SURFBEAT BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN
Surfbeat Behind the Iron Curtain is a compilation album featuring underground garage and surf rock musical artists east of the Iron Curtain that were recorded between 1963 and 1966. It is the first installment of the Planetary Pebbles series, which was a sub-series to the Pebbles series, and was released on AIP Records, on August 12, 1997. While the tracks are primitive in comparison to their Western contemporaries, nonetheless the album includes arguably among the rarest material available in the Pebbles series’ extensive catalog. The album features groups east of the Iron Curtain, but in actuality, 11 of the 24 tracks were recorded by Western European bands and a Japanese band. Surfbeat Behind the Iron Curtain, Volume 1 was released on both compact disc and vinyl. (More from Wikipedia)
The Communists could not keep rock and roll out of the country entirely.
I have two delightful albums in my collection entitled Surfbeat Behind the Iron Curtain that were released several years ago by AIP Records. They feature mostly instrumental recordings made by Russian and Eastern European bands that were evidently officially sanctioned by the Communist governments. The small number of these recordings made it necessary for the label to create a faux “battle of the bands” between these groups and similar sounds produced by Western bands of the same time period. The music is actually quite good though fairly tame.
(April 2015/1)
