SBB - Visions (excerpt)
This thing! One minute I am just messing around, woodshedding with this stem splitter technology in Audacity.... the next I'm constructing meticulous, fine-toothed remixes of entire concerts.
And these guys! They've been around for over 50 years and represent the cream of Polish Progressive Rock.
If I had to describe their sound, I'd say it was a sort of pentatonically Bluesy foundation, atop which flourishes of Fusion and Prog bubble like magmatic soup, waiting to erupt.
Their epic, serpentine extended jams that make up their concert approach -- where they string together tunes and contort them into all kinds of interesting and unexpected configurations -- are the basis of their reputation, and deservedly so because they bang, as the kids say these days.
Speaking of the fifty years they've been around, here is this completely wild 65 minutes of vintage mayhem from exactly 50 years ago today and tomorrow, from when they went to Poland and steamrolled audiences -- eventually making a live record that's been reissued in deluxe form, although containing none of the performances I'm about to share here.
This tape is beyond awesome, but the fact that the drums were too loud -- with the top of the kit louder still than the bottom -- and the bass and vocals were more distant than an estranged couple in divorce court made it a candidate for splitting and refitting, which turned out to be quite a project that took a lot more effort than my frustration levels could almost bear.
I fine-tuned it as best I could in three days and balanced it up fairly effectively, and I think I did a pretty good job, which should really please the 47 people still interested in Eastern European Progressive Rock of the 1970s to no conceivable end.
Anyway I wasn't meaning to do this one -- and definitely not to the extent it felt to me it needed to get done -- but since it's five decades old today and the music is about as soulful and pure as white people can get, I am slapping the results of my 72 hours of immersion in it up here just for the heck of it.
And why not? It's my party and I'll Prog if I want to! You would Prog too, if it happened to you.
SBB
Scandinavian Girls
Live In Sweden
5.14 & 15.1975
01 I Need You, Baby
02 Visions
03 Figo-Fago
Total time: 1:05:31
Tracks 01 & 02: Kolback SE 5.14.1975
Track 03: Sundsvall SE 5.15.1975
Józef Skrzek - bass, keyboards, harmonica & vocals
Apostolis Anthimos - guitar
Jerzy Piotrowski - drums
soundboard recording of indeterminate origin, sourced from the 2000 bootleg CD "Scandinavian Girls" (no label)
demuxed, rebalanced, denoised, retracked, remuxed & remastered by EN, May 2025
393 MB FLAC/direct link
393 MB FLAC/direct link
So there's that one, whew! I think I need a shower and a joint or seventeen. I shall return in the next few weeks with more to fill out the month. Then to the Maypole, haste away!
But before I go I repeat my initial assertion that SBB -- that's short for Silesian Blues Band, and honestly they are as tremendous a trio as this kind of music has produced -- are in the folder and in the clear, waiting for your ears to steer near!--J.
