In memoriam dear friend

(This is an off-topic post.)

Dänu Boemle, alias Sleepy Dan, alias Øml, a very close friend of mine, peacefully passed away yesterday afternoon after being seriously ill for many long years. He was 46 years old.


Dänu in his kitchen on November 18th, 2006

We were friends since 1984 when we began to play street music in Berne, Switzerland. I was a greenhorn teenager, he was a cheeky twen and we both loved the blues. Later on we used to be getting down a bit more funky but by the end of the decade each of us went his own path for a while. We got together again in the mid 90s, this time behind turntables, playing fine jazz and funk records in several Swiss music clubs. Dänu also helped out on our Plookers CD project in 1997 where he can be heard talking on the first and on the final track, as well as playing trombone on a still unreleased song. In the past years we continued to co-operate on various projects: music, his radio play, his web site, his books, his artwork, my wedding... But our friendship wasn't only about music, art or work: at any given time he was like an older brother to me.

Well, to make this entry slightly less off-topic, I'll try to turn it into a kind of Half Czech-In - or I should rather say Self Czech-In. Listen to the Ugly Blues Connection transferred from the copy of a "sub-master" cassette tape as captured in a small 8-track studio on February 16th 1985: Looking For Somebody, a Fleetwood Mac cover originally written by Peter Green. Christian Wolfarth played drums, Joel Kaiser was on bass, myself on guitar (you guessed it, I was the Czech of the group...) and Sleepy Dan was of course singing and playing bluesharp.

My old friend, I will miss you!

UPDATE:
More info about Dänu Boemle is now available on my site: machata.ch/boemle. And our friend Marc Krebs has written an obituary in Basler Zeitung from 27 February 2007 (in German).

---

On and on (The chicken, part 2)

Flamengo - Stále dál [sample]
from album "Kuře v hodinkách", 1972, Supraphon 0131287 (mono) or 1131287 (stereo) and 101287-1311 (reissue 1990); also on CD "Kuře v hodinkách", 1972/1998, Bonton 4910532; SP "Kuře v hodinkách", 1972, Supraphon 0431453; CD compilation "Paní v černém (singly 1967-1972)", 2003, Supraphon SU5496-2311
produced by Hynek Žalčík


original 1972 LP sleeve & 1990 LP/CD reissue sleeve

"... stále dál, stále dál, stále dál. Slepeckou holí mám spočítaný jak dlouhý je mý bytí, který je mi jednou daný."

"... on and on, on and on, on and on. With a blindman's white stick I've added up how long will my being last that I've been given."

Every time I hear this chorus I shiver all over. Ever since I've heard the song for the first time some seventeen years ago. So I was quite surprised to read that even the old sound engineer who originally recorded it also feels the same way after 35 years. Anyway, here we go with the part 2 of the Flamengo story:

The basic idea behind the album Kuře v hodinkách (The Chicken In The Wrist-Watch) was to bring progressive contemporary Czech rock music to the public. While it may sound as a simple matter of fact to you today, it wasn't an easy task in communist Czechoslovakia of the early 1970s; read my introduction for more background. The young Supraphon producer Hynek Žalčík (1949-2005) came with the nearly "subversive" idea to ask the poet Josef Kainar (1917-1971) to write the lyrics for the album. The "Kainar plan" was based on Kainar's communist party membership, although he was definitely not very popular anymore by his conservative and "normalized" party comrades. But at that time he also was the chairman of the Czechoslovak Writers Association and a widely respected writer who also used to write blues songs. Besides of that, one year earlier they have already successfully collaborated on the Michal Prokop & Framus Five jazz-rock suite Město Er. So that trick helped Žalčík once again to convince the responsible Supraphon bureaucrats to release a rock album played by a bunch of untamed long-haired freaks who would have been de facto and de jure (i.e. according to communist jurisdiction) considered potential enemies of the state. The compromise was that the record was originally sold solely to the members of the "Czechoslovak Hi-Fi Club" in a total edition of only a few thousand copies. A political decision of course: Flamengo would have sold easily tens if not even hundreds of thousands copies over the years to all the other rock-hungry long-haired freaks out there. But any attempts for an official re-edition have been rejected by the authorities until 1989. Only two tracks (Já a dým, Kuře v hodinkách) re-appeared on the scarce Josef Kainar tribute compilation Obelisk in the late seventies; again thanks to Žalčík's tireless effort.

Stále dál (On And On) is the only track from Kuře v hodinkách that isn't sung by Vladimír Mišík. Instead, it's the voice of organist Ivan Khunt and it's the last of only three Flamengo songs they ever recorded with him as the lead singer. Besides of the short instrumental intro track it's also the album's only song without Kainar's lyrics since Kainar passed away in November 1971. The words then came from producer and occasional lyricist Žalčík, the composition was the work of the "triple K" Khunt, Kubík and Kulhánek. Yet this song is a bomb and then some.

Due to the increasing communist oppression on rock groups in general, Flamengo eventually disbanded before the album has been finally released in 1973. The nucleus of the group along with Žalčík helped to record Dežo Ursiny's debut album Provisorium and they established the first issue of Energit (see this post). Khunt and Šedivý exiled soon thereafter which made any reissue of Kuře v hodinkách or any other record with their participation practically impossible. Guitarist Fořt started to work with the group of former jazz musicians Strýci (a.k.a. Šest strýců) for Helena Vondráčková, joined the Karel Gott orchestra and led his own session studio band Labyrint. It was also Labyrint with Kubík's and Kulhánek's participation who re-recorded Rám příštích obrazů and Doky vlaky hlad a boty for the C&K Vocal fantastic debut album Generace (Generation). Kubík and Kulhánek worked as session musicians here or there, in the mid seventies they co-founded the jazz-rock supergroup Bohemia. Kubík escaped to the West in the 80s, while Kulhánek eventually joined Mišík's Etc group. Mišík courageously kept on keeping on, on and on.

Nowadays there's a restaurant in Prague named after the album "Kuře v hodinkách". On their nicely designed web site there's a photo gallery with lots of pictures from Czech rock history. Czech it out.

Vinyl should be available on eBay or on Gemm (some sellers still confuse Flamengo with Flamingo though). Some of the records are incredibely rare so don't get shocked by the prices. But even the "über-rare" single Každou chvíli happens to be seen every now and then (although usually it's definitely way over my budget). Fortunately, the songs I've presented are available not only on the remastered edition of Kuře v hodinkách, but also on the ultimate Flamengo "singlology" Paní v černém (The Lady In Black - Singles 1967-1972). If you dig prog-rock, get the former. If it's fuzz guitars that makes your underpants wet, get the latter. If you just love music and you'd like show some respect for the involved musicians and producers and their exceptional work, get 'em all. On and on.

P.S. Kuře v hodinkách is one of the three albums that I would take with me on a desert island. Just for the record, the other two are Frank Zappa's Over-Nite Sensation as well as Mothership Connection by Parliament. On those three records every single note makes me feel good. (Oh, and if I had any chance to take a fourth one with me, it would be SAHB Stories by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band... :)

P.P.S. Tell me about your three desert island albums in the comments -->

---

Every while (The chicken, part 1)

Flamengo - Každou chvíli [sample]
from CD compilation "Paní v černém (singly 1967-1972)", 2003, Supraphon SU5496-2311; originally from SP "Každou chvíli", 1971, Supraphon 0431214; also a bonus track on CD "Kuře v hodinkách", 1972/1998, Bonton 4910532
produced by Hynek Žalčík


CD compilation booklet

Vladimír Mišík, one of my most favorite singers, has already got an entry on Funky Czech-In where I have promised to bring him back with a Flamengo post. Well, this band is just too important for the Czech music history in order to squeeze its story into a short single weblog post, so here's part one. Oh, and keep in mind: Flamengo is NOT Flamingo!

Flamengo's biggest problem probably was the frequent exchange of their lead singers. Not that any of them guys were not good enough. Actually the opposite is true, each one was a personality on his or her own. It just didn't really help to build up the group's profile over the years. Thus, among the group members since 1966 were Viktor Sodoma (who left for the Matadors in 1967), Karel Kahovec (originally a Matador himself), Petr Novák (earlier and then again later with George & Beatovens), the former early sixties teenage idol Pavel Sedláček, the English lady Joan Duggan (who later joined Jazz Q along with the original Flamengo guitarist František Francl), the organist Ivan Khunt, for a very short time and unfortunately undocumented on records even the ex-Framus Five Michal Prokop and finally since 1971 Mišík, who himself already passed through the Matadors, George & Beatovens (as their lead guitarist for a couple of months!) and who had just been fired from Matadors' follow-up Blue Effect.

Similarly complicated would be the attempt to describe Flamengo's musical range. The early beat songs by Petr Novák already sound much like Petr Novák on his later G&B records. Kahovec on the other hand had his unique voice and song-writing style, too. But by 1968 the Czech scene became "infected" with R&B and soul and Flamengo again returned to playing a lot of cover versions, now even real funk by James Brown (coming soon on this channel, stay tuned). Then with the arrival of Khunt and Duggan in 1969 they focused on dark blues-rock. And the final phase nicely fits into the progressive rock drawer. So there you have the dilemma: one name, five different bands...

Supraphon released as much as 16 Flamengo songs on 7" sides; some songs appeared on SPs with another artist on the flip side - a usual praxis in the sixties. It was however the final line-up that was going to make history when they recorded their only full album in 1971-1972, the masterpiece Kuře v hodinkách (The Chicken In The Wrist-Watch), the undisputed monument of Czechoslovak popular music. Flamengo's legendary last edition consisted of Mišík, Ivan Khunt (1947-2002), the composer and arranger Jan Kubík on saxes and flutes, the virtuoso bass player Vladimír Kulhánek, one of the best Czech rock drummers of his generation, the ex-Primitives Group Jaroslav Erno Šedivý as well as the last remaining original member, Pavel Fořt, who switched from bass back to lead guitar in 1970.

Každou chvíli (Every While) as well as the similarly sounding b-side Týden v elektrickém městě (A Week In The Electric City) both predate the album sessions by only a few months. You can already clearly identify the "trademarked" super-compact and funky sound that determines the later LP. Mišík's singing has also grown up since his departure from Blue Effect (as captured on the psychedelic album Meditace). This is already the voice that was going to have a huge impact on a whole new generation of young rock music fans as well as future musicians, myself included.

And then there's the drums. One of the sound engineers in the Supraphon studio Dejvice was Petr Kocfelda. He has been recently asked in an interview (in Czech, part 1, part 2) how they actually managed to achieve such a steady drum sound and what compressor or limiter effects were they using then. "None," he replied. The drummer Erno Šedivý obviously used to hit the skins so hard that they only had to adjust the mic inputs to the peak level which then remained pretty constant throughout the sessions. As a matter of fact, at that time the recording studio in Prague-Dejvice was still using a relatively old 4-track Studer machine along with a custom built tube mixing console which made the producers, engineers and especially the service technicians as much a part of the creative process as the musicians themselves. (Er, can the GarageBand generation still follow me what I'm talking about...? ;)

To be continued...

---

Questions and general feedback

Sometimes I receive e-mails with questions about Czech music. While that's generally okay and I appreciate your interest in this subject, I thought it might be a good idea to make these questions publicly available in the future. Hence this post. This is the place where you can ask or comment on a topic regarding Czech and Slovak pop and jazz music, if you can't find a dedicated post for it (yet).

At some future time I might also reactivate the phpbb forum on my web server, as it would be probably the more appropriate place. But first I need to find and install some good anti-spam plug-ins...

Feel free to ask your questions or give general feedback to this blog in the comments to this post. It will have a permanent link in the sidebar, so you can easily access it after it slips off the front page.

---

Return of Gemini

Mefisto - Návrat Gemini [sample]
from 10 inch compilation album "Hity Karla Svobody", 1968, Supraphon 0230414


original 1968 compilation sleeve (front/back)

Last sunday the 68 years old composer Karel Svoboda committed suicide, without any obvious or publicly known motive as it seems. I'm definitely not a friend of the vast majority of his immense work, but being probably the only Czech retro music blog writing in an easy to understand international language - i.e. not in Czech - I thought I might still honor him with one of his earliest and internationally less known compositions. Svoboda has been featured on Funky Czech-In already: for Marie Rottrová & Flamingo he wrote the outstanding pop-funk tune Kruh světla (Ring Of Light) (which I've translated falsely as Circle Of Light though), for Jiří Schelinger he wrote Závodník (The Racer) and likely he was involved in its production, too.

Mefisto, founded by Svoboda with the saxophonist František Kopal in 1963, used to be one of the first professional beat groups in Czechoslovakia. From the beginning they inclined more to the easy listening genre and that attitude secured them a lot of gigs and recording jobs with major Czech pop artists at times when a beat rhythm section seemed acceptable to the conservative Supraphon producers. Among their members were the later Golden Kids bass player and successful lyricist Zdeněk Rytíř or the guitarist Otakar Jahn. But Svoboda soon realized that he's able to compose pop hits and schlagers à go-go, thus for most parts he left the beat and rock behind. In the 1970s he began to write movie and TV scores, later also musicals. Among his best known work is certainly the movie soundtrack for Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Hazelnuts For Cinderella). He composed lots of hits for Karel Gott, like Lady Carneval or Včelka Mája (Biene Maja/Maya The Bee). And of course in the 70s and 80s there were dozens of other Svoboda-penned pop tunes and scores that made us want to puke each time we turned on the Czechoslovak socialistic radio or TV. Yeah, Mefisto. Nomen est omen...

Svoboda's Návrat Gemini (Return Of Gemini) from 1966 isn't exactly funky, at least not in the intended sense. Instead it sounds more like a Shadows rip-off that's a bit late to the party. But it's still adequate enough for this post since there aren't many Mefisto solo recordings anyway and this one in particular features Svoboda's piano quite prominently. It's not a strict instrumental, the cheesy background vocals were added by the ubiquitous Lubomír Pánek Singers & Swingers (a.k.a. Sbor Lubomíra Pánka) who appeared possibly on more Czech records than anyone else in the history of recorded music; just in my hopelessly incomplete collection of Czech vinyl Pánek shows up on not less than 116 entries in my database.

Návrat Gemini has been originally released as a single in West Germany on the Montana label. On the 10 inch mono compilation Hity Karla Svobody (Karel Svoboda's Hits) from 1968 it sort of represents the early Mefisto era. The other seven songs are Svoboda's best early compositions for other artists: Depeše, Nechte zvony znít and Tajuplnej hráč for Marta Kubišová, Zimní království for Yvonne Přenosilová or the nice beat ballad Stín katedrál for Helena Vondráčková and Václav Neckář. All of that stuff has been reissued on the original artists' CDs, Návrat Gemini is available on this compilation so get it if you seriously need it.