Song Of The Day 6/6/2015: Q65 – “I Was Young”


Nuggets Week: We wrap up this psychedelicized week, which I must say I enjoyed immensely, with Q65 from the Netherlands. "The Life I Live" and "Cry In the Night," different sides of the same single, both found their way onto Nuggets II. But there's a great, dusty emotional component to "I Was Young" that seeps through to my higher consciousness, if I've managed to develop one. Q65 are one of the more primal units you'll encounter in the Nuggets biosphere; there's a philosophical link from the Pretty Things to Q65 to the careening jaunts of the Stooges. They formed in The Hague, which is one of my favorite cities in Europe whose name begins with an article. This is The Hague. Don't accept cheap imitations.

Q65 were also notable for one of the more amusing and comprehensively pointless publicity stunts of the '60s, although there's some disagreement amongst web mavens as to what actually happened. What's known for sure is that they traveled to London to do a couple of shows, but were denied visas and wound up only doing publicity and photo appearances wherever they were being detained in England. It's at that point that somebody dreamed up the publicity stunt, but accounts differ as to how it was executed. The legend says that upon their refusal from England, they boarded a rubber lifeboat and paddled 12 hours across the English Channel to the pier at Scheveningen, a beach district in The Hague. They were met there by 30,000 screaming fans who got a free open-air concert. However, other (frankly much more likely) accounts said they left England aboard a ship, and only got into the rubber lifeboats when they saw the Scheveningen shoreline from the water. This whole naval exercise made them famous in their home country and gave them a Top 10 hit there, making the blow of England giving them the shift less painful. That could never happen today. Now they'd just throw their cell phones in the lifeboat and monitor them with drones. Not very pop. Not very pop at all.

What a nice week. I think a sequel's in order down the road. Now go dig up some Nuggets of your own.

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