Young Turks

We're back! And may I suggest to those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Georgia, you really ought to. It is a beautiful country and I had a great time there. I managed to pick up some Georgian folk and pop CDs which will no doubt be featured here in the future. I also lost my heart to the lovely Ana at the Stalin Museum in Gori, who is required under the terms of her employment contract to wear a Soviet era uniform. It made an old man very happy.

We reached Georgia via Trabzon in Eastern Turkey. It is not a particularly scenic place but it is not without its charms, among which are a couple of music shops just off the main square. One is really a DVD shop but the gent who runs it has an extensive collection of Turkish and other music available in mp3 format, and for three lira (roughly £1) he will fill up a CD for you with as many mp3s as it will take. So I am now the proud owner of the complete works of Turkish psych guitar legend Erkin Koray, and many more besides.

The second shop has a small but high quality selection of CDs, and it was there I picked up "Gecekondu", the current album by modern day Turkish psych band BaBa ZuLa. According to the blurb on their website, "Gecekondu takes its name from the Turkish word for a neighbourhood constructed without planning permission, a kind of squatters' district that has become part and parcel of Istanbul's urban fabric". So now you know.

Here are a couple of selections from the album.

"Hopçe" - BaBa ZuLa

"Temptation" - BaBa ZuLa

Those of you who have noted my tendency to add at the end of my posts clips of dodgy 1970s or 80s hits with only a tenuous link to the subject matter may have predicted you would be getting Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" today. And if the embedding device had not been disabled on the only copy of the original video I could find you would have been right. Instead you will have to sit through this.