic World, cyclists whiz by on white bicycles at midnight, you can hear the grass grow and the skies change from orange to marmalade (some women even have marmalade hair!).

No other music delved into the fantastic like psychedelia, and the genre couldn't be less timely. The trend in lyrics today (especially in the country and rap genres) is to reflect goings on in the real world, not to create an idiosyncratic fantasyland. How can today's teens get any escape from the often-harsh real world if even their music fails to provide that? True, there are video games, but their dog-eat-dog ethos is reflective of real-world strife. If you were looking for escape circa 1967, all you had to do was turn on the black light, stare at your day-glo posters and groove to the sounds of Clear Light or The Blues Magoos. Voila! A new world. Like, why go out at all?

Laugh at psychedelic music if you will. But it's instructive to remember that when artists of any post-1960s era have looked to make big statements and take their careers to a new level, it's psychedelia they usually tap into, for instance Prince's "Around the World in a Day," Robert Fripp's "Exposure" and Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and "Beautiful Stranger" (directly referencing Love's "She Comes in Colors").

Psychedelic music is crawling all over the media landscape again these days, since this summer marks the 40^th anniversary of the Summer of Love and the Monterey International Pop Festival. And while it's hard sometimes to know exactly where to start to get into this music (Blossomtoes? Ultimate Spinach?), there is a 24/7 source for psychedelic sounds, thanks to Internet radio.

The Technicolor Web of Sound (www.techwebsound.com) is an online station that serves up a non-stop selection of songs of vintage psychedelic origin. The station, which is powered by Shoutcast streaming technology, is run by Wisconsin native and music buff Paul Moews. Moews, whose name is pronounced as "maze," was doing Internet radio back before most people even knew what it was.

"I started the station around 2000," says Moews by cell phone while commuting to his job as an electrical engineer. "with one or two listeners max on a dial-up modem. I was excited when I'd get over three people listening at a time. Now I've got hundreds on there."

Moews' site stands out not just because of his micro-niche focus, but because his station has a Web site that provides details on the artists he plays (most Shoutcast Internet stations don't have Web sites, much less intricately-designed ones). There are no disc jockeys, except when the station broadcasts a programmed show called "The Pop Shoppe," put together by Oregon disc jockey Gregarious. What Moews has done is created a lengthy playlist that intersperses obscure tracks with vintage radio commercials.

"The playlist has been manually designed," Moews explains. "There's no randomness to it. It's such a long playlist that when even I listen a lot of the time I still won't remember what song is coming up next. One of the keys to its success, I think, is the transitions between the songs, and having the ads in there. If you were to do a random playlist, the ads wouldn't work at all -- you wouldn't have good transitions. With the ads, you need to have three or four in a row to mimic an original or authentic FM station
broadcast."

What can you expect to hear on The Technicolor Web of Sound? Here's a sampling of the Web site's "most recent tracks played" list as of June 19, 10:30 a.m.: John's Children's "Desdemona," Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne," Bear's "So Loose and So Slow," Stone Country's "Life Stands Daring Me," Ill Wind's "People of The Night," Steppenwolf's "The Ostrich," The Charlatans' "32-20," Cosmic Brotherhood's "Sunshine World," Painted Faces' "Black Hearted Susan," Neon Pearl's "Forever" and a Jefferson Airplane Levis Ad done by Spencer Dryden.

Moews' music choices sometimes fall beyond the boundaries of psychedelia, which waters down the station's appeal (for example, why is Led Zeppelin played at all?). But for the most part, most of what he plays is unheard anywhere else, especially on terrestrial radio stations. Even Satellite Radio is starting to shy away from potentially uncommercial formulas. Moews says he's able to earn enough money to keep the station running free from any commercial considerations. If there's anyone Moews takes his musical cues from, it's his listeners.

"I gradually ended up getting a fan base that started sending me more and more music," Moews notes. "My audience actually exposed me to a good percentage of what I play now. Plus, bands contacted me as well. I've received CDs from various bands, and not just obscure ones, some of the mid-level bands. And that's exposed me to some music I probably would not have been exposed to if I didn't have the station."

Moews says he gets listeners as young as 16 who e-mail him and say "I love your station!" Moews himself also missed the first flowering of psychedelia, having been born in 1968.

"I wasn't there, but I still like the music," he says. "I've liked that type of music since I was in grade school -- I heard it from a buddy that lived a couple of doors down from me who had a lot of older brothers (with psychedelic albums)."

As for the issue of the proposed royalty rate hike for Internet radio stations (set to take place July 15, 2007), Moews says he's "riding it out to see what happens." As countless news outlets have reported, there is still a chance Congress could step in and prevent the US Copyright Royalty Board from making Internet radio stations have to pay more in royalty fees (including retroactive fees) to the collection entity SoundExchange.

"It's a shame that when internet radio stations … introduce thousands of people to music they have never heard before and actually generate more record sales, that the Record Industry still wants to charge us even more for our efforts," Moews writes via e-mail when asked about the royalty situation. "It almost seems that they're trying to suppress certain types of music."

The Technicolor Web of Sound also helped spawn another radio station that's probably its only competitor in terms of Web radio programming.

That station is called Beyond the Beat Generation (www.beyondthebeatgeneration.com) and it plays an array of 1960s garage bands so obscure they makes Moews' playlist look like the Billboard top ten. It also has an exhaustive Web site with artist interviews, photos and even videos.

"I helped (Hans Kesteloo) set up that station," Moews says. "He's from Germany and he's an avid collector. In fact he turned me onto some stuff."

Like the Technicolor Web of Sound, Beyond the Beat Generation's site has a rotating "song history" listing. On the Technicolor site, you can click on the name of the artist in the song history and get a biography. On the Beat Generation site, the song history listing tells you the label, serial number and release year for each record and also tells the hometown of the artist. And you thought you were obsessive about records.

Here's a segment of the Beyond the Beat Generation's playlist as of June 20, 2:37 p.m.: Jarvo Runga's "Long Walk Home," Phyllis Brown's "Dead," The Syndicate of Sound's "Get Outta My Life," The K Otics' "Double Shot," The Dawn 5's "A Necessary Evil," The Yardleys' "Your Love" and Moving Sidewalks' "Stay Away."

If you don't want to be relegated to listening to all this music on your computer speakers, you can send the audio signal to your stereo via a $20 device called the Dynex®-Portable Wireless FM Transmitter (which you can order online at Best Buy). For serious music fans, all of the above technology has pretty much made commercial radio stations irrelevant.

You can also take the MP3 streams from both these stations, dump them into your Winamp player, toggle between them, and never hear a familiar 1960s song for hours on end. It's, like, a total alternate reality, man.

Chad & Jeremy & LSD
by Kim Cooper (from Scram #9)

You can quibble all you want about precisely when the psychedelic era set its roots, but in pop music it's clear that the apex of convulsive flourishing was 1967. Every artist with half an ounce of media savvy recorded a psychedelic song or album, and amongst the dripping lysergic swirls of overwrought cover art, idiotically-employed tape effects, interminable "far out" phraseology, and such gimmicks as the rare chance to see The Rolling Stones in 3D wizard garb (gear! fab! unngh...?), there were some remarkable surprises.

Amongst those who stepped up to eagerly take the hallucinogenic host (or at least give the convincing impression that they had) were Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde, a fairly-innocuous pair of posh British lads previously best known for not being Peter & Gordon. (This writer has long had difficulty remembering which duo she finds interesting, and has mistakenly brought home cheap P&G records on several occasions. This may be due to flawed mnemonic reasoning which suggests Peter & Gordon are "Pretty Good" when, in fact, they are not. Preferable, perhaps, to simply avoid all albums with redheaded men on their covers.)

Their early records were a baffling blend of pop smarts and pretentious schlock, jarring arrangements and strange cover versions. Frequently the boys' voices were drowned in so much orchestration and reverb as to render them nearly unrecognizable. Despite some good moments, theirs' was a career far more notable for marketing than for any creative distinction.

And so Chad & Jeremy might have easily remained, had they not hatched the brilliant idea to split London for L.A. sometime around 1965. The pair cleverly consolidated their stateside fame with regular appearances on Hullabaloo, and by guest starring on Batman (Catwoman steals their voices, spelling instant gloom for Gotham's teeny populace), The Dick Van Dyke and Patty Duke shows.
Close proximity to the television industry, a fertile West Coast music scene, and that high quality Frisco windowpane combined to spell revelation for our heroes, and by 1967 they were ready to show the world precisely what side their crumpet was buttered on. The result, Of Cabbages And Kings (Columbia CS 9471/ CL 2671), is a masterpiece of high-concept psych-pop, richly-orchestrated, unfailingly melodic, gorgeously produced (by under-rated hot rod meister Gary Usher), and brimming with multiple layers of real meaning. If there was any justice in the world - ha! - then never again would Chad & Jeremy have been mistaken for Peter & Gordon.

Cabbages is a true collaboration between Clyde (who wrote most of the songs and the side-long experiment "The Progress Suite, Movements 1 thru 5"), Stuart (who arranged and scored), and the scarily-talented Usher. The perverse world-view of the disc is quickly delineated in the first track, "Rest in Peace," a delightful musical portrait of a man who knows a thing or two about the real face behind the painted-on smiles. The melody is lovely, words as arch as Tower Bridge.

"My name it is Matthews
And I've got it made
A memorial maker
It's a profitable trade
I don't solicit business
There's no point in trying
What I like about my customers
They just keep on dying
Here lies Frederick
Mourned by his wife
He led a blameless life
He couldn't win the way she treated him
His gravestone should have read
'Here lies Fred, he's better off dead'
Rest in peace
Rest in peace
They bring the names of husbands
They bring the names of wives
They want me to perpetuate
Their awful dreary lives"

No "Strawberry Fields Forever," this. In Chad & Jeremy's psychedelic world, it's the dark, square trap of British middle class life that's observed with a rapier eye, dipped in bile and road grit and laid down on magnetic tape under California skies.

Los Angeles has traditionally provided a psychic haven for British writers, a retreat from which they can cast an increasingly jaundiced eye home. So it's no accident that this most English of records would have been entirely created on the left coast, from which distant vantage a precise satirical vision of Britannia could be honed.

In a stroke of fortune, homegrown genius Usher was selected to forge iridescent nets of sound to contain their cruel ruminations. What might have seemed merely bitter in other surroundings becomes glorious under Usher's umbrella. The cat who would produce the Byrds, Peanut Butter Conspiracy and Gene Clark trotted out all the tricks for this pair - even though the three didn't particularly get along. Usher thought their songs uncommercial indulgences, and was irked by their rejection of the exquisite "My World Fell Down," which he and Curt Boettcher would soon record as Sagittarius. Personal feelings aside, Cabbages is one of Usher's finest productions.

But it's not all nastiness and nostalgia for our two émigrés. "Can I See You" is a true classic of lovelorn pop, with a perfectly structured lyric introducing the anxious lover who makes a gentlemanly request to meet his ex, and grows increasingly hopeful and impassioned as the one-sided specifics of their reunion are delineated. Settling into courtly resignation, Jeremy coos,

"And I see you
You look a little older now, perhaps
Or maybe I am younger
And I touch you
I take your hand as a stranger now
And want to hold it longer
But you must go
You'll never guess I still love you so
But I saw you
I saw you"

It's an exceptionally beautiful piece of music, precise and moving.

The too-frank teen melodrama "Family Way" is an incredible artifact, and the everything-but-the-Chinese-wok production suggests the group had a blast recording it. The moody buzzing undertone created by double-tracking the vocals sounds especially great. Set up like any number of clichéd young-lovers-thwarted scenarios, Chad & Jeremy quickly kick their tale into hyperdrive with the revelation that the kids don't just wanna get married, they haveta get married! The distaff parental reactions are classics of Anglo passive aggression, culminating in the desperate offer of a one-way ticket to sunny Mozambique for the young gentleman. Only it's already too late: the insistent cry of an infant loops in to close the track as tastelessly as it began. Amazing!

A highlight of the album is "I'll Get Around to It If and When I Can," written by James William Guercio, but perfectly pitched to the tone of the original material. The deliberately crafted tune becomes somewhat amusing after one learns a few key facts about its author, a perpetually peripheral figure in pop music. Chicago scenester and consummate hustler, Guercio hoped to parlay his gig as Chad & Jeremy's bassist into a Columbia house producer's chair. He gained additional leverage as The Buckinghams' manager, but that group soon socked him with a lawsuit for publishing fraud. Before long he was back as Chicago's manager, and he would produce them, Blood Sweat & Tears, and even Moondog for Columbia. But success didn't still Guercio's natural hustle: see Clive Davis' 1974 biography Clive, where he talks about Guercio and Mike Curb's clumsy attempt to sneak a pre-hit Chicago out from under Columbia's contractual nose. Later, Guercio was the Beach Boys' road manager, and still more interestingly, he both scored and directed the idiosyncratic Robert Blake motorcycle cop flick, Electra Glide in Blue. A man with a talent for being where the action was, Jimmy Guercio. One wonders what schemes he's working today.

The idea of allocating the flip side of a record to a side-long experiment wasn't a new one - Love's "Revelation" had stunk up Da Capo the year before -- but Cabbages' "Progress Suite" is one of the more interesting examples of the trend. The implications of such a composition are clear: the artistes presenting the work feel hemmed in by the commercial requirements of pop writing, and fancy themselves capable of producing something more meaningful and moving than just another "yeah yeah yeah" hit. Ambitious, arrogant, and doubly blessed with a sympathetic producer and access to the best equipment extant, our heroes let it rip, revealing their caustic vision of the first two thirds of the century in an effective, demented aural collage.

The suite begins with a "Prologue" containing some very convincing sitar playing by Chad - and since no one west of Bombay was playing the sitar prior to 1966, it's all the more impressive.

The second movement is the pessimistically-titled "Decline," a chaotic layering of commercial signifiers, the mid-20th century encapsulated in brief: car horns, jangling phones, the human babble and that of the barnyard, clacking teletypes emotionlessly conveying information (bad news, most likely) full-bore machine noise in full stereo. It's a fluid tone poem in darkest hue, stressful and increasingly sinister with the eventual introduction of police sirens and fire bells. All but buried in the murk is a hauntingly insistent melody line that soldiers on, oblivious to the chaos that surrounds it. A toilet is flushed, a martial pennywhistle blows, and the section closes with a Kinksish vision of a great empire dying out before your ears.

After that, a listener both needs and deserves a break, and Chad & Jeremy prove their pop intuition is true by offering "Editorial," a nifty little tune, catchy as sin, suspended in the amber of this experimental platter. The only catch: the subject of "Editorial" is world hunger, and melody can't obscure the cynical creepiness of the lyric.

"Look at the progress we've made
Get your vitamin quota
In your soup ready-made
Forget that there's hunger around you
Look at the progress we've seen
Perhaps you should cut down
On sugar and cream
You can't button your jacket around you
Overcrowded world
What happens now
Better pray to your gods
And hope that somehow
Far from the shack you call home
They aren't burning the grain
That has ripened and grown
'Cause the prices have fallen again, so
Eat up your rice, Billy dear
They're starving in India
At least that's what I hear
Come on, my child, cram it down you
But we are okay
In our shiny new car
Look at us now
You can see we've come far
Here I am playing electric guitar
Look at the progress we've made"

"Fall" is an instant bad trip comprised of nationalistic sloganeering over soldier's rhythms, animal sounds, a smattering of spy jazz, civil defense sirens, international war reports, machine gun fire and a breath of slinky sitar, the whole mess building up until it culminates in a nuclear blast. Fun guys, Chad & Jeremy.

The "Epilogue" is a vocal number, gloomy but not particularly catchy. They should have left off with the explosion, really.

It ends with a whimper, but overall Of Cabbages And Kings is glorious, and the good news is that this absurdly rare disc has just received a domestic CD re-issue on M.I.L. Multimedia. Grab yourself a copy and rejoice.

The Clyde-Stuart-Usher triumvirate were soon back in the studio recording a follow-up, the somewhat schizophrenic The Ark (Columbia CS 9699/ CL 2899). Moodily cloaked in Charles Bragg's cover painting, The Ark is poppier than Cabbages, but less cohesive, and the plethora of guest-writers suggests that the boys were having some difficulty coming up with a full set of tunes. Jeez, put down the bong and work, guys! While Levitt-Gorgoni's "Painted Dayglow Smile" is a terrific psychedelic gypsy's lament, R. Irwin's lame "You Need Feet" ("...to keep your socks on and stop your legs from fraying at the end") is simply unforgivable (and interminable!). Just why Chad & Jeremy felt compelled to revive Bernard Bresslaw's 1959 British novelty hit (itself a parody of Max Bygrave's "You Need Hands") is a mystery lost to the ages. Whatever the cause, it seems to have infected the Rutles as well; they too briefly revived it in All You Need is Cash.

The best tracks on The Ark are Clyde's buoyant "Imagination," the British Invasion nostalgia-piece "Transatlantic Trauma 1966" ("I'm writing from Boston/ And Chad is uptight/ I broke two strings on stage last night..."), and a great song from the soundtrack to AIP's sexploitation pic "3 in the Attic."

Usher's production is maybe the best thing about the record -- to his almost immediate detriment. The cost of The Ark was $75,000, an enormous sum in 1968. Stuart had many elaborate demands for this record, and the producer seems to have acquiesced to most. But then the record sold bubkus, and soon Gary Usher was looking for another job. You can get The Ark on CD too (Japanese import MVP M32224), if you're inclined, and fans of Cabbages probably will be, but here's an instance where you're advised to buy in the order of production.

After Ark, Chad & Jeremy ambled off in different directions to engage in the usual post-popstar activities of the very posh. Live theater, restaurant ownership, you don't really want to know any more than I want to chronicle it. An early '80s reunion failed to capture the lyric charms of the Hollywood days, and no further collaborations are known.

It would be easy to dismiss this pair based on the bulk of their recorded activities -- a staggering eight albums in the three years before Cabbages -- but easy dismissals are for squares.

Maybe it was the sunshine, or the windowpane, or Gary Usher's golden touch. Whatever independent forces conspired to work their wiles upon Chad & Jeremy, the fact remains: Of Cabbages And Kings exists and it is perfect. Call it one of the gems of the psychedelic era, and marvel at the improbability of it all. And maybe wonder, just in passing, what Peter & Gordon might have lurking in the vaults.

Naaaahhhhhhh.