To people who grew up listening to vinyl, like I did, cover art is an important part of a record. At a time before internet when we only had state radio in Greece which seldom played rock music, we relied a lot on the cover to figure out how the music must have sounded: how did the band look on it? what kind of instruments they used? which font did they choose? was the cover funny? serious? sexy? all that played a role. My first record was Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. I bought it because I'd heard "Temple Of The King", but above all I think because of the cover: a guitar castle out of fairy tales, what more could a 14-year old fantasy fan ask? During the CD era, covers shrinked and became less impressive but there was still a lot to be gathered by looking at them. I'm only starting my review with this because I'm looking at this CD cover and wondering how much ignorance has gone into it, and whether this can affect the way I feel about the album. Let's start with the title: "Velvet Revolution" refers to the regime change (from Communism to Western-style democracy) in Czechoslovakia in '89. Which means that the compilers missed the mark by only 20 years. Many of the bands here do come from Czechoslovakia but that's probably just a happy coincidence. I'd think they had confused the Velvet Revolution with the Prague Spring (1968) but I don't want to give them too much credit. That would imply they have at least some clue. Next, to the one that really irks me: the huge CCCP means of course that the CD contains music from the Soviet Union. Right? I mean you don't put a huge USA on an album containing music from Guatemala - or Canada, for that matter. Nooo...apparently you do. Just to throw potential buyers off. To amplify the message they use a pseudo-Cyrillic font that renders the band names virtually unreadable. Why? Cyrillic is used mainly in Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia. You feature bands from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany and Poland. These countries all use the Latin alphabet. Do you just want to get on my nerves by making me strain my eyes to decipher your bullshit font? But then I realized: the compilers apparently believe that the Eastern Bloc was a single country (capital:Moscow) that existed in an unspecified time and place. That explains why the cover features World War II bombers (again, 25 years off the mark) and a Soviet soldier - because this is what eveyrone wore in those countries, right? uniforms and hats with red stars on them. Ah, and according to discogs, the tracklist on the back has no less than 4 spelling mistakes. Now, why am I not surprised? Do you know how much skill it takes to copy a title from a record label? At least the booklet seems to have been written by a different person, someone who can actually tell Poland from Mongolia.
Now let us go to the music, starting with the Hungarian bands: Opener "Visz A Vonat" by Illés is groovy, organ-heavy, soul-rock with female vocals. A second song by the same band is completely different, featuring male vocals and a folk sound akin to Incredible String Band. Another (as Illes Zenckar) has some nice hard rock guitar but is otherwise unimpressive. Neoton is also represented with 3 tracks: hard rockers "A Haz" (Deep Purple-influenced) and "Nehez Fiuk" (Hendrix-like) and ballad "Gyere Alom". Moving on to Czechoslovakia, "18 Minut" by Juventus starts off like typical 60's pop but turns into a freakout with the singer yelling and band attacking their istruments hard. Olympic were a hugely popular band (nicknamed The Czech Beatles). "Tobogan" is a Yardbirds-like rocker and "Ikarus Blues" reminds me of Traffic circa 1968 - including a Chris Wood-like flute solo. Blue Effect were a Matadors offshoot (We'll talk about the Matadors in another post). The Effect's "White Hair" has some nice guitar but otherwise sounds like an outtake from the musical Hair. Of the Polish bands, Czerwono Czarni offer their own take on The Electric Prunes' Mass in F Minor with the instrumental "Kyrie". No To Co's "Saturday To Sunday" is English language flower pop. The band even made an attempt for an international career by releasing a record at the UK, but failed to get noticed. By "international" I mean in the West. Most of these bands did have international careers within the confines of the "Eastern Bloc". Breakout's "We Have Told All" (sung in Polish, despite the English title) sounds a lot like Jullie Driscoll circa 1968-69. Rounding the compilation up, there are some East German numbers. East Germany had a great rock scene, evidence of which is the fantastic hard rock of Scirroco Combo (think Atomic Rooster), Joco Dev Sextett (Black Sabbath without the ultra heavy riffs) and Electra Combo (rather progish - Jethro Tull meet Cream?). On the whole this compilation helps to dispel the myth that Eastern Europe was this backwards place where rock was unknown or banned. Despite their difficulties in dealing with the state, rock bands flourished and produced music at least equal to the one made on the other side of the Continent. Musically, this is probably worth 3,5 stars but I'm subtracting 1,5* because of the disrespectful cover art presenting all these countries as if they were nothing more than Russian provinces.
**** for Visz A Vonat (Illés), Wege Mit Gutem Namen (Scirroco Combo), Stapellauf (Joco Dev Sextett)
*** for 18 Minut (Juventus), Tobogan (Olympic), Du Bist Mir Nah (Joco Dev Sextett), The Story Of M (Illés), Ikarus Blues (Olympic), Kyrie (Czerwono Czarni), Saturday To Sunday (No To Co), We Have Told All (Breakout), Über Feuer (Electra Combo), Nehez Fiuk (Neoton)
** for A Haz (Neoton), Gyere Alom (Neoton), Menekilles (Illes Zenckar), White Hair (Blue Effect)
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