Golden Earring - Moontan

Well, I guess ya can't get more Classic Rock than the album that gave us Radar Love, can you?  I have had this for years and years and years.  I think my original copy is a late 70's US pressing, but I saw a really nice German one in Florida a few days ago in an altogether boring record store, with an altogether bored clerk who wouldn't hardly talk to me at all.  I hate that!  I figure if it's just you and me in the store and you're just reading the album cover for the record that's spinning (Bowie's Ziggy Stardust the Motion Picture Soundtrack), then maybe you could use someone to make your day go a little faster.  But I guess this dude was really interested in knowing what address the record label was at.  Besides, it was a shitty, beat up copy of a pretty dull album.  I mean, the movie works okay, but if you wanna hear The Spiders live, you really should be doing Santa Monica 72, doncha think?

The cool thing about the German one is that it has the cover with the girl on it instead of that awful picture of a woman's ear.  I guess the other cool thing is that the track listing is different than the US version, too.  What makes this album confusing is that in the US original versions came with the US tracklisting and the girl on the cover, but it was soon replaced with the dumb ear picture.  The songs stayed the same, though.  That record usually seems to command a pretty good chunk of change, and if you ask me, the imports have better songs, so I always wanted to find a reasonably priced import version.  Problem is, most places just see the girl on the cover and stamp a twenty dollar (or more) price tag on it.  So I never got one until a few days ago.

The US and import versions have four songs in common, Radar Love, Candy's Going Bad, The Vanilla Queen and Are You Receiving Me.  The US version adds Big Tree, Blue Sea to these.  The import adds Just Like Vince Taylor and Suzy Lunacy (Mental Rock).  The former was available in the US on the flipside of the Radar Love single.  My brother had that 45, and I always liked that song, though I had no idea who Vince Taylor was.  I was a little disappointed when I bought the album and got Big Tree, Blue Sea, which is easily the least of all these songs.  It's not bad, it's just not memorable.

So this is another of those albums that came out in 1973, and that year seems to be one that really worked for me.  Maybe the songs on the charts had good guitars in them that year.  We used to hang around at the pool in my friend's development all day, every day.  The lifeguards played the radio all day, and I could just hang out and listen all I wanted back then.  I used to get in to the pool even when my friend wasn't there because all the guards swam for my dad at the high school, plus I'd be a ringer on their swim team and if I was on the team, they'd win four events.  The only time that wouldn't work is if some kid I swam against in AAU or the YMCA lived in another development and recognized me and whined to his coach.  It was pretty fun for me because it was the only time I ever raced and really didn't feel any pressure to win.

Dad used to drive me to swim practice or meets sometimes.  Mom or the other kids' parents did it more often because swimming season kinda meant my dad was busy with the high school team.  But I remember being all ready to go and sitting up front with dad and punching in G98 or whatever the FM Top 40 station was back then and Radar Love came on one day.  My brother and I are like, "Yeah!  Turn it UP!"  So dad does.  He liked music and always thought it was actually important, even if the music I listened to was pure crap.  He figured I'd eventually like "good" music if he encouraged me with the music I already did like.  So anyway, we're digging Radar Love, in a car, the way you're supposed to dig Radar Love.  And our Dutch singer, George Kooymans, tries to get his Dutch tongue around "and the longing gets too much," and dad freaks out, and changes the station to anything that comes next.  I'm incredulous!

"Dad!  What are you doing?  That's Radar Love!"

He looks pissed and says, "I won't have any swearing on my radio!  You're not allowed to listen to that!"

I couldn't believe it!  My dad was censoring something?  I got in trouble for taking a Playboy to school because my dad always let me read anything I said I could understand (his Playboy subscription mysteriously ran out soon after I took one to school).  I knew that he was thinking he said "bitch" in there, but no amount of my pleading would get him to understand that.  I really fucked it all up when I told him my little brother had the record, man!  I got the stinkeye from him for awhile, but I don't think dad took the record away.

Good times, huh?

So anyway, I like this record a lot.  Especially the import version.  It opens each side with the two best songs, Candy's Going Bad on side one, and Radar Love on side two.  Both of those songs are catchy, just the right length and hold up pretty well over the decades that have gone by.  We used to get Are You Receiving Me and The Vanilla Queen now and then on the late night radio shows (and college back then) and I just always loved when they came on.  They're both a little Prog Rockish, and maybe a little psych and some hard rock.  It just works, and I always thought it was weird that they really seemed to blow everything that had on this one record.  I remember seeing them do Radar Love on Midnight Special or something and the drummer jumped over his drum kit after the song was over.  Keith Moon never coulda done that!  At least not without biting it in a big way.  It was weird that Golden Earring just never seemed to go anywhere after this one really good album.

So both of mine are in really nice shape.  I'll usually play the import version because I like the track listing better than the US, but I also think it sounds better.  The US one sounds okay, but the import just has more dynamic range to it.  I've heard some people kind of disparage this in the intervening years, but it's really a pretty darned good record.  Yeah, it sounds like the 70's, but there were some really cool things about the 70's.  Besides, who can keep their foot off their accelerator when Radar Love comes on, anyway?