Q 65 “Revolution” 1966/2015. Limited edition reissue on gold vinyl. Blues and soul influenced garage rock from the Netherlands. The liner notes are entirely in Dutch so after putting the first sentence through Google translate (it reads “When I get out of the elevator, a friendly Phonogram teacher is waiting for me) and deciding that was too much work, I’m just posting the back cover here if anyone else wants to put in the effort.

Revolution was Q 65’s first record and it’s an excellent mix of hard psych and bluesy garage originals and American blues and soul covers. My top picks of the Q 65 originals: “I Got Nightmares” which has Jagger-level maracas and a killer Bo Diddley beat, “Just Who’s In Sight” an exotic psych number and the growly “Summerthoughts in a Field of Weed.” The best cover is hands-down their raucous version of Willie Dixon’s “Down in the Bottom.” Also pretty great are “I’m a Man” (Bo Diddley), the dirty blues “Spoonful” (also by Willie Dixon) and the slinky “Get Out of My Life, Woman” originally by Allen Toussaint. The record is capped off by an epic rendition of “Bring It On Home” (written by Dixon and released/performed by Sonny Boy Williamson) pre-dating Zeppelin’s version by three years.

Because up until now I knew absolutely nothing about Q 65, I’ll pull some quotes from Allmusic’s biography of them here: “The Q 65 were Frank Nuyens (guitar, vocals, sax, flute, harmonica), Willem Bieler (vocals, harmonica), Peter Vink (bass), Joop Roelofs (guitar), and Jay Baar (drums), first got together in 1965, in the Hague. The city was known as “the Liverpool of the Netherlands,” with a music scene that had been thriving since the end of the ’50s…The group’s professed influences were American soul acts like Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding, yet somehow, when they performed, what they played came out closer in form and spirit to the likes of the Pretty Things, the Downliners Sect, and the Yardbirds than it did to any of those soul acts, at least at first…The album [Revolution]sold 3,5000 copies, a respectable number in the Netherlands, and established the group sufficiently to rate a spot playing with the Small Faces, the Spencer Davis Group, the Kinks, and the Pretty Things when they toured Holland.”

Q 65 did not make any significant inroads to the UK or US market – but this story about them trying is hilarious: when trying to promote the single “The Life I Live” which opens Revolution, their label’s management wanted to promote them in England “which led to a publicity stunt that was not only a waste of time, but utterly foolish, sending the group to England by boat and having them come ashore in a rubber lifeboat, as though they’d come across the ocean that way. They were then supposed to play a gig, but as nobody had secured work permits, the group was only able to pose for photographs and press interviews before returning to the Netherlands. The Q 65 were greeted at the shore in Schevenning when they landed (again manning the lifeboat to land) by 30,000 fans, and ended up playing a gig right there at the pier. The band may not have done much for themselves in England, but they garnered a Top Ten hit in the Netherlands.”