Friday 1st June

What can I say about Colin, his voice is one of the most instantly recognizable and wonderful sounds in Music.  He was in the Zombies, who had an instant hit in 1964 with ‘She’s Not There’.  In 1968 they recorded their swan song album ‘Odyssey and Oracle’; after its poor reception and a string of under-achieving singles the band decided to break up and go their separate ways.  Colin actually returned to try his hand at his old job in insurance, before making a string of beautiful albums in the early seventies; One Year’, ‘Ennismore’ and ‘Journey’  where he performed with a string quartet, as well as the more usual pop backing.  He has always remained friends with his former band-mates, and they have reformed from time to time and still tour occasionally.  Colin has recently released a couple of albums with Rod Argent, another Zombie, but it is the early trilogy I return to time and time again, those and the constantly re-issued work of the originally Zombies, who are now recognized as one of the great seminal voices of British Pop, and the album that was so neglected in 1968 is now rated as their masterpiece.

But through it all, like red lettering through a stick of rock has been the crystal clear and yet slightly vulnerable voice of Colin Blunstone singing  ‘Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright, but she’s not there.’  Or ‘The nearer we got to Andorra, the sun set on the land.’  And best of all ‘I realise that I’ve been in your eyes some kind of fool, so say you don’t mind, you don’t mind, you let me off this time.’