Love in vain: A Rembtika mix

 "Come back here when you've learned to sin"-paraphrase of Sam Phillips to Johnny Cash, 1950s.

When you're down and out and in the darkest recesses of alcohol-induced torpor, you'd do worse than to discover rembetika. What is rembetika, you ask? A short and highly simplified definition: A south Aegean genre that probably originated in the Ionian cities and Constantinople. It arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and blossomed in the Piraeus after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-23 and the Population Exchange of 1923. Musically, rembetika is an eastern Mediterranean phenomenon that I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to comment on. Lyrically, topics included love (and loss thereof), drugs, crime, and the dissolute lifestyle any reasonable person would have lived at the time, given the conditions (in Turkey, a terminally decaying Ottoman Empire and mutual atrocities after World War I culminating in this, and in Greece the Venizelos and Metaxas dictatorships, followed by a horrific Nazi occupation). The men and women that made rembetika lived fast, died young, and most of them only recorded 2 or 3 songs, at most, before vanishing in a haze of nargila and ouzo. That's a worse record than American blues musicians.

Speaking of which, if you love the American blues, these folks in the Aegean littoral were on the same page as Charley Patton and Skip James, at the same time. They were just getting wasted on hash and raki melo instead of whiskey and weed. The music, structurally, isn't similar. But the fierce joy in the face of suffering is. It's the sort of attitude that says to the world, "Yeah. You suck, you dealt me a shit hand. But so what? Life is beautiful, and I'm going to have as much fun as I can while I'm here, so pass the booze!"
Antonis Kostis (Αντώνης Κωστής) -a pseudonym for Kostis Vezos (Κωστής Βέζος) -was one of the baddest muthafuckas of this genre as far as I'm concerned. He recorded a handful of songs in the 1920s and '30s, including some Hawaiian slide guitar cuts that aren't as trite as you'd think. He died in 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Check out his music. 

I first heard examples of rembetika when I was much younger and didn't come 'round to it until recently, after a lot of disgusting living. Maybe the listening experience is different if you're Greek, but for me, these are songs of experience, in Blake's words. It's hard to like this music if you haven't lived in the world long enough to get dirty, shameful, filthy, sinful, and still come up loving life no matter what it throws in your face.

CHECK IT OUT.  I cobbled together this mix from various rembetika compilations. The most comprehensive collection is, undoubtedly, the Greek Music from the Underworld series. A fantastic single-volume introduction is the Cafe Rembetika LP. Mississippi Records' Bed of Pain compilation is, of course, out of print, but they also released a discography of Marika Papagika's recorded output, which you can buy here.


Track listing:
1. Νίκος Πουρπουράkης-The Offenders
2. Α. Κωστής -Τουμβελεkή
3. Στρατός Ραγιουμτζής -Minor Key Song from the Taverna
4. Σταυροσ Ρεμουνδχος -Μάνες Χιτζασκιάρ Πιρεοτικός
5. Ανεσθης Δαλγας -Καροτσιέρης (The Coachman)
6. Στεφαναυα Γ. Πενχεβυα-Σελσκα Ρατσχεντιτζα
7. Στελλάκης Περπινιαδχης-Μάγγες, Μου Συμοφορθίτε!
8. Ρόσα Εσκενάζι - in the Taverna with the "Laterna"
9. Cavadhias Popular Orchestra-Karsilamas Tekirdag
10. Γιοργιοσ Κατσαρός-[untitled]
11. Εφ. Ραγιουμιδζης-Σφουγγαραδχες ("The Sponge Divers")
12. Κ. Ρουκούνας -Μη Μου Λες βος Δεν Με Θελήσ ("Don't Say that You Don't Want me")
13. Ρένα Στάμου-Bed of Pain
14. Γιώργιος Τράkης-Τα μάγια στο πηγάδι

Greek-speaking/-reading readers, please let me know if I've made any glaring errors in this post. I did the best I could with transliterating the song titles and performers' names; if any of you can help me, get in touch.
I know that the last track, by Giorgios Trakis, isn't rembetika, strictly speaking, but it's beautiful and deserves a wider audience.

ΔΙΑΤΆΡΑΞΗ ΚΟΙΝΉΣ ΗΣΥΧΊΑΣ CS (1984)

I'm too tired and have too much work to do to get around to any of the new releases clogging my mailbox, and anyway lots of y'all prefer old music over new music, so here ya go.

The title translates as, roughly, "Disturbing the Common Peace." Enigma (no, not the US/UK label) Records dropped this one back in 1984, and showcases what the Athens scene sounded like back then. Most of the bands straddle the line between punk and new wave, especially  the two tracks by Γενιά Του Χάους ("Chaotic Generation"/"Chaos Generation"), which are probably the best: dark, plodding punk that should appeal to all you kiddies jizzing your pant/ies over the dark/deathpunk revival.

Panx Romana and Ex-Humans are the other well-known (relatively speaking, anyways) bands here, but Γκρόβερ and Stress are pretty good too.

Dig it, creeps. I think I found this on Robert's Terminal Escape blog a long time ago; you should follow TE if you don't already, fool.

Ora Miden-Demo CS (1988)

This is easily the most exciting demo I've heard recently and, go figure, it was recorded over twenty years ago by a band that released only this cassette and one EP, "Mona Lisa."

Oρα Μηδέν*, "see nothing/see zero", easily puts most late-80s punk to shame (YoT, this means you). I was hesitant when I first heard the ska guitar arrangements, especially on "Το Καλοkαιρη," but ska this ain't, and the band's unique

take on glum rock quickly grew on me.

Oρα Μηδέν were remarkably talented at creating an atmosphere of anxiety, especially on "Κόλαση" and "Πιρελλη Ελλάς Α.Ε." On "Κόλαση," "Hell," a swelling bassline and drums usher in the singer's sonorous hum, broken by sparkles of guitar strewn across the beat, which quickly switches back into a churning, anxious cycle. "Πιρελλη" comes close to industrial noise, with its chugging drumbeat and scratchy, reiterated guitar note. It's suffocating, and for the whole track you're just waiting for an explosion- it never comes. The gorgeous, mournful guitar lick opening "Αφιέρωση"alone makes the demo noteworthy. 

 Ώρα Μηδέν produced one helluva demo, and it's a fucking shame they only recorded one more 7". On the strength of this demo alone I'll put them up against any of your deathrock idols. Do yourself a favor and download this.

A fascist regime! // Κατεβάζω Ευχαριστώ πόλη /thank you very much to the guy at Social Subproducts blog for putting me onto this band. Check out that blog and this for some great Greek punk. 

*Thanks a lot for the correction on the band's name and translation! The demo didn't come with a picture, so I provided my own of Athenian graffitti. It reads "Class hatred." *

*EDIT, 9.8.12: Reupped the file. Get it HERE.*

The Hands of Cain-The Only Sound (2009)

Formed in Athens in the early '80s, the Hands of Cain recorded a handful of tracks before ubmerging into the raki stew of Εξάρχεια.

This collection could pass as a flagship release of Minimal Wave or Wierd Records. All the classic elements of "cold" wave are here: mournful, gusting synth lines, semi-automized drumming, and an inaudible, halfdead vocalist.

But this isn't simply a Greek Bauhaus imitation. The tracks are uneven, spanning as they do three years and various recording sessions. The mood is autumnal, mournful. Yet there are occasional bursts of warmth and sunlight, like when the motorik drums on "Two Steps to the End" cut through the droning synth. The most impressive song is the 7" version of "Pristine Passion." The synth layers aren't so heavy here, and the individual instruments stand out: robotic, clanging drumming, a numb synth line, and guitar that's distinguishable from the synth, instead of being drowned by it.

It's a shame Hands of Cain didn't stick around longer; it sounds like they were headed away from the uniformly grey ambiance of their early work toward something more dynamic.

There's no future! //[kατεβάζω!] //Annalogue Records seems to still have copies of the collection, with "Pristine Passion" included on a separate, white vinyl 7". Props to Urban Aspirines, from which I think I got this originally. The tomb picture has nothing to do with Hands of Cain, it's a sepulchral sculpture from a 13th-century tomb. Deathwave, eat your heart out!