Hometown: St. Albans, England
Formed: 1962

Personnel:

Colin Blunstone -vocals
Rod Argent -keyboards, backing vocals, songwriting
Chris White -bass, backing vocals, songwriting
Paul Arnold -guitar
Hugh Grundy -drums

Bands In The Family:
Argent, Chris White, Colin Blunstone, Alan Parsons Project, Luka Bloom, Roger Daltrey, Nancy Griffith, Tanita Tikaram

Beatles, schmeatles; the Fab Four were all washed up by 1967. The Rolling Stones? Irrelevant poseurs in whiteface. We love The Animals, The Kinks, and The Who, but they all wandered off the path. So only one contender remains for the title of the greatest British pop group of the 1960s: clearly, it was The Zombies. This disc consists of the twenty-eight singles and b-sides they released during their tragically short career. It is a perfect album from stem to stern, you need it in your life, go now.

If nothing else, for their three big hits, all written by Zombie genius and funky organist Rod Argent. I am assuming you are familiar with "She's Not There," which puts so much heartbreak, confusion and pop joy into its two minutes and twenty-six seconds that I still cannot believe Argent isn't Smokey Robinson's British cousin. "Tell Her No" is probably the very definition of twee, and, of course, "Time Of The Season," which is slinky and hooky and is the first recorded instance of white people using the phrase "Who's your daddy?" Whatever you end up paying for this CD, these three songs are worth it, trust yer old Uncle Matt on this one.

But the brilliance of this band is that the other songs are almost as good. The singles are nearly all perfect, humming with intriguing chord changes and left-field lyrics; check "Care of Cell 44," a sensitive ballad to an imprisoned girlfriend, or "Leave Me Be," written by second banana Chris White, in which the narrator tries to explain to his friends that he needs to be alone until he stops feeling sorry for himself about his breakup. And the b-sides are real hard chargers, too, from the stomp of 1964's "Woman" to 1968's "I'll Call You Mine." There are also some ahead-of-their-time production techniques here, like Colin Blunstone walking up to the microphone, singing the beginning of "The Way I Feel Inside" a cappella, and then dropping a tuppence and walking away at the end of the song. Weird shit everyone slept on, and shame on them.

The icing on the cake is the packaging of this disc. Instead of some bullshit essay about the group, their importance blah blah blah, the liner notes consist almost entirely of the reviews the singles received at the time. One of the reviews for 1965's "Whenever You're Ready" begins, "I love the clever Zombies." Well, damn it, so do I, and so will you. They are the missing perfect pop band of the '60s and this album proves it.