Driving to Blue Café

While one of our hosts in Poland were driving us around Olsztyn, she had a CD playing in the car that was pleasant. The tunes were toe tapping and never jarring. Although the lyrics were in english, I could detect a distinct accent at times.

I asked our host about the CD and she said that it was a Polish group called Blue Café. This is from their newest CD Ovosho. The lead singer has an incredible controlled smoky voice not unlike Diana Krall or Norah Jones. She also seems to have quite an incredible range. Most of the songs on this album are in english, with a few Polish songs thrown in. On an interesting note, this band's Love Song served as Poland's entry to the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest.

Frustratingly, this CD seems to be available on Amazon for about the same amount as I paid for it in Poland.

Again, I really did have a hard time picking a couple of songs to feature here. Given a choice, I would highlight about 6-8 songs here which all highlight different aspects of the group's talent. However, I'll stick to the catchiest melodies. The lyrics are not particularly sophisticated or subtle, but then again, let's not forget that groups like Abba took lyrics like "Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight, Take me through the darkness to the break of the day" all the way to platinum status mutliple times over!

Let's see how this is received. If there is enough demand, I may feature a couple more songs from this album later.

1. Blue Café - Barok (2.61 MB; 128kbps MP3)

2. Blue Café - Baby, Baby (3.57 MB; 128kbps MP3)

Poland Trip Finds

Those of you who read my other blog know that I was having all sorts of adventures in Poland last week. I managed to pick up a few CDs there that I will feature on this blog at least during the first part of this week.

A well known rock band in Poland is Lady Pank. According to Wikipedia, this band has been around in various incarnations since the early 80s. There was even a time in 1986 that one of their songs got heavy rotation on MTV in the United States.

When I was in Poland last week, I picked up their latest album that has just been released and immediately fell in love with it. Very straightforward, clean, rock music which just happens to be in an unfamiliar language. I would classify it in the same genre as favorite 70s-80s-90s rock bands like Kansas, Boston, and Supertramp. Very catchy melodies and solid vocals.

Amazingly, I liked all the songs on this album (titled Strach Się Bać), so decided to relatively randomly pick a couple of songs to feature here. The first is the album's title track. The second is a more mellow track called Nie mam nic, prócz Ciebie (lady). I picked it simply because the title was so irrresistable! The big 25 on the cover of this album makes me think this is their 25th album. Quite an achievement for any band!

It seems Amazon lists several of their albums, but at outrageous prices. You can find the Amazon discography of Lady Pank here.

1. Lady Pank - Strach Się Bać (3.7 MB; 128kbps MP3)
2. Lady Pank - Nie mam nic, prócz Ciebie (lady) (3.69 MB; 128kbps MP3)