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| SBB in the 70s - now that's my kind of prog ;) |
Here's an odd thing, I never liked King Crimson and wasn't a super big Pink Floyd-fan either although I like them much more than Crimson, but one band that really struck a chord in me was this odd Polish 70s Prog group that is still active today: the Silesian Blues Band a.k.a. Szukaj, Burz, Buduj (Search, Break-up and Build) or just commonly referred as SBB. They have traits of other big British groups of the era, yet something very different which I always referred to as some sort or Slavic melancholy. Well, or maybe it's just that they sing in their mother tongue which is Polish and some of my own ancestors are from Poland too. My grand-grandma's parents spoke no word of German is what I've been told.
So I discovered SBB sometime in the late 90s in my father's record collection. Their abstract covers may have attracted me but I listened to every LP in his collection anyways. Back then we really lived in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the East German woods of the Harz region. Our village comprised of a total thirteen houses and I was the odd kid with long hair and doing my odd things like handcrafting a bong from a beer can and sat there in my little room in the light of one lonely green bulb and listened to this old music from the 70s. And for some reason SBB had these weird sounds that always attracted me: I thought it was a guitar (!) but much later found out that it was a Moog synthesizer that they used excessively among other popular Prog Rock-keyboards of the era like a String Orchestra drenched in lush Phaser-sounds, a Fender Rhodes etc.
Their 1977 album "Ze Słowem Biegnę do Ciebie" would probably be among my top ten of all times, or at least top 20. I don't have lists like that but SBB are very close to my heart and for some odd reason I never really liked King Crimson at all who may be like SBB's own big influences along with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. While SBB is that type of band that has a kind of cult following of mostly old dudes from Poland or East Germany but never really made it much further than that despite even playing shows outside the Iron Curtain. I guess it's because of the (mostly) Polish lyrics but then these make a significant difference. Well for me most of their 70s albums are real highlights along with master Józef Skrzek's solo work and parts of the album "Geira" as a backing band of pop singer Halina Frąckowiak.
