Interlude: The Matadors’ secret tracks

You may have already read about popmuseum.cz before. Recently they have posted a request for help in order to identify four cover versions as played live by The Matadors between 1966 and 1968. As far as I can say, I seem to be familiar with at least two of the songs, but still I can’t tell either where the originals are supposed to come from. You see, the caveat is that at that time both Kahovec and Mišík weren’t singing real English words but something that became quite widely known as Kahovština, i.e. the “Kahovec language” (as a side note: Kahovština has been reinvented as Svahilština by Pražský výběr in the 1980s).
In any case, if you’re hunting the web for any rare audio files, this is your big chance to grab a few super rare recordings never heard in public before. Of course, their audio quality was anything else than hi-fi from the very beginning.
www.popmuseum.cz/records/records.php

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Regarding Funky Czech-In, it seems that I will need to take an “official” short break from publishing new articles regularly. I have a couple of very exciting projects going on at the moment which will require my full attention for the next couple of months. I will still try to post at least one long article each month, besides of occasional interludes like this one.
The good news is, that one of these new projects is actually directly related or at least heavily inspired by this blog. The future looks very bright, so stay tuned. (In other words: don’t trash your RSS feed subscription to this blog, you might truly regret it!)

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Marriage on Bear’s Meadow

Fermáta – Svadba na Medvedej lúke [sample]
from album “Pieseň z hôľ (Song From Ridges)”, 1976, Opus 91160521
produced by Štefan Danko & Ján Lauko


original LP sleeve (front/back)

Since June I’ve spent about one or two weeks each month in Prague for family duties, over six weeks in total. Tomorrow we’re going for yet another week to my home town. This time one of the reasons for our visit is quite pleasant, however. Ondra, my oldest friend for more than thirty years since our school days, is going to marry Markéta on Saturday. But other than that – there’s absolutely no connection between the upcoming event and the main subject of this article except for the first word of the title of this tune: Svadba na Medvedej lúke (Marriage On Bear’s Meadow). Well then – Happy Marriage! (Oh, and while we’re at it: Happy Birthday to my brother Daniel today!)

The Slovak guitar virtuoso František Griglák, born in 1953, was already a well respected and experienced musician before he even turned twenty. With Pavol Hammel he recorded the early albums Prúdy (The Jets) and Som šťastný keď ste šťastní (I Am Happy When You Are Happy) in 1970–1971. Afterwards he shifted to the other main Slovak progressive group of the seventies, Marián Varga’s Collegium Musicum, with whom he worked on the classic(al) double LP Konvergencie (Convergency). In 1973 Griglák established Fermáta as likely the first and for a few years the only professional and more or less straight instrumental jazz-rock combo in Slovakia. The other founding members were the keyboarder and professional stage designer Tomáš Berka (1947), bassist Anton Jaro (1954) as well as originally Pavol Kozma on drums, who was soon replaced by Peter Szapu and in 1976 by another ex-Prúdy member Cyril Zeleňák (1951).

Probably thanks to Berka’s daily job, in the beginning the group used to record lots of scenic themes for various Slovak theater productions, thus training their sense for transforming colors and atmosphere into music. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1975. While it was clearly inspired by jazz-rock heroes like Mahavishnu McLaughlin or Al DiMeola, it suffered from rather poor recording production. One year later, the second album Pieseň z hôľ (Song From Ridges) turned out much better. Not only from the technical but also from the conceptual point of view. Quoting from the English liner notes by Igor Wasserberger: “In Czechoslovak jazz-rock it is this record that presents the most complete essay to form a synthesis with elements of domestic folk music. (…) Fermáta avoid frequent ways of rock and jazz arrangement of folk songs and try to involve elements of [Slovak] folk music into their own musical tongue.”

While the aforementioned statement certainly applies, Svadba na Medvedej lúke (Marriage On Bear’s Meadow) remains an unusual tune in Fermáta’s repertoire. Firstly, written by Berka, Jaro and Zeleňák, it’s the only collective instrumental composition from the group’s 1970s output; all other tunes have been penned either by Griglák or by Berka. Secondly, the band leader Griglák doesn’t seem to participate on this track at all. And frankly, I don’t even miss him that much. [Hey, no personal offense… :) But despite being a guitarist myself, actually I quite dislike the guitar-driven pyrotechnical jazz-rock sub-genre in general; except for Zappa, that is.] The song begins with a drum/synthesizer simulation of a thunderstorm or something, likely happening somewhere in the woods of the Tatra mountains, which then takes us to the said meadow (which actually really exists) while it evolves into a laid back but joyous funky wedding groove carried by a lively bass and colored by wide Fender Rhodes chords floating out of the folk-influenced themes. In fact, the track reminds me of Billy Cobham’s early work from his Spectrum/Crosswind period. In any case, to me Fermáta never sounded as warm as on this track again, although their later albums also include a couple of jazz-funk inspired sequences here and there.

In 1977 Karol Oláh replaced Zeleňák on drums and Ladislav Lučenič became the new bass player. In 1979 yet another ex-Prúdy/Collegium Musicum (and even ex-Blue Effect) member joined in, the Slovak bass master Fedor Frešo. Besides of releasing their conceptual albums the group also used to work as a studio backing band for artists like Miroslav Žbirka (two singles in 1976), Pavol Hammel (Stretnutie s tichom and the first Czechoslovak rock-musical Cyrano z predmestia) or for Dežo Ursiny (Pevnina detstva). The original Fermáta disbanded in 1985 after Oláh’s tragical death. Griglák revived the group with new musicians in the 1990s and continues to tour actively to the present day.

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Working in the coal mine

Blue Swede – Working In The Coal Mine [sample]
from album “Hooked On A Feeling”, 1973, EMI ST-11286
produced by Bengt Palmers


original LP sleeve (front/back)

As you might have noticed, I have created a new label exclusively for this post, named Obscure Czech-In. That wasn’t without a reason because the other secondary label of this entry, Half Czech-In, is pure speculation on my part. To explain: I’ve found Hooked On A Feeling last year in a second hand record store (coincidentally it was in Prague, but that doesn’t matter here) and at first I thought, “well, yet another cheap one hit wonder from the seventies, nothing of interest for me.” On the second sight, however, there were three things that caught my attention: 1) the group had a “built-in” horn section (often a good sign), 2) they covered an Allen Toussaint song (they had taste!), and finally 3) the guy who’s credited to play clavinet and organ had a surprisingly Czechoslovak-sounding name – Ladislav Balaz [sic]. Well, to make a short story shorter, in the end I bought the record but except for a few tracks I was rather disappointed when I heard it at home. In the meantime I sold it again already.

Blue Swede were better known as Björn Skifs & Blåblus in their home country Sweden. Their international breakthrough came with a cover of B. J. Thomas’ hit Hooked On A Feeling, the title track of this album, which climbed up to no. 1 on the U.S. pop charts in 1974. The group’s style was kind of on the edge between early 70s pop and soulful brass-rock. At times they sounded almost like Chicago, for example, but still more on the pop side of things. The musicians who participated on this recording were, besides of Skifs, Jan Guldbäck (dr), Bo Liljedahl (b), Mikael Areklew (g), Tommy Berglund (tp), Hinke Ekestubbe (ts) and on keyboards the aforementioned Baláž (as the name should be spelled correctly in Czech or in Slovak).

Really, I surfed the word wild web for many long hours but I coudn’t find any other trace of a keyboarder named Ladislav Baláž except that he was playing on this particular record; I don’t think that he could be this guy, though. And interestingly enough, I can’t even hear much keyboards on this particular track either, unless it’s a clavinet and not a guitar in the centre of the stereo panorama when the verse is playing. Nevermind, whatever, Working In The Coal Mine is still my personal highlight of the album, despite the “Czech connection” perhaps being only a mirage. And besides of that, I’m definitely a fool for any Allen Toussaint song. Hence this is the first of only two opportunities known to me to post a Toussaint cover on this very blog in the first place…

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