Planetary Pebbles Vol. 3

Subversives: Surf Beat Behind the Iron Curtain Vol. 2 (AIP)
by Jon Sarre

Mopheads with homemade guitars playin’ for proles but not singin’ in English cuz the Stasi go to shows too (and take notes), or you think you’ve got it bad. Welcome to the German Democratic Republic circa the mid-sixties. Beatles and Stones records are verboten, so kids hooked on the beat start their own bands and dodge the Man and fake toeing the line and make their double entendres so convolutedly obscure that probably nobody could figure ’em out or just ditch the words and run off instrumentals based on foggy memories of illegal Western radio broadcasts.Before ya run out and buy this un, just keep in mind that most of the glorious, socialistic primeval rock’n’roll sounds more like game show themes or a low rent Mancini mangled approximation of the Beatles (or Monkees) that I saw on an episode of Bewitched one time than it does the Ventures. Bein’ branded a possible enemy of the state isn’t gonna do anything for yer sound, is it? The guy who wrote the liner notes claims the original 45s (the few that were pressed) became big collector’s items when the Iron Curtain went up for the final time, but trust me, it’s not cuz the rock’s so great. You ain’t missin’ a thing.
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