The Zipps

Pass the Dutchie

Be Stoned! Dig The Zipps - Pseudonym 1999
Rating = 6

The Zipps were a delightful little mid-'60s Merseybeat band from the Nether Regions, playing their zippy peppy tunes with an Easybeats-esque sense of decent mid-60s hookery before diving headlong into mind-not-expanding harpsichord-fuelled light psycho-delia. The hooks may not be timeless, but there's certainly a lot of unintentional humor to be enjoyed! First of all, who doesn't adore an adorable Dutch accent? "Hurt" becomes "Hirt," "too" becomes "tu" with an umlaut over the u, and the adoration of adorable angora ardure arbor

Instead of making unlimited fun of the Dutch and their silly Dutch ways (i.e. splitting the check whenever they go out on a date), why don't I describe the band's history chronologically? Wouldn't that be nice? Seemingly not content to rely on the speedy Chuck Berryisms of "Highway Gambler" and charmingly naive Bo Diddlyisms of "Roll The Cotton Down" that adorned their harmless and catchy debut single, the band quickly progressed to writing darker and more dynamic (not to mention shake-your-headingly dated) '60s lingo pieces like "Hipsterism" and "Kicks And Chicks" ("So hang arond, stick arond - git yir kicks! Hang arond, stick arond, git yir chicks!") Catchy? Heck yes! Good tunes all around those two are, with recorders, jazzy guitar solos and everything. But The Zipps' career wasn't over yet. Not by a longshoreman!

The drug use continued, resulting in the 15-minute Dutch-language (if there IS in fact a "Dutch language") "Beat And Poetry" single, which is exactly what it sounds like, and not in a good way. This was followed by the much more enjoyable (if not for the reasons they intended) laugh-yourself-hoarse "Marie Juana" (a FAR too dramatic harpsichord song about a.... "girl".... named "Marie Juana") and what I'd have to guess was intended as a legitimate novelty track, "The Struggle For Ice-Cold Milk of Benzi The Bassplayer or How To Promote Original Dutch Milk" (or "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite Part II," if you ask my vocal melody). After this they backed up some lowlife non-American lounge singer for one unlistenably bland single before all bustin' up, reforming a couple years later to record the fuzzed-out mind-expanding drug fucking over-serious idiocy "When You Tell It, Tell It Well" and its presumed b-side, the cool evil thumping psych-beat nugget "Lotus Love." Then there's a couple of live tunes, a non-English interview that's news to me, and four hundred billion goddamned alternate versions of "Kicks And Chicks" for all those folks who bought the disc after hearing the Nuggets Vol. II box set.

In an eggshell, The Zipps had maybe five great songs, and lots of other "okay" ones. Is this compilation a must-own? Oh, Christ no, not even a little bit. But it sure is diverse, weird, foreign, funny, embarrassing and every once in a while quite musically fulfilling in an "also-ran" '60s rock-into-early-psychedelia way. Yes, Messrs. Noyten, Santoro, Elzerman, Bek, Visschers, Van Seventer, Klein and Verschoor; your pot-drenched beat music shall live forever in the hearts and minds of all who have heard it. And as a top-selling band once sang, "When the heart rules the mind, one look and love is blind." Ah yes, who can forget that hit, the first of three dozen chart-topping successes for the recently-knighted GTR?

Say! That reminds me of a little joke. What did the newspaper headlines say when Alice Cooper's son fell off a building and a member of a mid '60s Dutch band saved his life before he hit the ground?

"Zippser Catches Kin!"

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Add your thoughts about the hilarious Alice Cooper joke (and/or Zipps album)?


Click clack paddy wack, give my dog a loan.