Vondrak, Bodlak, Polak: Barvy - CD

The collection of nineteen songs with a stylish cover by Jakub Stejskal maps another of the faded places of the Brno cultural scene. Jiří Vondrák, today a successful documentary filmmaker, writer and musician, repeatedly remembers his songwriting collaboration with Antonín Bodlák in interviews. After all, they met at the age of fifteen in 1969 and performed as a duo of singing guitarists until the early 1980s. Other musicians took turns around them, but the authorial tandem Vondrák-Bodlák remained the basis of their trios, quartet and wider groups.
The album Barvy captures the formation after Vondrák and Bodlák, after several years of accompaniment by the Greek singer Froso Tarasida, established cooperation with the long-time rock singer Synkop Michal Polák. A slightly older colleague added a new colour to their songs and also brought a second wind accordion to the band. However, it did not stay with the trio - originally a purely folk ensemble was completed after leaving Progress by keyboardist Karel Horký (synthesizer magician Daniel Forró, who lives in Japan today), the gentlemen continued their earlier collaboration with cellist Aťa Lukáš, Pavel Kopřiva (violin) also appeared on stage with them, Richard Lašek (percussion), Pavel Pelc (bass guitar) and especially Zdeněk Němeček (guitar, flute). The colours are not only a set of recordings of a long-non-existent folk trio, but a small overview of the type “Who was who on the Brno scene“. After all, it is no coincidence that the album' s booklet contains three pages of dedicated memories of guitarist and Folk Team singer Roman Venclovsky - the band he founded with Pavel Kopriva in the first half of the 1970s operated in Brno alongside Vondrák and Bodlák and interacted with them.
The recordings on the album come from various sources. Almost half of these are live recordings from the former Esenc club in Brno on Křenová Street. The second almost half of the films is connected with the Ostrava Folk Carousel, and thus with the trips of Brno musicians outside the region. The set is then complemented by three recordings from the Brno studio - Children' s, Nature and the title Colors.
The colours are not a document of a band of regional significance. Thanks to Mikoláš Chadim, who played with Vondrák, Bodlák, Polák and others in their strongest final period - the album is documented by songs recorded on the Folk Carousel - the album also has an overlap with the Prague alternative scene. More importantly, however, the poetics of Jiří Vondrák and Antonín Bodlák have not aged even after more than thirty years and still sound fresh.

Playlist

Boys, don' t be angry / City in the dust / Pyramids / Old world / Colors / Rainfall / How many times / Nature / Children / Fruit / Sunday to Monday / No / Thistle fluff / Swallow takes spring / Hangover / Punk / Christmas / Nature / Colors