A loose translation
of an article that appeared in the Polish magazine Panorama
in August 1970, previewing Christie's historic appearance
at the Sopot Festival!
CHRISTIE IN SOPOT?
Recently several British popular music
bands have played in Poland. These were the bands widely
known with the young, though being no great shakes in this
type of musical form. Now we have an opportunity to see
another band from London which made its way at lightning
speed and gained extreme distinction in several European
countries. Critics favored them.
It's quite possible that not only those
lucky people who will manage to get to the concert will
have an opportunity to see and to listen to the band in
Poland, but also all the music lovers who are interested
in the International Music Festival in Sopot. This year
the band will play at one of the festival concerts which
will be transmitted on Telewizja Polska channel.
The band CHRISTIE was named after its
founder, musical director, chief composer and arranger Jeff
Christie. The band came out at a public concert in Llanelli
Glen (Wales) in early June this year. Before this, band
members had been working with each other only for two weeks,
and during this time they managed to develop, prepare and
record a disc at CBS' music workshop with the song Yellow
River.
|
The Polish Charts
for the month
of August, 1970
|
The band was created
in quite a strange way. Brian Longley, director of concert
agency in London, liked the song Yellow
River, written by the young composer. He liked it
so much that, despite many difficulties, he decided to make
it a hit. For doing this, apart from the composer, who had
written the song, he invited to London two more musicians:
Mike Blakley and Vic Elmes. He created a new band and recorded
his favorite song.
We have to admit that the result was not
long in coming: two weeks later Yellow
River took one of the leading positions of the British
chart, more than 300,000 copies had been sold till the end
of July. It came to a point that famous American singer
Mama Cass presented the album on her television show, thus
ensuring its success in the United States. There's more
to come: the song got to the South American market thanks
to the British band The Tremeloes, who recorded Yellow
River in Spanish.
Meanwhile, after their official debut,
the band started its international career. On 12th, 13th
and 14th of July they played their first hit in Rome, at
the Rome Pop Festival. Then they went on tour of the most
popular resorts of Great Britain. Directly after this they
went to the continent, where they went on television of
Holland and West Germany, and also had a mini-tour of Belgium.
After coming back to England, they prepared
the next single and the first long-playing record. Among
others, the following new songs were recorded on it:
Inside Looking Out, Put Your Money Down Boy and
San Bernadino together with Yellow
River and eight other songs.
The music the band represents is called
country-rock, and for the moment it's one of the most popular
directions, as well as hard-rock and rock-and-roll. All
the guys play their songs with great enthusiasm and musical
culture unusual for British pop music.
We hope that next to famous and remarkable
music stars, the entire constellation of which is expected
at the festival, young representatives of Great Britain
will be one of the surprises of this huge event in the world
of music, which as usual will end the Sopot Cultural Summer
on the 30th of August.
Read
more about the Sopot festival here
and here, and listen to a snippet
of the show here.
