the zombies

Bummer In the Summer

The Velveteen Rabbit Box Set?

Every week I like to pick up an album by a band I've never heard before. Last week it was Pere Ubu, this week The Zombies. Although I might have made the mistake of buying a copy lacking the mono versions. Doh!

Next week: Red Aunts, motherfucker!

oddessey & oracle = perfect summer record

wow, i am drunk. i meant to say "spring." I listen to it every spring, anyway.

hell, it's perfect any time of year

"Odessey & Oracle" plus "The Decca Stereo Anthology" contain absolutely everything anyone would ever need by The Zombies.

Yeah Geir you said that 3 years ago.

I have proof.

I found out too......

Late!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uB-0D-gV8mY/RvqkxHuak8I/AAAAAAAAEL4/XRSBTVcWjao/s400/999.jpg

I would search out "R.I.P.", their final album which never actually got a proper release (though all the tracks are available on the aforementioned box set and there's a Japanese CD release too). "I'll Call You Mine" is maybe my favorite song they ever recorded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAxZqr0XYHs

Man this is great for all kinds of reasons including - Schlitz breakfast of champions sweater / cameraman vs pillar FITE / pretty french girls in sequined dresses dancing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eExAFAxZJxE

What's the song out now that samples "She's Not There"? I heard it in the car today, first time. More interesting than particularly good. (Google gave me an Eminem song, but this was a woman.)

Black Hippy "Rolling Stone"

Oh nevermind that samples Time of the Season.

If that's new, that's got to be it--I just got the two mixed up, I think. Thanks.

Only 'recent' song (2012) I know which samples it is from Kompakt. Blond:ish - it's too late:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZtqIM3aqAA

If you're looking for covers rather than samples Nick Cave and Neko Case covered it for the True Blood soundtrack and I think Glee used it as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSWKZSCBOI

time of the season has been sampled several times... here's some of them not sure if what you're looking for is here

http://www.whosampled.com/The-Zombies/Time-of-the-Season/sampled/

imo, zombies should be held in same regard as the beatles, doors. odyssey and oracle is a masterpiece in songwriting, vocal harmonies and studio mastery. those sample of songs sampling them makes me fucking livid.. sample some unknown shit. but whatever.

anybody go out to see the "odessey & oracle" 50th anniversary tour? chris white plays the second half of the show (when they do the record front to back).

saw them in mpls last night and it was fucking insane. colin blunstone is spot on, the arrangements are super tasteful, i almost wept with joy.

so nice also to hear rod and colin tell little anecdotes between the songs (in the first half when they play their early hits). these guys are obviously so grateful, so happy to being doing what they're doing at 70+

http://www.thezombiesmusic.com/tour-dates

Thought about it but didn't get it together.

Saw the show in Durham, NC last month. The first part was decent,-and the Odessey portion was absolutely great. I enjoyed Chris White breaking up Blunstone and Argent's jeans-and-leather-jackets theme by wearing a high-collared maroon suit that I'm pretty sure was paisley.

the Odessey portion was absolutely great

Yes it was

I saw it in DC. They came back through again and I missed it the second time, but heard folks who attended, praise it

I saw them in an old movie theater outside of Philly between Odessey tours so they basically played whatever they liked and I was blown away. The harmonies were unbelievably tight and Blunstone's voice hasn't aged a day!

Saw them last week and the Odessey set was ace. The first set was ... kind of embarrassing. The two or three or four Zombies hits they played sounded good, the new blues-rock boilerplate they played was embarrassing, and "Hold Your Head Up" remains one of my least favorite songs of all time. There were times I'd be driving around as a kid listening to classic rock radio, and when the song came on I'd keep changing the channel and coming back, always surprised this epic slog was still going. The crowd here was soooooooo not into it, but I suppose humored Rod.

'Hold Your Head Up' is a great song and Odessey and Oracle is better than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I agree wholeheartedly with the second part of that.

josh, i think the first set was really hampered by the guitarist's unwillingness to play the earlier mod tunes in that mid-'60s style. his tone was just super lame rock guitar guy (as were the solos). thank god that argent et al. seemed to have insisted that his tone for "odyssey" had to more or less mirror the lp. obv. stuff like "she's not there" can easily be ruined by being overblown (see: santana).

first avenue crowd was clearly in the mood to humor the band (or maybe they genuinely were into it, i don't know), applaud loudly at the new songs, and sing along with "hold your head up" (a song i don't like at all). looking around, the feel was kind of like a state fair vibe. lots of mom / daughter, dad / son combos.

colin's big smile and his hand gestures were more or less identical to this performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtyROCysfN0

Yeah, guitarist's tone was the worst. The ugly PRS was a red flag. I guess he used to be in a Santana tribute band?

Anyway. O&O could not have been performed more faithfully.

I consider myself a fan and have Zombie Heaven and Odyssey and I have no idea what this "Hold Your Head Up" song you guys are talking about is. weird.

not going to post the video in this thread, but it's been a classic rock radio staple for decades, you've certainly heard it. it's not a zombies song but white/argent wrote it

Interestingly, at the show I saw, Argent prefaced the song by saying "a lot of people think I wrote this, but it was actually Chris White". They are both officially credited, though.

yeah that was cool. i also lol'd when rod said something like, "i've been performing this song for a number of years. for some reason, people seem to think the lyrics are 'hold your head up, woah!' actually the lyrics are 'hold your head up, WOMAN.' so, if you're going to sing along -- and we really hope you do -- for god's sake, get it right."

Verbatim here, and probably everywhere, iirc, since they've been doing the same exact setlist for a couple of years.

Man, that reminds me--Rod Argent is 71, and still shredding on the keyboards, while playing just about the whole show standing up. That was something to see.

Do keyboard players tend to lose dexterity as they age? I would imagine so, and maybe Argent has, but I couldn't tell.

Aside: Great article from last year about the group that toured the US as the Zombies to cash in on their success. Included 2/3 of ZZ Top!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/danielralston/the-true-story-of-the-fake-zombies-the-strangest-con-in-rock?utm_term=.it8GBR9V9b#.uvYAWMYeYq

which, as the article explains (though i've read this elsewhere on some zombies fan site), led the zombies to record their great lost album, unreleased until 2012 i think.

anybody have an opinion on "rip" ? it's one of those things (like the vu quine tapes) that i keep thinking i'll buy but never do.

thanks for that youtube clip upthread. i've always loved that song and that 'era' of the zombies but hadn't seen that video before. plus, i never realized what a tall drink of water blunstone used to be.

just came back from seeing the Zombies at the Grammy Museum, in a small theater there. It was about an hour and forty minutes, the first hour being an interview with Colin, Rod, Chris, and Hugh, and the remainder being a set of Zombie songs (including a pair of new ones, which I thought were a cut below but performed with a lot of joy that was infectious.) This set was just Rod on piano and Colin singing, which was remarkable. He can still belt it out at 71. They played about ten songs, i think. Such legends.

wow

i did not know that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usvuOs7o944

would have thought all the ilx chillwavers would have hepped me to this fact. i have been playing old prefab a TON recently.

holy shit, that's really good. not a reimagination as much as a perfect match.

Picked up Time of The Zombies, a double LP comp Epic put together in the '70s. The second side is a bunch of stuff slated for RIP (post O & O sessions w/Argent & White), and almost all new to me. It's like The Left Banke if they'd been grownups.

Sounds tempting

Can’t check now but I think all of that is on the Zombie Heaven box

Zombie Heaven has everything from the '60s. RIP itself finally came out in the 2000s.