BEAT WEEK: POLE POSITION

Czerwone Gitary: Bylas Mej Pamieci Wierszem
From Rytm Ziemi (Muza, 1974)

In our last Beat Week post, we visited the Danes – this time, it’s the Polish. I’ve always found it amazing that despite being behind the Iron Curtain for the better part of the 1960s and ’70s, the output of Polish jazz and rock, especially on the labels Muza and Polskie, was downright stunning.

Muza, in particular, was a wealth of innovative music (hint: potential future theme week) and there is no shortage of interesting music to be found on their imprint. I dipped into their rock records to pull out Rytm Ziemi by Czerwone Gitary, a relatively prolific singer/songwriter who has at least six albums on Muza (probably more). This is less psych (though there is fantastic psych on Muza) and more just hard rock: all guitar tears, heavy drums, and in this case, some violin thrown in (don’t laugh – Michal Urbaniak was Polish after all). This cut though stands out for the middle drum solo section which is one long (more than 32 bars!) drum break. I can’t say that I’m into Gitary’s voice but hey, for beats like this, I can deal.