Song Book: Robbie van Leeuwen

Robbie van Leeuwen… “Robbie who?” is probably the reaction from most of you, but once you know he was the lead guitarist, sitarist, background vocalist, and songwriter of the Dutch band Shocking Blue… 

This post is courtesy of Richard who suggested it and helpfully sent me a zipfile with 30 covers! However I must admit that besides Shocking Blue my knowledge regarding Robbie was rather limited as well, consequently I started surfing the web and went down the digital rabbit hole...
In fact Robbie has had quite a musical history as he was active in various groups both before and after Shocking Blue, e.g. The Motions, Galaxy-Lin, and Mistral. 

The Motions were a Dutch band from The Hague and active from 1964 until 1970. Their Nederbeat sound brings back memories of listening daily to the radio… 

I remember Shocking Blue clearly as sexy lead singer Mariska Veres made quite an impression to put it mildly and they were active from 1967 to 1974 with several hits.
Their Venus was a monster hit all over the world and has seen countless covers over the years and even lesser known tracks like Love-Buzz got covered by Nirvana! 

The follow-up Galaxy-Lin was another Dutch pop rock band founded in 1973 by Robbie van Leeuwen in which electric mandolins played a central role. Unfortunately after only 2 albums Robbie pulled the plug out of Galaxy-Lin, but their hit Long Hot Summer (1975) is definitely still worth listening to. 

Together with Rick van der Linden, Robbie founded Mistral in 1977, a completely different kind of musical beast; synth pop anyone?
I needed to check them on YouTube and indeed Starship 109 gave me one of those OMG moments, at the time I don’t even think I was aware that Robbie was part of that ‘weird’ synthesizer band.
I never was a fan of Mistral, but must admit that their performance of Jamie was pretty off the wall! 

In the early 1990s Robbie gave up on the music business and moved to Luxembourg.

What’s fascinating are the relatively large number of covers released in other languages; Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, Czech, Italian, Japanese, French, and even Cambodian!

Main songs that were covered at the time included: Venus, Never Marry A Railroad Man, & Send Me A Postcard.

Love Buzz was completely ignored until Nirvana got famous and fans discovered their 1988 cover.

Therefore the first CD focuses on covers from the beginning until 1988.

Since then lots of artists and groups have rediscovered Robbie’s songs and tackled them in various ways.

The second CD has more recent covers and although most covers follow the originals closely we do have some exceptions, incl. Italian Brass & Roll, electronic, & Indonesian dub reggae versions of Love Buzz!

Besides the covers I also added a few originals, incl. one song each by: The Motions, Shocking Blue (pre Mariska Veres), Galaxy-Lin, Mistral (with Mariska!), & Cat's Eye (Robbie's last band).