Guru Too
1635 Lancaster St Fells Point Baltimore
(next to BOP Pizza, across from Bertha's - two doors west of Broadway
and one block north of Thames St.)
443-844-5896

Thursday November 19th, 7:30PM

Come out for a free celebration at our brand new second location!
We look forward to welcoming you for an evening of beautiful records
with two purposes:

ANNOUNCING OUR 2ND LOCATION!
Guru Too is a brand-new store front record store, an adjunct to Own
Guru, which will specialize in bright, clean copies of great records
ofr all kinds at friendly prices in a comfortable and accessible space
- a veritable gallery of sweet sides - where you will find me, Ian,
four days a week, Thurs-Sun for the forseeable.
Come out to the Mortika party for first crack at our 2000-piece
opening inventory and the life-affirming sound of the Greek masters of
generations past, and I'll share my ouzo and some of my favorite music
with you.

AND
Mortika: Recordings from a Greek Underground (Mississippi/ Canary Records)
a 2LP set in box with 20-page book book

Mortika is the second release on my own Canary Records label
(manufactured and distributed by Mississippi Records in Portland, OR).
It is the best survey of the music of the tekes - Greek hashish dens
- of the late-20s to early-40s ever assembled, in terms of song
selection, mastering, notes - the whole maghilla. It was pressed in an
edition of 2000 copies, licensed from its producer Tony Klein,
released two weeks ago and already sold out from its source. Copies
will be for sale during this one night at $17.

Yours truly will give an hour-long talk describing the history and
context of these gorgeous performances, playing some original 78 rpm
discs including masterpieces by Jack Gregory, George Katsaros, Rita
Abadzi, Marika Papagika and Gust Dussas among others, describing
underworld concerns of drugs, theft, murder and prison as well as
themes as unrequited love and having a good time.

"The word 'mortis' in Greek underworld slang refers to a person who is
both tough and elegant, as it were the cool bearer of a knife and
suit, a counterpart tot he 'Apache' of Paris. Mortika simply means
songs about male 'mortes' and female 'mortisses.' These LPs hold a
collection of urban songs and instrumentals centered on this theme,
recorded commercially between 1927 and 1946 [with two exceptions]. All
might be considered as belonging to the 'rembetica' genre, but we who
have compiled and produced this record would rather see them
emancipated from the strightjacket of genre catagorisation. Apart from
the intrinsic, moving musical quality of the performances, this
compilation is distinguished by the rarity, and often excellent
condition of the originals, and by the quality of Ted Kendall's
remastering. Listening through these LPs, you will make the
acquaintance of some of the central figuresof the period [...]
becoming familiar with some of their variety of vocal styles and
techniques, their idiomatic use of various plucked, hammered and bowed
string instruments and accordion... All this music is associated one
way or another, with subcultures of outsiders, where at home or in
imposed or self-chosen exile, and where they represent the urban
musical culture of Asia Minor and Istanbul/Constantinople, the local
tradition of Pireaus subcultural music, or the music of the
Greek-American population."
-Tony Klein, from the notes.

"A shade over 74 minutes' worth of superbly remastered – and therefore
sonically stunning – recordings from the 1920s to the 1950s, recorded
in Athens, the US, and, in one case, Weimar Republic Berlin, offer
just about the single most cohesive portrait of this extraordinarily
tough and beautiful music. Rebetika is often compared to the blues,
and while that offers a useful comparison to set novices upon the
right path, rebetika has its own sound and feel. It belongs completely
to the Greek underworld experience, a history of displacement, social
isolation, suffering and truculent reaction to it all that is
well-documented in the extraordinary book that cohabits the LPs.
Of the music, I can tell you that the 21 well-chosen performances
present the listener with a superbly balanced variety of the
sub-styles within rebetika, and offer not only the heroines and heroes
like Rita Abadzi, Rosa Eskanazi, Markos Vamvakaris and Andonis Dalgas,
but lesser known, inner-sanctum figures that include the stunning
loannis Halikias and the utterly obscure but fabulous Pol-Meraklis,
singing his hashish ditty in a doomed 1929 Berlin. But perhaps the
most astonishing recording here is the most recent, a hackle-raising
performance by Nikos Vrachnas, recorded in 2000. It's a superb live
time-warp performance, packed with tough energy and as the final tour
de force of well over an hour’s worth of muscular history, it provides
a most satisfying end-note. The production values are extraordinary;
Charles Howard, the project's director, is probably the world's
foremost expert on the genre, and producer Tony Klein has written a
wonderfully succinct history of the genre, its meanings, its
instruments and its raison d’etre. There's also a well-researched
glossary of underworld terms, complete lyric transcriptions in Greek
and English, full recording details and two dozen well-chosens photos
of artists, instruments and ephemera. If you wanted just one rebetika
release, this is it. Those of you who quietly gather everything Mangas
will immediately see the value of this, perhaps the best of all
rebetika anthologies. Utterly wonderful." - Paul Vernon, fRoots

"Hash-fuelled music from the 1920s and ‘30s that gets deep under my
skin. The best selection of rebetika music I’ve found. Given to me
very kindly by Ian Nagoski, a fanatic collector of amazing music
himself and a contributor to the Dust-to-Digital label. This CD was
compiled by Charles Howard, who also compiled the Rembetika Rounder
series that until very recently was my favorite rembetika collection.
The beauty of this music is that the melodies are mostly melancholy
but always with some amazing catchy hook that lifts them out of their
own misery. The songs are made by Greek refugees who returned from
Turkey to the Athens port of Piraeus, where they set up an underground
community and introduced these dark, sad trance-like songs mostly
about lost love, prison, drug addiction and tuberculosis. The song
titles tell everything: the hash smokers, heroin and hashish,
hash-smoking chicks, the lifer... oh mother, I can’t stand it. The
musicians on this really come from the best period of Rembetika -- the
mid ‘20s to the mid-’40s, including Markos Vamvakaris, whose rough,
growling voice is trademark stuff, and Rita Abatzi, my favorite woman
singer of rembetika. It’s great music to play when youre eating,
smoking and drinking..." - Andy Moore (the Ex), Dusted

"Just when you think Mississippi Records releases can't get any
cooler, along comes this deluxe 2lp boxset of Greek underground folk
music...These two lps contain an incredible selection of sounds from
this important movement in Greek folk music, some of the songs are
intricate and dramatic, others simple and stripped down... the music
too is quite varied, often skeletal and spare, but can get quite
intense and complex, but always melodic and quite beautiful and
emotional. The two lps come housed in a printed box, and includes a
bit booklet filled with photos, lyrics, as well as a history of the
music and the musicians. So cool!!" - Aquarius Records

looking forward to it,
Ian