2023 marks 25 years since I started recording and performing music and noise. It is the year of retrospect and reconstruction of my first ideas and also the year of my first ever vinyl release under my birth name.
I started in 1998 with a classical guitar and a tape recorder. Those were the rimbaudesque days full of creative joy, escapade, expedition, and surprise – from first inspirations like Kurt Cobain, Syd Barrett, and Jim Morrison to other discoveries like Budgie, Nektar, or Hawkwind – when I started buying vinyl around the year 2000. Some of these recordings have been now released on a compilation album on the Polish netlabel Free Arts Lab.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
It took me four years (during which I played punk with some other kids – our rehearsals took place in a military unit, and apart from one bass riff I wrote, there are hardly any memories from these days) to find a kindred spirit in the world of music in my friend Mati. He played bass, sang, and played a bit of organ, just like me, so we pretty soon found musical similarities – we both shared an affection for the 3rd Deep Purple album, which I brought along from a trip to Israel. We listened to it for hours.
It is hard to believe that back in 2002, recording technology wasn’t as widely available to teenagers in Poland as it is now – we had to record directly to magnetic tape in a high-rise block, with no studio, no money, no computer. Money opened doors, of course, but for 17-year-olds from the block, a recording studio was just an unreachable dream. We were delighted and creative, though, and spent much time on the bench outside our block just talking, drinking cheap beer, and smoking cheap dope. Recording cassettes, listening to music together, partying, and meeting first loves. Stuff all teenagers do (or did, as now they seem to be overoccupied by the presence of smartphones).
Mati and I always dreamed about having a drum machine. The closest we got to having one was when I brought in my Casio organ with a built-in rhythm box. We recorded 2 or 3 tracks using this rhythm box and incorporated the rest of the wunderbar Casio sounds into some of our other recordings. Things were primitive back then. Nowadays, the youth can compose music at ease in a DAW. We didn’t have this technology back then. We only had guitars, organ, and a tape recorder. We first saw a computer with DAW in 2003, but only recorded one track on it. A friend was among the wealthier kids, so he organized a “recording session,” a mess of drinking cheap wine and trying to sound like Hawkwind.
“Banished Pope” is a fantasy of our original Górczyn sound and what would happen if we had a primitive drum machine back then. Dreams come true, and here I am in my home studio recording this track, 21 years after recording the “Rock’n’Roll Underground” tape with Mati. Still no money, though. Buying my albums on Bandcamp would help, as streaming only makes sense when you hit a million plays. Some things never change, and we are repeatedly stuck with a statistic error in the internet era. The “Banished Pope” is alive and well in Górczyn, like the evil Eye See Eye God from the Hawkwind saga. Let’s destroy him some other day, as now I’ll be busy cloud-floating and picturing the release day of my first vinyl as Adam Majdecki-Janicki – more details below the lyrics, of course.
I gotta cup full of delusion
I gotta name that breeds confusion
And I’ve got years that led to this place
Look from its heights and it’s a disgrace
Got a sack of dope for the banished pope
Got a heavy rope for the banished pope
I got a friend in emanating darkness
He’s like the shadow, he reflects the brightness
Come everybody to an atomic feast
Burning napalm spells the number of the beast
I got a reason not to hide from the sun
Its morning rays are my relentless gun
It shoots up writs that say well done
I gotta season of the witches that run
As some of you might know, I have released some slices of vinyl since 2011, some CDs, and some cassettes. But I have never released an album under my birth name on the vinyl format.
Thanks to the awesome HERBY RECORDS from Texas, USA that will soon change. I’ve worked with Herby before on the A.J. Kaufmann vinyl, the Neanderthalmen vinyl EP, and the Chica Narcotica vinyl. Herby has also proved to be one of the best underground labels around over the years.
So, with great pride, I announce the coming of “Adam Majdecki-Janicki” to LP (on glorious white vinyl!) soon. The album artwork (by Justin Jackley) is almost ready, and the vinyl should be quickly pressed.
It’s coming in a significant year – I recorded my first cassette in 1998, so 2023 marks 25 years of my operation as an artist.
Here is the album tracklist:
SIDE A: 1. Anita Pallenberg. 2. Górczyn Spirit Soldiers. 3. Six 2 Saturn. 4. You Rule in This Kingdom. 5. Melancholy Hour.
SIDE B: 1. Grace. 2. Holy Wheels. 3. Malawi Night Tripper. 4. Urmensch Zitrone. 5. Martyria. 6. Wspomnienie z Hipisowskiego Bunkra.
Hope you guys are as excited as I am. Keep an eye out on my debut vinyl album under my birth name! Hurray!
Special dedication of this piece of writing goes to my good friend, the legendary Wojciech Korda – the man whom I had the pleasure to meet in 2011 (and even play a gig with a year later!) and who is the pioneer of Polish rock’n’roll and the man who first brought Jimi Hendrix’s music behind the Iron Curtain. In 1968.
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