OLYMPIC Zelva ORIGINAL 1968 Czech garage psych LP HEAR

$

56

It’s the summer of love.  1967.  San Francisco is abuzz with the sounds of the Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors – over in the UK, Swingin’ London is in full swing, the Pink Floyd have just released their first album and the Beatles unleash Sergeant Pepper.  So what’s going on over in Czechoslovakia?  Well, a Soviet occupation, for one, which may tend to tarnish the “love” portion of their summer.  But surprisingly, even in Prague, there’s some incredible music being made.  The Olympic were undoubtedly Czechoslovakia’s finest rock band – the Slovakian Beatles, if you will – and in 1967 they dropped their very first album, “Zelva”, which means “turtle” in Czech.  But don’t expect the light harmony pop sounds of the Turtles anywhere here – it sounds to my ears like the Olympic kids were listening to the punk thrash of American garage bands and the primal R&B freakbeat of the UK mods more than anything else.  In that respect, anyone into the sounds of early Them, Pretty Things, Standells and the Count Five will instantly relate to these boys’ band of raucous thrash n’ burn, even if they don’t speak a lick of English (the band, that is).  Such is the power of the universal language of fuzz.  I’ve seen this album described by most reviewers as “Beatlish beat pop”, and that’s true for Side 1 and some of Side 2.  That also proves that said reviewers didn’t finish listening to “Zelva” all the way through, because, like a good solid Czech hockey team, this album seems to coast steadily for the first 2/3, then finish strong down the stretch.  Much of Side 1 and part of Side 2 is solid beat pop, influenced by the “Rubber Soul” Beatles but kind enough to add in some wicked fuzz licks and some dancefloor-aimed swinging go-go strobe beats.  Nice stuff, but not exactly Communist revolutionary.  It’s the final tracks where Olympic really rip things apart, unleashing years of Soviet repression into four blasts of primal fuzzed-up garage punk, like some hellish hybrid of Van Morrison’s Them and the Dutch Outsiders on speed.  “Dedeckuv Duch” kicks off the madness with a killer fuzz riff, and takes a fairly standard Radio Free Europe-friendly garage pop melody reminiscent of the Raiders or even the Monkees, and then unleashes some inexplicable Trashmen-style vocal grunts and noises at the end of each chorus.  It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to think that “Dedeckuv Duch” means “Surfin’ Bird” in Czech.  This one’s followed closely by “Jen Buh Vi”, slower and moodier but possibly even more intense thanks to the kind of buzzin’ bass fuzz solo that you’d expect John Entwistle to unleash.  If any song on here proves that Prague had good weed back in ’67, this one’s it.  As “Jen Buh Vi” fades, a phone rings and an operator picks up.  Whatever she says must translate into something like “Hello, you’ve reached 1-900-MONSTER-RIFF” because immediately afterward, the Olympic boys bring down a great Balrog of a fuzz riff, a thousand static-filled phone lines buzzing at once.  The pace is frenetic, a galloping thoroughbred of garage punk mayhem, thrashing and snorting and kicking up dust clouds as it races forward with reckless abandon, an even more fitting a comparison once the bizarre Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western backing vocals kick in.  And even THEN the boys don’t have it cranked quite ALL the way up – because a few minutes later, once their masterpiece of twisted garage psychedelia “Psychiatricky Prasek” begins, they show you what it sounds like when they do.  This is the band at their most acid-fried, one of the greatest European mind-blowers, on par with the Deejays awesome “Striped Dreams, Checked Fear.”  It begins innocuously, riding a standard “Gloria” bassline but otherwise much more freeform in style.  But like the Koobas “Barricades”, it’s the break that gets you.  And “Psychiatricky Prasek” has one of the most demented breaks you’ll ever hear.  It’s a long one, which allows for the fuzz guitarist to go absolutely bats&*$t on the fretboard, carving inch-thick ruts into the master tape with each crackling kerrang of distortion.  Meanwhile, someone at the mixing board is grabbing random sound effects albums off the production room shelf, so we hear random voices murmuring indistinctly in the background, someone moaning, and even a snippet from some forgotten opera!  It’s like what “Dark Side of the Moon” might’ve sounded like if Syd had stayed sane.  Sensing their master tape might be running out, the band picks up to a furious gallop near the end, as the guitarist wrings out a few last-minute scratch and claw sounds out of the remaining shards of his axe.  Then someone throws in a backwards recording of some old song recorded off the radio, and every single Czechoslovakian hippie’s head explodes.  And if you liked that, it serves as a little taste of what the band’s next album would sound like, their full-blown psychedelic monster “Ptak Rosomak.”  “Zelva”, on the other hand, is a louder, brasher, younger and angrier beast – their “Get the Picture” versus “Ptak Rosomak”’s “S.F. Sorrow.”  There’s nothing slow about this turtle.   Slightly later pressing with different cover on the Czech Supraphon label, probably from 1968.  In STEREO!  Cover in VG shape with 2-inch spine split and light wear.  Vinyl looks unplayed, real clean with no marks, plays strong EXCELLENT to NEAR MINT (listen to the sound byte) - incredible condition! 
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