The Zombies Album: “The Singles Collection”

I feel that this update of the See For Miles version of "The Singles A's & B's" is a bit flawed. The sound is amazing in mono (where the original was issued in stereo) but the material can already be found in the 4 CD Box Set "Zombie Heaven." PLUS, the omission of the US Only Single "I Want Her Back Again/I Remember When I Loved Her" really hurts the difinitive-ness of this set. If you want the complete set of mono mixes stick with the box set...it's not as streamlined as this CD but it gives you everything you want from the Zombies. Big Beat has done a great job so far with upgrading the Zombies' catalog for the digital age and what I'd really like to see next is a singles set featuring newly remastered stereo mixes (including the US Only single).

It's hard to choose between "The Singles Collection" and the one disc "Absolutely the Best." TSC may be more than than a casual listener needs of this group. If you need all the forgettable B-sides here, you're a candidate for the "Zombies Heaven" box that has everything they ever did. On ATB you get three of the very best Zombies songs that are NOT on TSC: The Way I Feel Inside, I Want You Back Again, and Gotta Get a Hold of Myself. (That is, the best songs before their great "Odessey & Oracle" album - get the 30th Anniversary Edition!)

It all started with the soft voice and engrossing organ of "She's not there" lost on a tape of 60's Best Of. Digging a little in the hope of finding more nuggets I found this Singles Collection. What can I say? Pure gold and probably one of the most underrated 60s act, which is just plain incomprehensible considering the consistant qualities of the singles that the Zombies produced during their brief carrier. I guess they might have seemed a bit too nice at a time when other bands were busy adding Sex and Drugs to Rock 'n Roll (nothing wrong with that either), and competing for public attention with the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, etc. just can't have been easy. Still the Zombies' songs remain, pure pop gems.

She's Not There, Tell Her No, Time Of The Season, I Love You, and ...

If you were around in the 60's waiting for the year you would be drafted to "better serve your patriotic duty" in Southeast Asia, you heard many of these songs on the radio numerous times as you watched others leave for Vietnam. You also knew every group on the radio, as you might have been a teenager living on an AM diet and only experiencing the "elite" FM for the first time in the late '60s - most car radios only came with AM until the 1970s. If you were truly a convert after "FM" mobile, you also had an 8-track tape player for an even better play of favorites. In '68, "I Love You" was rendered by the group "People" - from where the song became best known across the USA radio charts, even though the Zombies published it years before.

If you were at least five years old or more, you couldn't help but remember the top chart Zombies songs as they were often played - and this CD has them. As I recall, the Zombies were one Hell of a big step forward from the so-called King, Elvis - the Elvis I even once liked in the 50's for "Jail House Rock" and "Hound Dog". You could also hear the Zombies (and Elvis) in Southeast Asia and most anywhere on shortwave radio, or while on R&R - usually butchered by some foreign group trying to imitate them to entertain the masses and soldiers. Yeah, you know what R&R was also - if you were there. Daily it was a nasty memory to live, so I often retreated to music to stay sane, even if it was only hearing it in my mind. While this music awakened memories of almost 40 years back, many I would prefer to forget, it awakened more of the better ones stateside as a youngster still in school.

Actually, there are more than a few of the songs on this CD that could compete with popular songs of today. I'm almost surprised there aren't groups today that are adopting some of these songs into "new" hits - just as the "People" did in 1968 with "I Love You". On the other hand, maybe they have and I just haven't heard about it. I seldom can stand listening to radio very long these days - without inserting a good CD like this one or plugging my ears, even in heavy traffic. With Digital AM and FM, more groups should be getting exposure using the new radio formats - but then, good local DJs like we had in the 1960s are few and far between now. Most of them now are un-hip, hop-head, Be-Bops drowning in a deep drumming old fish barrel. They don't know how DJs and station managers were successfully promoting groups and making money in the 60's. The really cool people today don't know what they've missed - military action aside. That loss tends to make them a distortion of what cool really was - and still is. The Zombies were a cool group - and their music still is.

This CD is made from original master tapes and the songs on it sound every bit as good as they did on vinyl in the 60's - better in fact, as media players of today reproduce sounds much better. In comparison, to early AM and FM or vinyl, this CD gives a better distinctive "pop" to the music and vocals - making the music a much cleaner studio sound.

What makes The Zombies so interesting is that they produced three oddly syncopated, jazz-infused and wonderfully different singles: "She's Not There", "Tell Her No" and the beautifully atmospheric "Time of the Season"... so good that no 60s collection is complete without them... plus two further "you really should have them" singles in "Whenever You're Ready" & "Care of Cell 44". Problem is how do you find them on the same CD. Well here's one of a couple of compilations that include all five, surrounded by several other equally distinctive tracks and a large amount of intriguing, but probably "destined to be played only a couple of times" stuff. Worth the money?... well that depends on how many of their "classics" you already own.