Nuggets II: Kicks and Chicks by The Zipps

The success of Rhino’s 1998 Nuggets boxset justified a follow-up. The sequel covers the rest of the world since the first volume only chronicled the USA.

Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964–1969 emerged in 2001. It features music from countries such as Iceland, Uruguay, and Japan. I’m profiling and rating each of the 109 tracks, working backwards.

Track 99 – Kicks and Chicks by The Zipps

From: Dordrecht, The Netherlands

7

Credits

4/19. KICKS & CHICKS – The Zipps (NL)
(Peter Nuyten/Ben Katerberg)

PERSONNEL/PHILIP ELZERMAN: vocals, guitar * PETER NUYTEN: lead guitar * THEO VERSCHOOR: bass * JOHNNY NOCE SANTORO: drums
Producer(s) unknown
Recorded in Amsterdam, Holland
Relax single #45105 (1966) [Netherlands]

The Zipps

The Zipps formed in 1965 in Dordrecht, a Dutch city known for a folktale where a sheep was disguised as a person.

Import of meat or cattle was taxed in the 17th century. To avoid having to pay, two men dressed up a sheep they had bought outside the city walls, attempting to disguise it as a man. The sheep was discovered because it bleated as the three men (two men and one sheep) passed through the city wall gate. There is a special monument of a man and his son trying to hold a sheep disguised as a man between them, that refers to this legend. 

Wikipedia

The Zipps were notable for their promotion of drug use and for their hallucinatory light shows. Leader Philip Elzerman promoted drug use in interviews, and the band promoted stickers reading “Be Stoned! Dig: Zipps Psychedelic Sound”. 

Dordrecht’s Zipps epitomized the bohemian extremes of the Dutch beat movement. Their 1966 publicity stickers laid down their manifesto–“Be Stoned: Dig Zipps: Psychedelic Sound”–while their second single, “Kicks & Chicks,” documented their lifestyle with lines like “I don’t care for money/I’m beat as hell/Paris or Rome are the places I dwell” and “I read only books of Jack Kerouac/He’s the only priest in my life . . .”²⁰

The Zipps began in 1965 as an alliance of members of The Beattown Skifflers and The Moving Strings. They quickly built a devoted following among beat fans, Provo types, and early hippies, solidifying their uncompromising stance by performing a song called “LSD-25” on national television, exhorting the joys of marijuana and Benzedrine in their songs, and providing background music for readings by Dutch beat poets.

Mike Stax, Nuggets II liner notes

Kicks and chicks

‘Kicks and Chicks’ is an interesting song. With a jazzy, druggy feel and references to Jack Kerouac, it’s similar territory to what The Doors would explore a year later.

It’s notable for the awkward lyrics and pronunciation, the product of a band where English isn’t their first language.

Well I’m a bloody guy with a knack,
I read all the books of Jack Kerouac
He’s the only priest in my life,
He’s my resort, he and my knife

Kicks and Chicks

The Aftermath

The Zipps didn’t last much longer, only releasing a few singles. They recorded ‘When You Tell It, Tell It Well’ in 1969 as the theme song for the Dutch Advertising Association’s 29th congress. The invited guest of honour at the congress, his royal highness Prince Bernhard, left halfway through the song, appalled.

The band never recorded again after the 1960s, but have sometimes reconvened as a live act.

Read More

• Nuggets Song by Song
• 1960s Album Reviews

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