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Dienstag, 7. Dezember 2010

Various Artist, "Country Roads" (Amiga - Country Music Made In GDR)

Country Music from behind the Iron Curtain (GDR):

"COUNTRY ROADS"
(Amiga 8 56 121, 1985


* Thank God I'm A Country Boy
* Ring Of Fire
* Rocky Mountain Music
* Foggy Mountain Breakdown
* Back Home Again
* Apple Jack
* If You're Gonna Play In Texas
   (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band)
* Take Me Home, Country Roads
* Detroit City
* Broken Down Cowboy
* Good Heardet [SIC!] Woman
* Orange Blossom Special
* Waiting For A Train
* Medley: Wabash Cannon Ball, Roll Im [SIC!] My Sweet Baby's Arms, Jambalaja [SIC!], Old McDonald Had A Farm, Yellow Rose Of Texas, She'll Be Commin' [SIC!] Round The Mountain


It sure sounded "Country" (with the canned applause and everything) and must have given GDR citizens a similar feeling as when watching Marlboro commercials on West German TV -- even though hardly anyone could understand the lyrics and despite the fact that in 1985 none of the musicians were likely to "ever play in Texas" and that it was next to impossible in the GDR to be "a thousand miles away from home waitin' for a train"....

I'm told (from a reliable source at WikiLeaks) that a take of "Don't Fence Me In" was attempted, but aborted by the Stasi "observer" in the studio....

DOWNLOAD (mp3)

3 Kommentare:

  1. Oooh, that looks interesting! Back in 1982, I saw a record called "Country 'n Eastern" in an East Berlin shop window; tried to buy it but didn't succeed as the woman salesperson got angry with me, an obvious Westerner, "who probably thought that everything was for sale!!!". It was very clear at the time that there was some popular antipathy brewing. Have been wondering what ever would have been on that record, even if it was not a dummy window-filler... "Don't fence me in" -- oof :-) Great find, OOP!

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  2. That was, most likely, an album by Hungarian band Fonograf, recorded in 1979, and most likely the shop was the Hungarian Cultural Center (each country of the Warsaw Pact had these "cultural centers", where products from these countries were on sale in the capitols of the other Warsaw Pact countries).

    As an interpreter for the U.S. military police in Germany, I was not allowed to go into these countries until 1990, when the (enforced) "friendship" between these countries started to fade -- still, I could find/buy "Johnny Cash In Prague" at the Czech Cultural Center in Budapest, Hungary, and a CD of a Polish Folk Festival (Mragowo) with a live performance by Mickey Newbury at the Polish Cultural Center in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

    Fonograf's "Country & Eastern" album was even released in West Germany, and I have a copy of that West German album.

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  3. Please, could anyone reupload mp3?

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