Thursday 13 October 2022

Vizerunki Shlyakhiv - "Візерунки Шляхів" (Меlodia – С60-06699-700) 1976


Funky Vizerunki Shlyakhiv was a folky,funky,but very latin sounding, 'Ukrainian vocal-instrumental ensemble',as described in Soviet newspeak, from the lovely city of Kyiv,.....yeah that place we now know is pronounced 'Keev' rather than 'Key-Ev', since they kicked the butt of the Russian invading force/farce earlier this year.
Dunno if any of Vizerunki Shlyakhiv took out any tanks,but they seem to resemble a bunch of handy chaps with State approved Flares to match.I have no doubt that these swarthy Slavs know the right end of a Panzerfaust 3 and how to use it.
There's a Ukrainian Folk tilt given to some of these smoking workouts that would please the local communist commissar bastard,backed up with a song about local commie hero Shcors to ensure no-one got sent for re-education in a Siberian gulag anytime soon.
State Label Melodia has rarely been cooler....which isn't saying much.Unless its referring to temperature of course.

Tracklist:

1. Пісня Про Щорса / Song About Shchors
2. Камінь Сонця / The Sunny Stone
3. Я Люблю Твої Тихі Затоки / I Love Your Backwaters
4. Гуахіра / Guahira
5. Коло Млина Калина / A Guelder Rose Grows By The Mill
6. Марійка / Mariyka
7. Весна I Ти / You And Spring
8. Била Мене Мати / My Mother Beat Me


6 comments:

Richie Muster said...

"I have no doubt that these swarthy Slavs know the right end of a Panzerfaust 3 and how to use it." That's entirely possible, Jonny, as (and i'm sure you weren't deliberately inferring that) a goodly proportion of Ukrainian nationalists during WW2 fought alongside the Wehrmacht, against the Red Army. Sad to say, those at the farthest right of this ultra-nationalist wedge not only aided the nazis but there's evidence to suggest they were instrumental in perpetrating some of the ugliest atrocities of the Holocaust eg at Baba Yar. How times - and allegiances - change.

Jonny Zchivago said...

Indeed, Richie...my fathers prison camp in Poland was run entirely by Ukrainians in WW2...However,it has to be recognized that as they fought on the side of the Nazi's, didn't make them Nazi's...they were mainly fighting with the Germans to free their motherland(Ukraine) from Soviet repression.As did 50,000 Russians in stalingrad for the same reasons...in their eyes the lessers of two evils. Of course there were plenty who were vile murdering opportunists, as happened with the Red Army,who chalked up quite a number of jewish dead themselves. Kind of ironic that Putins forces managed to hit the Baba Yar memorial in Kiev with some of their more dumber bombs...i think that displays who the Nazi's are in this conflict rather nicely.

parmalee said...

DM Thomas's seriously weird The White Hotel is heavily inspired/informed by Babi Yar. He even liberally plagiarizes--or artistically appropriates, depending upon your point of view--from Kusnetzov's biographical novel, Babi Yar. The thought that being marched to one's mass grave is but a tiny facet of the mass horrors inflicted upon these people is too much. (I think David Lynch tried to make a movie of the novel, but deemed it ultimately unadaptable.)

It's not really much comfort that Putin simply isn't competent enough to match these atrocities--it's not like he isn't trying.

Richie Muster said...

Yes, it's one of the grislier ironies of WW2 that the nazis uncovered the Katyn forest massacre of Polish officers (also fictionalised by one of my favourite authors, Philip Kerr, in one of his Bernie Günther novels - i forget which, my memory's very poor.)
The Russians do inhuman slaughter very well, especially when it comes to their own countrymen. What was that Stalin Order at Stalingrad? 'Not One Step Backward'? Caught between two mass-murdering psychopaths: i can think of little worse.
And yes, Parmalee, it's little comfort. The sooner he's halted, the better.

Jonny Zchivago said...

Lets not forget our Polish allies, who carried on the Jewish pogroms after WW2 had ended.
Also if you did take a step backwards at Stalingrad,you would be executed...of which there were in the tens of thousands.
If it wasn't for the eastern hemisphere we wouldn't have anything to write about...almost exclusively in the mass slaughter stakes.

Guitarradeplastico,scraping oddities said...

Many thanks