Potapy, "C - O - backwards P joined with frontwards P - backwards N - backwards R" (1970s)

Both myself and my keyboard are incapable of rendering Cyrillic characters so I've had to resort to the Jackie Chan school of sounding out Russian script. Who knows what the name of this LP actually is. There's no Wikipedia article for Potapy so I'm not going to feign any erudition on this one - the only clue I have as to how it made its way to NZ shores is the words "From Ukrainian Friendship Society, Kiev, May 31 1977" scribbled in ballpoint on the back. So presumably someone at the Kiwi Embassy sent them back a Ray Woolf LP and the detente was ON.


I have no idea how the production and distribution of pop music worked behind the Iron Curtain. One imagines stooped, hollow-cheeked men with hard eyes, travelling from school to school searching for children with slender fingers and a sense of rhythm - those showing promise dragged into blockish gray buildings where they are subjected to Beatles and Otis Redding records until their eyeballs spin. Elsewhere, old ladies in headscarves queue for half a day in the snow, clutching tickets redeemable for the latest state-approved hit single - most will trudge home disappointed, as just thirty copies were made before the vinyl press was repurposed to boost steel production.

But however it was done, the process was not without successes.

Potapy - Side 1 Track 5
Potapy - Side 2 Track 3