Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Czech JCS--Original Prague Cast

Oh, my gosh. This one's so wonderful. I've listened to "Vse Je Tak, Jak Ma Byt" ("Everything's All Right") three times now, that's how wonderful this is. And I nearly started crying during "Gethsemane"--which is all the more impressive when this is the tenth--or maybe eleventh, or twelfth--time I've heard this song in the last two weeks.
Maybe one of the reasons I like this recording so much is because my family on my mom's side is (mostly) Bohemian, so I feel a cultural affinity here. I'm certainly glad that my Czech repertoire of phrases might be expanded by this experience. Before this recording, I only knew "Bez práce nejsou koláce", which means "No work, no tasty fruit- or cream-cheese-filled pastries." I'm almost tempted now to travel to Prague and ask of random passersby, "Proc ten shon?" I say "almost" because I'm worried that I really would be saying the Czech equivalent of "What's the buzz?"--that is, the most dated bit of 70s slang imaginable.
Maybe it's because it seems to take three times as many syllables to deliver these lines in Czech, or maybe it's, again, the subtext of hard rock being sung in a communist milieu. Whatever it is, I get the strangest sense, listening to these songs that I think I know so well, that far more is being said than I've ever heard before.

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