TOM ZACHARIAS

Discography (on Subliminal Sounds):
Belinda (SUBCD-8)

Click on the album title to listen and/or purchase mp3. (This title, and most of our other releases are also available for purchase via digital download from the following dealers: Klicktrack!, Itunes, www.finetunes.net , www.emusic.com ,www.aolmusic.com  , www.connect.com  , www.musicload.de , www.napster.de etc)

We've unleashed the ultimate Swedish early 70s underground psych funk erotica groove record! Yes you've heard about the Swedish sin but here's the ultimate proof. Not only were the hippies practicing free-love but they recorded some dirty music too. In the early 70s legendary outsider artist genius/madman Tom Zacharias, together with the cream of Swedish studio musicians, some beautiful Swedish hippie nymphs and a bunch of drugged out freaks, recorded two ultra rare LPs called "Belinda" and "the Daughters of Belinda". Both of these which are now mega rare collectors items that never turn up, even in Sweden. These two masterpieces, with their XXX-rated lyrics, were recorded with both Swedish and English lyrics but only the Swedish language versions were ever released. Even though adds were put out in both Screw magazine and Mayfair the English language versions were kept in the can. Until now! We present both versions on one CD complete with extended liner notes telling the previously untold story of how this came to be. Great groovy, funky acid erotica with loads of gurgling fuzz/wha-wha guitars, booming bass, wicked drum beats and over the top XXX erotic lyrics!! The crudest perversities, horrible chock sensations, .presented in the most frugally and tasteless manner ever conceived. Don’t miss this opportunity to embarrass yourself in front of your family, your partner or your friends, a once in a lifetime opportunity. Order your copy today and we guarantee you the dirtiest and most disgusting you have ever experienced in your loudspeakers. Do it while you can!

For the Belinda CD liner notes in English click here!

REVIEWS:

Vice
9 out of 10
I'm an older record shop nerd who's kind of out of touch with modern music so I really like it when somebody re-releases a porno funk rock record that you could only get in the 70s as a free gift with Swedish wank mags. Recorded with the cream of the Swedish session guys and masterminded by the true crazy Zacharias, this sets new highs and lows all around. At last an "incredibly strange sounds" record that sounds good! On the rare occasion I get a girl back to my house I always play them this and ply them with vodka. Six times out of ten they start to spin out, and that's how I get them to stay over.
Dick Sniffer/Vice Scandinavia. Source: www.viceland.com

Pitchforkmedia/USA:
When critics strain to pigeonhole a piece of music that's vaguely funky in that sleazy 70s way, the words "porn soundtrack" are often put to use. The idea that the blue movies of the 70s had even marginally interesting soundtracks is, if you think about it, a rather odd bit of received wisdom. How many people have actually seen enough of these films to say? Perhaps it's just that 70s porn soundtracks and the now-classic music of the blaxploitation genre have become tangled up in people's minds somehow. In 1975, Swedish songwriter and renaissance man Tom Zacharias recorded two concept albums so funky, so nasty, and in such overall bad taste, that counterpart skin flicks would've been mere redundancies. These records, titled Belinda and Belinda's Döttir, featured elastic rhythms, acid guitars, and catchy pop songs about kinky sex of the most extreme varieties. Sold primarily in porn shops, both were hits throughout Sweden. In an attempt to cross over to the American market, Zacharias recruited singers to add English vocals to a handful of the tunes and advertised the finished product via classifieds in the back pages of Hustler and Screw magazines. There were few takers, however, and Belinda never arrived in America. This CD reissue collects the Belinda songs re-recorded in English; also aboard are the Swedish originals. The sound of this disc is immediately appealing. Zacharias had access to a good studio and used top-drawer session musicians; every last instrument and piece of gear used here would undoubtedly fetch top dollar in today's vintage market. The grizzled guitar filth is so very right, and the drums pop and reverberate with joy-- a joy the 80s might've destroyed forever. When Zacharias' band is at its funkiest, it makes the kind of sound The Beastie Boys longed so desperately to capture on their Check Your Head-era instrumentals. At the purely sonic level, Belinda is a major treat. The songs themselves, though, present a mixed bag. I greatly prefer the Swedish versions because, in English, the lyrics are graphic and shocking in the most juvenile manner possible, distracting the listener from all other concerns. "Please Daddy" is sung from the perspective of a girl who wants to lay her father, and she's willing to allow Mom to join in. "Last Christmas," she sings, "I blew Santa Claus/ And the family that screws together grooves together." It's all theatrical and tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it's hard not to feel like an asshole listening to it. But skip to the Swedish half of the album, and the groove goes guiltless in comparison. With the meaning of the words masked, Belinda becomes an enjoyable series of libidinous 70s pop tunes with tough beats. "Slavinnan" sounds almost like Can, with a driving bass throb that the rubbery drummer clings to like a life preserver. "Gay Club" is acoustic and quieter but still danceable, stemming from some strain of music-hall tradition. Melodies seem drawn more from Northern European folk songs than the Western pop tradition, which lends an added degree of strangeness. A pretty decent record for a rather indecent party.
-Mark Richardson, April 8th, 2004/Pitchforkmedia

Moviegrooves/ USA
Oh shit! What the hell is this? Well, to cut to the chase, it's Swedish 70's psych-funk erotica groove with XXX lyrics (in English and Swedish) - but I don't think we'll be starting a new website section for this genre just yet.
This is pretty damn funny and pretty damn good musically too with loads of fuzz-wha-wha guitars, wicked drum beats and over the top XXX erotic lyrics! Our favourite though has got to be Gay Club ("...but four cocks at a time is all that I can handle - and someone sucking mine!"). If you found the "softcock" sketch in Chris Morris' TV show Jam funny, then you'll probably get a good giggle out of this too. We've been listening to it quite a bit, and really getting into the music (as well as the silly lyrics). Today Tom Zacharias lives, and is in good health, in Stockholm city. He is a regular walker-on in many TV productions and was the star of a bizarre televised enema championship (it's true!).
Moviegrooves

The Brain/USA:
Tom Zacharias was something of a renaissance man: Sweden's first male pin-up, a successful film and television producer, singer and songwriter of a string of well-received LPs, and the mastermind behind Belinda and Belinda's Daughter, to my knowledge the only albums ever to have been conceived and created specifically to be sold from ads in the back of porn magazines. This is the sort of thing that could only have happened in the Sweden of the early 70s, with the sexual revolution in full swing and people waiting in lines around the block for mainstream erotic films like I Am Curious Yellow. In 1973, Zacharias was approached by businessman, inventor and astrologer Stefan Brydolf, who proposed that he write, perform and produce two concept albums of erotic rock, along with an accompanying erotic novel. The novel was written, and the LPs were recorded with the help of Sweden's finest session musicians, and everything sold fairly well. The next logical market was North America, so Zacharias recruited New Yorker Suzy Heine to translate and re-dub the lyrics in English, and ads were placed in US men's magazines like Screw and Hustler. Unfortunately, they never received even one order, and the album was shelved. Now Sweden's Subliminal Sounds have released this collection, which gathers together the never-before-heard English language tracks, together with both of the Swedish LPs. I have rarely heard anything as funny or as shocking as the first six tracks on this disc; funky 70s acid rock with completely over-the-top pornographic lyrics. Starting off with a sleazy fuzz-guitar solo, "Dirty" quickly erupts into alarmingly direct pornographic provocation: "You want to suck a cock and lick a hairy pussy/And wear sexy underwear and paint your face/You want a cock up your ass and rubber ducks in your bath/You'd like to screw every sailor in the place...Singer Suzy Heine erupts into perverse Karen Finley-style shrieking, detailing every sexual perversion imaginable: S&M, incest, rape fantasies, foot fetishism and homosexuality are all celebrated with equal zeal. What's most amazing is the infectiously funky jamming by the session musicians, which is really quite good, a terrific specimen of mid-70s acid-funk. It's tempting to compare it to porn soundtrack music, but I don't recall any porn soundtracks with music this accomplished. A closer parallel might be Blaxploitation music, an apt comparison, because Zacharias often reminds me of a Swedish Rudy Ray "Dolemite" Moore. For non Swedish-speakers, this disc loses a little bit of momentum after track six, because the remainder of the tracks are from the Swedish-language LPs, but the music is still fun. Belinda is absolutely essential; I don't where else you'd get to hear such languid, trippy rock music accompanying lyrical refrains like: "There's a he-man on the sofa with a hard-on, giving me the go-ahead sign/About four cocks at a time is all I can handle, with someone sucking mine." - Jonathan Dean/The Brain.