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The small but perfectly-formed canon of The Zombies belongs on the same shelf as the other major players of mid-1960s Britpop, such as the Kinks, Yardbirds and Small Faces. From their 1964 debut ‘She’s Not There’ onwards, there was never at any point a drop in quality and Zombies discs are acknowledged as some of the best-produced and distinctive in all pop music. In their day, the Zombies were one of the few English bands of the 1960s that enjoyed true global popularity, with two American number ones, chart records throughout the rest of the world, and a deep and lasting affection for their music. And ironically, right after the band split their final single ‘Time Of The Season’ quickly became their biggest record – US radio plays for the latter song has passed the four million mark. The Zombies’ first two American singles, ‘She’s Not There’ and ‘Tell Her No’, also remain two of the most heavily-spun vintage hits on American oldies radio.

More importantly, the popularity of the Zombies’ music, in keeping with their name, shows no sign of dying. Their unsurpassed oeuvre continues to influence musicians around the world, whether they be original fans of the stature of Tom Petty or Paul Weller, or more recent acts like Beck, Pavement and Badly Drawn Boy. Indeed, most cutting-edge alternative pop acts of any worth within the past two decades have openly cited their love of the Zombies. Thanks to high-profile reissues like Big Beat’s definitive 1997 box set “Zombie Heaven,” each new pop generation has been able to discover for themselves the undiluted magic of the band’s catalogue.

Beyond the statistics and continued inspiration, the Zombies had several remarkable attributes that set them apart from other artists. The sheer consistency of keyboardist Rod Argent and bass player Chris White’s songwriting, is perhaps rivalled only by Lennon and McCartney. Building upon the standard R&B and rock’n’roll influences, the Zombies introduced class and sophistication into a genre not noted for either, and in the most natural, unselfconscious way possible. The songs were lent an extra dimension by the voice of Colin Blunstone, widely acknowledged as one of the finest singers Britain has ever produced. Fellow Zombies Paul Atkinson (guitar) and Hugh Grundy (drums) should not be maligned, for as a whole, the chemistry of the band was unsurpassed.

The quintet came together in 1962 as school friends in the sleepy Hertfordshire town of St. Albans, purely for the love of beat and R&B music. Strictly an amateur schoolboy outfit at first, the band was about to pack it all in for work and college when they took a shot at the regional Herts Beat talent contest and won. Amongst the subsequent record offers, the Zombies opted to sign with the independent Marquis Music, which stood them in good stead when their first single ‘She’s Not There’ on the Decca label became first a top twenty hit in the UK, and then a smash all over the world in late 1964.

While their career would fail to return to such heights during the Zombies’ lifetime, their debut nevertheless set the template for an remarkable run of singles, from ‘Leave Me Be’ and ‘Tell Her No’ to ‘Remember You’ and ‘Indication’. Each ensuing release showcased Argent and White songs of an unparalleled standard. The group’s debut album, “Begin Here”, released in April 1965, is a classic of the beat age. Throughout 1965 and into 1966, the Zombies toured America and Europe, and also made a brief appearance in the potboiling thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing. In early 1967, at a time when their record career had almost ground to a halt in theUK, the band played to crowds of over 30,000 in the Philippines.

In the summer of 1967, the group switched from Decca to CBS, with a renewed resolve that came from a fabulous new batch of Argent and White tunes. The resultant album, “Odessey & Oracle,” recorded on a shoestring at Abbey Road studios, remains perhaps their greatest artistic statement. “Odessey” presents an evocation of memory that maybe has yet to be surpassed in pop music, with a peculiarly English, yet universal, slant on dreams, childhood and the attendant loss of innocence that derives from the passing of both. It is a record today as celebrated and influential as the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” or Love’s “Forever Changes.”

Having completed their masterwork, the Zombies had decided to split upon the release of  “Odessey” in April 1968. The final single, ‘Time Of The Season’, was issued that same month to little initial fanfare, but in a supremely ironic twist, it was picked up by US deejays almost a year later to become a massive stateside hit. This posthumous accolade could not induce the Zombies to regroup. With Chris White behind the scenes, Rod Argent had already formed the eponymously-named Argent, enjoying further success in the United States during the 1970s with the anthemic hits ‘Hold Your Head Up’ and ‘God Gave Rock & Roll To You’. Both he and Chris have since had a varied and successful career in the field of record production, as well as frequently scoring for television and stage. Colin Blunstone, meanwhile, has remained a familiar chart presence in the UK and Europe through hits like ‘I Don’t Believe In Miracles’ and ‘What Becomes of the Broken hearted’.

Big Beat has been proud to polish up this band’s exemplary catalogue, starting with our lynchpin 4-CD box set “Zombie Heaven.” Gathering virtually every vintage Zombies recording together in one fully-remastered place, it remains one of the best-selling titles in the Ace Records catalogue. Subsequent Zombies releases have included definitive stand-alone reissues of ‘Begin Here and “Odessey & Oracle”, the “Singles As & Bs” anthology, a comprehensive 2 CD set providing stereo versions of every Decca side; and “Into The Afterlife”, which gathers fascinating post-Zombies demos along with Colin’s rare solo recordings as Neil MacArthur. Vinyl fans will want to pick up our limited set of Zombies 7” EPs which include several tracks not available on any CD releases,

The former members of the Zombies continue to remain active in music. The original quintet have reformed just twice in the recent past: once for the launch party of “Zombie Heaven” at London’s Jazz Café, and then, on a sadder note, at a benefit for Paul Atkinson in Los Angeles, shortly before he died from liver disease in 2004. In 2008, the remaining members came together for several special performances marking the 40^th anniversary of “Odessey & Oracle”. Argent and Blunstone maintain a touring version of the group that regularly visits the United States and Europe.

And so it came to pass that the Porretta Soul Festival turned 27 years old this July. This wonderful three-day event, held in the small and friendly spa town of Porretta Terme – about an hour south of Bologna on the train – grew from a desire by music mogul and diehard soul fan Graziano Uliani to pay tribute to his own hero, Otis Redding, by bringing some of the finest artists from he American South to Europe and presenting them in the charming surroundings of Porretta. In the years that have gone by since Porretta 1, Graziano has made his dreams – and those of southern soul lovers everywhere – come true time and time again.

There probably has never been a greater example of rock’n’roll revisionism than the current respect accorded to the Sonics. Cult heroes may come and go, but the Sonics’ ascension to become the quintessential garage rock band of all time is truly remarkable. Unlike, say, the Stooges or the Velvet Underground, there was really no awareness of the Sonics, outside of their native Pacific Northwest, until the late 1980s. Slowly but surely, the bands distinctive brand of noise has percolated up through generations of rock fans to almost enter the mainstream. For instance, in the past few years, the Sonics’ paint-peeling take on Richard Berry’s ‘Have Love Will Travel’ has been a regular fixture of television ads the world over.

There’s a simple reason why the Sonics strike such a chord. Theirs is likely the sharpest definition of garage rock that has ever existed. The rough-hewn quintet from blue-collar Tacoma, Washington drew from the implicit rawness of the 50s heroes like Little Richard and Jerry Lee, revved it up with post-British Invasion attitude, threw in the Northwest’s own unique translation of R&B energy, and in the process arrived at a sound that is the very essence of what rock should be: rock’n’roll boiled down to its very nub.

The core of the Sonics were the Parypa brothers, Larry on guitar and Andy on bass, who founded the group in the late 1950s. Like every other neophyte rock’n’roll combo in the Northwest, they looked up to local bigwigs the Wailers for inspiration. The embryonic group mutated through different personnel until singer and keyboardist Jerry Roslie entered the fray in late 1963, bringing along his school pals Rob Lind on sax and Bob Bennett on drums. Within months of this new line-up coming together, a drastic change occurred. Together as a band, the Sonics amped up their sound to a cruder, rougher style, in an almost subconscious attempt to distil the furious energy that beat at the heart of the rock’n’roll and R&B they so enjoyed.

Headquartered at teen hotspot The Red Carpet in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood, where the Sonics regularly jammed the joint, it wasn’t long before Buck Ormsby of the Wailers grabbed the quintet for the Wailers’ own Etiquette label. A first attempt to harness their fury in the recording studio left the group non-plussed, but when ‘The Witch’ was released in November 1964, it quickly began to get heavy airplay, capturing the imagination of teens around Puget Sound and beyond. No-one had heard rock quite that visceral on the radio in recent memory.

The follow-up, ‘Psycho’, was recorded in the spring at Kearney Barton’s famed Seattle facility, and was another Roslie-penned hamburger-throated opus. It became as big a hit with audiences and radio around the Northwest as ‘The Witch’, and both tunes rocked the airwaves well into the summer of 1965. The Sonics’ fiery template was firmly established by these first two singles, along with the fabulous sequels ‘Boss Hoss’ and ‘Shot Down’, and the entire contents of the album “Here Are The Sonics” - surely one of the most uncompromising debuts in rock history. Rather than pad out the record with the expected hits of the day, the band filled the grooves with choice interpretations of rock’n’roll and R&B classics, all laden with their patented trademarks – searing, abrasive guitar tones, guttural vocals and pounding, unrelenting drums. And Roslie displayed a very real knack for writing – and screaming - ear-catching originals such as the classic ‘Strychnine’.

Throughout most of 1965, the Sonics wreaked havoc on audiences the length and breadth of the Northwest and beyond, and simultaneously upped the ante of the entire region’s music scene. Most remarkably, the bands dynamism even effected a change upon their mentors the Wailers, whose post-Sonics recordings very clearly bore signs of their former apprentices’ influence. October of 1965 saw the release of a fourth Etiquette single, perhaps the most ferocious to date: ‘Cinderella’/ ‘Louie Louie’ was a double-whammy of epic proportions. It was accompanied by the Sonics’ second album, “Boom”, recorded at the lo-fi Wiley/Griffith studio in Tacoma but nevertheless continuing in the same full-blooded vein as previous releases.

Word had seeped out to other parts of the country about this wild young combo, and Sonics releases were getting a lot of interest from radio stations in markets as far away as Pittsburgh and Florida. This led the group to question Etiquette’s efficiency, and miscommunication between band and label ultimately meant that the Sonics decided to part ways with Ormsby in the spring of 1966. Waiting in the wings was Jerry Dennon, whose well-distributed Jerden imprint had most of the Northwest’s talent under contract. Dennon romanced the band with the possibility of national success.

At first, the Sonics’ Jerden singles acted as a natural progression from their no-holds-barred Etiquette sides, and the initial single, ‘You’ve Got Your Head On Backwards’, a Brit-styled pounder sung by Lind, was a strong seller in the autumn of 1966. At Dennon’s behest, the group traveled to Gold Star in Los Angeles for the sessions that would become their third and final album, “Introducing.” In retrospect, the sides the group cut there are certainly far better than is generally acknowledged, and including screamers such as ‘High Time’ and ‘Like No Other Man’. But the Sonics never really recaptured in Hollywood the pure unadulterated magic that their Etiquette sessions had in abundance, something reflected by the diminishing sales of their later Jerden releases.

From there on, it seemed all downhill. The combo continued for another year, making their first and only trip back east, but the military was at the door, and once they had finished with their education, various band members began to drop out in 1967 or, like Roslie, just quit unexpectedly. The single ‘Lost Love’ was their last rocking effort but in truth, there didn’t seem to be a place for Sonics-style dementia in the face of flower power. In a cruel twist of fate, a faceless Holiday Inn lounge act inherited the band’s good name, and watered it down well into the next decade.

However, the legend of Tacoma’s once-raging rock machine began to gather moss after collectors outside the Northwest happened across the amazing Etiquette records, and began theorising in magazines such as Creem in the mid-1970s as to what kind of band could have created such a noise. Shortly afterwards, a renewed energy resurfaced in rock’n’roll that correlated exactly with the emotions that the Sonics had espoused a decade before: punk rock. The resourceful Ormsby had hung onto the band’s vintage masters, and began to reissue them in an attempt to keep the band’s memory alive. He eventually struck a deal with Big Beat for a comprehensive anthology of the Sonics’ Etiquette material, which was released in 1993 as “Psycho-Sonic”.

Fast forward to the late 2000s. “Psycho-Sonic”, now remastered after the discovery of ear-blasting first-generation tapes, is one of the best-selling items in the entire Ace Records catalogue, in the process turning a couple of generations onto the band’s savage sound. The best of the Sonics’ Jerden sides, including unissued material, is included on the exhaustive Big Beat series “Northwest Battle Of The Bands”. And in an unprecedented and exciting turn of events, the Sonics have recently reformed around the core of Jerry, Larry and Rob to dish out some long-overdue authentic Sonics rock’n’roll, delighting fans around the world in the process. Make sure you don’t miss them – but grab a hold of “Psycho Sonic” first, to properly understand what all the fuss is about.

In the roll call of 1960s garage band heroes, the Chocolate Watchband reside at the very top. Their notoriety derives from the handful of singles and LPs that they made, balanced between the Watchband’s own intense Anglophilic blues wailing, and mysterioso studio trickery on the half of producer Ed Cobb. Their best-known cut is probably ‘Let’s Talk About Girls’, which appeared on the seminal 1972 garage band sampler “Nuggets,”, but the Chocolate Watchband have many more such gems within their vintage catalogue, all of which is available to you in fully remastered sound on Big Beat Records.

The original Chocolate Watchband was formed in the autumn of 1965 at Foothill College on the San Francisco peninsula, with a six-man line-up that featured guitarist Mark Loomis and drummer Gary Andrijasevich. Playing the R&B and folk rock of the day, the outfit did some recording, but outside of their unusual name, made little impression beyond local gigs in the San Jose area. The draft and the departure of key personnel rent the group asunder late in the year, but Loomis determined to reassemble the band with a new line-up, including rhythm guitarist Sean Tolby, bass player Bill Flores and on lead vocals, San Jose State student David Aguilar.

Though it had been Loomis’ group up until this point, Aguilar was the spark that moved the Watchband to the top of the class. Within weeks of this line-up getting together, they took San Jose by storm, blasting their way to the top of the local circuit with a scintillating, mesmerizing set of Americanized Stones, Yardbirds and Animals covers. Aguilar in particular was a master of dynamics, and the singer directed his mod-togged combo through sets that made the new Watchband the talk of the local circuit. In the summer of 1966 the group signed with manager Ron Roupe, whose connections included Ed Cobb of Green Grass Productions, then riding high in the chart with the Standells. In quick succession Cobb inked the Watchband and ushered them to Los Angeles to record.

Technically, the first release was ‘Blues Theme,’ a pseudonymous instrumental cover credited to The Hogs, but the Watchband’s debut proper was the Cobb-penned ‘Sweet Young Thing’, perfectly suited to the group’s arrogant punk stance. It was released in December 1966 on Tower Records’ R&B imprint Uptown, an unusual choice of label which meant that the group was subsequently perceived by some agents as a black act. The single’s flip was an atmospheric reading of Dylan’s perennial ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. 

Moving into 1967, the Chocolate Watchband was constantly at work, either at the plethora of teen hotspots and psychedelic ballrooms in the Bay Area, or at clubs and ballrooms up and down the California coast, leaving a trail of ardent fans and wrecked cloakrooms in their wake. They continued to record with Cobb, and made a remarkable and unforgettable appearance in the classic teen rampage flick Riot On Sunset Strip. The upbeat, undeniably commercial ‘Misty Lane’ became the next single, coupled with an orchestrated ballad, ‘She Weaves A Tender Trap’, a choice the group openly questioned, and only recorded under duress. It was a harbinger of things to come.

Another exploitation movie, The Love-Ins provided the third Watchband single, ‘Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In)’, written and recorded in just one day in order to make the filming schedule. The freaky flip, ‘No Way Out’ was an equally off-the-cuff recording, evolving from a studio warm-up jam. Both sides of the single – this time on the Tower label proper - captured the Chocolate Watchband at the peak of their powers. Sadly, it was also to prove this line-up’s swansong, for shortly after the release of the single in June 1967, Aguilar, Loomis and Andrijasevich all suddenly quit the group, principally over musical direction. Flores and Tolby were left the lurch with a month’s worth of bookings, but the pair quickly assembled an interim Watchband, with personnel that included Tim Abbott on guitar. However, this line-up was to struggle through only until the end of 1967.

That September, shortly after the Loomis/Aguilar line-up had imploded, Tower Records had released the debut Chocolate Watchband album, “No Way Out”, following it swiftly in February 1968 with another long-player attributed to the combo, “The Inner Mystique”. The label had given both albums pop-art sleeves with little identification of the band or its members, while the contents of each mixed bona fide outtakes from the band’s sessions for Green Grass, with trippy instrumentals and overdubbed tracks, many of which did not feature the band at all. Most worryingly, in several places Aguilar’s original lead vocals had been replaced by those of a faceless sessioneer.

The group’s members were outraged, but despite, or perhaps because of, these disingenuous releases, interest in the Chocolate Watchband remained strong, prompting Green Grass to approach Tolby and Flores in the autumn of 1968 and induce them to reform the band for a third album. Loomis, Andrijasevich and erstwhile members Ned Torney and Danny Phay returned to the fold. The mostly original “One Step Beyond”, was the brief and somewhat diffuse result, with nary a trace of the Watchband of old. Some desultory tours followed in its wake, with Tolby the only visible original member of the group, and in 1970 the band finally split for good. In the late 1990s, the band reunited and have since intermittently returned to both the studio and the stage, thrilling fans both old and new.

Their live power brought them notoriety back in the day, but it was the band’s mysterious catalogue that spurred the growth of a posthumous cult reputation for the Chocolate Watchband as psychedelic punks par excellence. By the 1980s the group’s catalogue was getting regularly reissued and, with a degree of irony, the records were venerated as much for the duplicitous instrumentals and studio fill, as for the authentic snarl of David Aguilar. Big Beat is proud to be foremost amongst the champions of the Watchband, beginning with our original Best Of, “Forty Four”, followed by repackages of the band’s three vintage albums, and finally and most definitively with the “Melts In Your Brain . . . Not On Your Wrist” anthology. This double disc set not only contains their complete studio recordings, but also features demos, backing tracks and for the first time, Aguilar’s reclaimed vocals for ‘Let’s Talk About Girls’ and other tracks, along with detailed notes that explain which cuts are real Watchband and which are the fake.

The vaults of Scepter, Wand and Musicor were the first to which we gained unlimited access. The great thing about that from a personal point of view was that my co-founder of the 6Ts soul club, Randy Cozens, had championed Scepter and Wand since the mid-60s. Wand’s main acts, Chuck Jackson and Maxine Brown, were the most played and revered artists to feature at our dances.

Florence Greenberg had formed the labels in the late 50s, recording mainly black acts from the New York area. The success of the company was guaranteed once the Shirelles began a string of hits in 1960 with the chart-topper ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’. An astute businesswoman with a great feel for the music, Florence knew to employ the cream of producers, arrangers and songwriters available and could hustle with the best of them. This was shown with her purchase of Maxine Brown’s contract from the major ABC label when her career there stalled.

Florence’s ability to get some of the best songs from the Brill Building and 1650 Broadway writers was demonstrated in the stream of pop-soul masterpieces that she secured for Dionne Warwick from the hottest composers in town, Bacharach and David. Scepter also boasted Tommy Hunt, whose record ‘Human’ was a big R&B hit, and later pop singer B.J. Thomas, who sold millions of records in the second half of the 60s. Those major talents were augmented by acts such as Rosco Robinson, Freddie Hughes and Nella Dodds, as well as great one-miss-wonders Jack Montgomery, Wally Cox, the Ivorys and the Gentleman Four.

The first few various artist compilations Kent issued featured mainly the lesser-known acts whose discs had been adopted by the Northern Soul scene. There were also solo sets from Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, Tommy Hunt and the Shirelles. In 1984 we gained access to the Nashville-housed master tapes and unearthed a slew of wonderful unissued recordings. To British soul fans’ ears it was almost criminal that they had been deemed not good enough for public consumption. Tracks from Maxine, Chuck, the Shirelles, Tommy, Bettye Lavette, Maurice Williams and others helped revitalise a sub-culture that had struggled through the early 80s.

Playing an equal part in this belated New York soul explosion was the Musicor catalogue. Musicor sported the Platter’s stunning mid-60s period, Porgy & the Monarchs, Jimmy Radcliffe, Sammy Ambrose and a single by the young Melba Moore. By the mid-70s, Melba’s 45 had enjoyed enough plays on the UK’s soul dance circuit to warrant bootlegging, but it was the discovery of the third track from the session, the soulful original version of ‘The Magic Touch’ (as recorded by the Bobby Fuller Four), which shook the rare soul world. With all the qualities of the best Wigan Casino dancers, it became massive across the UK’s Northern scene and quickly spread via scooterists and mods right across Europe. Coming at the peak of that first Euro soul movement, it was one of the key records to convert so many devoted soul fans.