lockdown : vinyl find #19.

A business trip to Poland led me to the city of Bydgoszcz a few years ago. People promised me a boring town. That's not what I found. Immediately upon arrival, I knew I had only a couple of hours before close of business. Of course, I had previously listed the record stores (it was pre-free roaming in Europe) on paper and if I remember correctly, there were only two : one was a department store, the other one was more in tune with what I was looking for. So I ran to it, and had trouble locating it, as it was settled in some kind of basement. 

I quickly spotted the turntable available to customers. Going to Poland, my interest resided in the local music, and mostly vintage jazz, as I'd already owned a few good records of Polish jazz. So I spotted the right crate and started digging, obsessed by time. Soon, I also got obsessed by the quality of the records I was going through. The woman behind the counter turned into a digging assistant, providing advices on what should fit my tastes ; consequently, my pile just got bigger and bigger. Which meant that I wouldn't have enough time to listen. My assistant reassured me, by stating that I could stay a bit after normal close of business time. Which meant that I would potentially spend a big load of money. Everybody would be happy.

The pile wasn't only constituted of Polish records. There seemed to be quite a good network of distribution of records accross the Eastern European countries during the Cold War, so I ended up listening to music from other countries as well, especially from Czechoslovakia. 

This digging session turned out to be one of my favorite ones : I found what I had come for, I could listen before buying, the surroundings were welcoming, and I purchased a lot of good records. 

The record I picked today is from Czechoslovakia, which was easy to identify from the cover. The cover... it looked like a pyschedelic rock cover, with guys sporting big mustaches and long hair, a denim blue sleeve and... a woman. All this made me curious about what I would find inside. 

The liner notes in English made it easy to understand that this album was intended for export. The woman turned out to be called Joan Duggan (not a Eastern European name, indeed she's British), and was in charge of vocals, sung in English and written by herself. 

Branded as jazz-rock, the record starts like a psychedelic track, with a fat bass and bright keys, on which Ms. Duggan jumps with a voice made to sing soul music. Then it's more rock than jazz, but still brilliant. 

The main track on side B ("The wizard", 16-minute long) could easily be a jazz track from the 1990's. Challenging for the musicians, with vocals which could be turned into a house music track... 

Overall, more a prog/psych effort than jazz. Classy.

Jazz Q Prague - Symbiosis.

Here's the full album : YouTube.