Scorpio’s Dance
Reviewing Shocking Blue’s big hit Venus in January, I wrote that their first album was:
well worth a listen as an example of a forward-thinking European band fully aware of what’s happening across the Atlantic–especially, I think, Jefferson Airplane. It’s well-played and well-produced, and I prefer it to Jefferson Airplane.
Scorpio’s Dance was their second album, and I’m not quite so taken with it, although I enjoyed listening to it. Like their first album, it is very proficiently played, sung and produced and has a sharp eye for the commercial market. The problem is that it was the market of late 1969 rather than 1970 and, to my ears, would already have sounded dated by the time it was released.
Their influences are obvious, but well chosen: there are distant echoes of Pentangle on I Love Voodoo Music, and Water Boy sounds in parts more like Jefferson Airplane than Jefferson Airplane did, once the sitar and tabla stop, Mariska Veres sounding very like Grace Slick (so close that it has to be deliberate). There’s an early recognition of country-rock on Sally Was A Good Girl. The title track is varied enough to foresee where progressive rock might go.
As I’ve said a number of times during this project, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this record, and plenty to recommend it in terms of the playing (Klaasje van de Wal’s bass is tight throughout), and I mentioned Robbie van Leeuwen as a guitarist and songwriter in January, but, for me, it’s a bit of a near miss. Perhaps if they hadn’t been so focused on the market and just played it would have been better: they certainly had the talent.
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