The Outsiders
C.Q.

Necessary preface: I apologize in advance for having delved so deeply into this work, but if you have the strength (if not the pleasure) to reach the end, you will agree with me that we are dealing with an absolute masterpiece.

At the end of the golden decade of the 60s, the musical madness dubbed Freak-Beat explodes in the Netherlands, formed by a myriad of groups that assimilate in a frantic manner all the artistic styles coming from across the English Channel, and more than any other European scene, it also proves receptive to the more “difficult” American proposals. Many of these bands simply adopt the style of the moment, while others try to contaminate it with classical reminiscences… The Outsiders (often mistakenly confused with their Cleveland namesakes) transform their powerfully bluesy sound from their early days into a bewildering rock fresco, hypothetically painted by the visionary Hyeronimous Bosch.
In 1968, Polygram releases (in very few, rarely found copies) the epitaph of the Amsterdam band, which just one season later would implode on itself, with leader Wally Tax seeking fortune in the States with the Tax Free project. “C.Q.” truly is a complete album, where nothing sounds superfluous and where every single idea is perfectly set in its right place. “Misfit” begins with a thumping bass that leads and completes a garage ride that starts from the 13th Floor Elevator and reaches Radio Birdman, but with a dark Central European atmosphere, which never leaves the track. “Zsarrah” is a hypothetical crazy three-way dialogue between Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Syd Barrett, with the Byrds placing them on their soft flying carpet… and they transport them into the title-track, in a deep and expanded non-dimension where cosmic waves disturb the frequency of the signal from a drifting spaceship that mechanically repeats “Do you receive me...???”, until the final explosion. “Daddy Died On Saturday” sounds as if Lou Reed, unusually lucid, was performing a composition written by David Bowie and Donovan in tandem (for those not paying attention, remember we are only in '68). “It Seems Like Nothing's Gonna Come To My Way Today” is a subdued bluesy exercise, stripped of warmth from its soul… a field where Faust would explore every possibility just a few years later. “Doctor” is a perfect space-garage exercise, bringing us back down to earth after an “Interstellar Overdrive”, futuristic in its concrete music intermezzo. “The Man On The Dune” is folk-core… the Dead Kennedys played by the Doors. “The Bear” is little more than a minute of gypsy western, introducing the lightning-fast hyper-blues of “Happyville”. “You’re Everything On Earth” is a soft ballad anticipating by thirty years the cultured pop insights of bands like Galaxie 500, The American Analog Set, or Belle And Sebastian. “Wish You Were Here With Me Today” claustrophobically expresses the folk-lysergic visions of the psychedelic west-coast (Byrds and Love above all), while in “I Love You, No. 2”, an acid solo is fitted into a perfect exercise of easy-listening, nocturnal and nebulous. But it is in the final “Prison Song” that they manage to do the impossible, mixing everything and everyone in just 5 minutes and 37 seconds of pure freak madness… anticipating the cultured folk of Nick Drake and the shifted one of Barrett, which involves psychodelic rock in the manner of Country Joe or Kaleidoscope (USA) before a sinister tremolo makes everything explode into a “core” version of a rock’n’roll standard, only to then enter, with a sudden stop, into the space of a mini kraut suite with a heart that beats to industrial echoes of garage blues. And here we are outside... tried and happy.

For intellectual honesty and chronic duty, I add only that the beautiful Pseudonym reissue of 2001 adds 5 bonus tracks, drawn from the singles of the period and alternative versions of tracks contained in the album.