PROGRESSIVE ROCK
TURKEY
21.Peron's story begins at the heart of the Western Coast of Turkey, the city of izmir ("Smyrna" for your orientalists). The kids who were later to form the band were aLL locals of izmir and grew up in this peaceful old city where the cultural presence of the Greek never lost its crucial influence albeit the hundreds years long Turkish rule. Andreas Wildermann was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1954 and found himself in Izmir when he was just about to start the elementary school. His father was an officer of the grand Goethe Institute and was one of the few privileged names who were given the duty to form the Izmir branch of this institute. This was a great joy for Mrs. Wildermann since she had sympathetic emotional bonds with Izmir through his father who had moved to Izmir in late 1800's to produce wine from the gorgeous grapes of the Aegean coast. Thus, Andreas started the first days of his school life in Izmir, Turkey at the age of seven, to a completely different environment compared to Germany. He longingly reminisces his childhood days: "The only thing I remember from those days to be a drag were the piano lessons that my father insisted me to take...", he states fondly, "... because only then I had to be home. One hour a day. He would sit in the next room and at random intervals wave the newspaper that he was reading, just to remind me that he is listening; then when the lesson is over, off I'm on my way to the street!". We have to state that the district of Bornova, izmir in those days were one of the most lovely places you could find with big houses all around, a strong presence of green that's close to nature but not very far from the city, plus safe, broad and empty areas to play, where you could have the most beautiful childhood of your life. Haluk Oztekin (1955, izmir) and Alp Gultekin (1956, izmir) were both locals and both arrived in a world of music. Haluk's mother was a music teacher and he grew up in a house where they had accordion, piano, violin and mandolin. "When I was around at the age of four, the piano was banned for me when I simply belted out the keys with a jacknife!" he remembers smiling, "and I simply went on to be a 'mandolin virtuoso'! When I played the "Hungarian Rhapsody" to my mom one day with mandolin (one tune she used to play with violin], she was remarkably impressed!". Alp Gultekin's story was a bit different but his passion for music showed itself at such an early age that his parents didn't resist much to his musical ambitions either. "I was ten when I seriously got involved with music" he says, "...and Beatles were my heroes at the time. Then I became one of those usual figures who literally destructed the mandolin while trying to play it like a guitar! Oh well, then it became apparent that viola would be my main instrument and I delved more into classical music, then took the exams and got accepted into the Izmir Conservatory of State," Izmir in 1960s were one of the most beautiful, comparatively wealthy and peaceful cities in Turkey. Total population were just above half a million (now 3,5 million], the big bay where the city appeared to be a necklace around it was crystal clear with all kinds of fish (now, millions of dollars are being spent to sterilise the sea after the industrial pollution that happened after 1970s], traffic was neglectable and horsecoaches were still serving (it's needless to mention the morning traffic jams of today's izmir), its mountains were still clear (i.e. without the illegal structures that invaded them in 1980s), the presence of the Greek, Jewish and Italian minorities who were locals since the days of the Ottoman Empire were still felt and the suburbs were unpopulated and green. Add to this, the influence of the Americans due to the big US-NATO army base in the city and you have a quite interesting amalgam of cultures, colours and peace. The smaller provinces around the city were on agriculture and izmir, being the third biggest city and having one of the biggest trade harbours of the country, always knew well how to stand on its feet economically and thanks to the immense varieties, the residents were open to all kinds of cultural influences. Around these days the social and political climate in Turkey was at an upheaval as well. After the coup d'etat by the military took place in 1960, a brand new and much more democratic constitution was in order. The army thought the new constitution should be accomplished by the people who are experts on its field: the leading civil law professors of the day. This created an interesting situation where you had one of the most democratic constitutions in Europe (such as women's rights were of a much better state than that of Switzerland etc.) and it was accepted by the junta! If you add up the positive vibrations all around the country in which the people were feeling the increasing need to integrate with the world, the entrance of the Turkish labourers' Party to the parliament with a considerable number of chairs in 1965 and the seemingly increasing interest in all aspects of culture and especially music, many things were looking up pretty well. Two very important nationwide music contests were held by the two leading newspapers: Hurriyet and Milliyet. These two papers saw an obvious fact and did a great job in interpreting this potential into cash and also prestige: there were shadows of hundreds of local garage bands around but these young people could not get their names through. In early to mid 60s, the dominant scene with the record labels were of the classical Turkish music and pure folk; the style known as "Turkish pop" was just around the corner, so the labels weren't much excited to release records from these young hopefuls. Hurriyet's contest (Altin Mikrofon) decided to go for the more professional looking and sounding bands. After taking stage in front of a pre-eliminatory jury, the winning bands/artists would perform for finals in front of the public by taking a tour all over the country. They would perform live in each city they visited and the attendant viewers would vote for their favourite act when leaving the theatre! Such a 'fairplay' contest would be hardly reassembled later in Turkey. Also, when you consider that Turkey is one of the biggest countries in Europe and the Middle East, it seriously was a quite hard task! But the paper managed to succeed in the organisation. They were kind and frank enough to leave all the income from the singles to the contestant artists (which was again released by the newspaper themselves!), and had earned enough money and prestige after making this organisation from 1965 to 1968 and rightfully deserved to be respectfully remembered as one of the most contributive aspects in the evolution of Turkish pop and rock music. Milliyet's contest, though, was much more of a different bag. They went for the more amateuristic side of the spectrum: the real garage bands. But since such a cultural scene (garage bands as of in US) was not much accomplished over here, they organised it by stating that this would be a 'battle' of the high school bands! Altin Mikrofon was very important but in fact, this contest was much more interesting since a lot of stars of 1970s and even 80s would come out of these contests... slim, young and ambitious boys and girls were trying their best to play and feel like a professional! Both Milliyet and its relative publications trumpeted the contest nationwide and many naive youthfuls in the successful finalist bands found their luxurious color photos on such big magazines like Ses and the major papers like Milliyet. This generated a serious excitement and the kids took this contest very seriously. The state of Turkey is geographically divided into seven parts. These are not inter-states; the 'region' nomenclature is simply used to ease the division of topographical boundaries. In each region, a semi-final would take place and these pre-winners would later go for the real finals in Istanbul. Milliyet teamed up with one of the most powerful labels at the time called Sayan to release these bands' singles. They were pressed in very low numbers and they are hugely collectable now as they show the youthful power and drive of these garage bands which were largely bands formed by a few school mates and labelled themselves as the "school band" in order to attend the contest. One such band was from the izmir College. What the term "college" refers to in Turkey is a bit different in its use in English. In Turkey, colleges are private high schools that strictly teach a foreign language and give education of a higher level than that of the state owned free public schools. These colleges are formed of two parts: junior high school and high school, thus you enter a college right after the elementary school if you pass the college exams. When you graduate from a college, again depending on a compulsory exam, you go to university. The tradition of teaching a foreign language in the Turkish colleges always had foreign teachers on duty and most of the English teachers in colleges in Izmir were Americans. This was also true in the Izmir College, which was one of the best in the whole Aegean region. Sincere involvement of these teachers with the local culture and the good rapport that they formed with the students ensured a healthy relationship of a cultural give-and-take. The economic conditions of those days also gave the opportunity of middle and even lower class kids to go to these quality schools as long as they could pass the college exams. So the cultural backgrounds firmly mixed up to pave the way for a better understanding for these teenagers of the nation's different social classes. As with most teenagers in the world at the turn of the seventies, the guys interested in music in the college were seriously involved in collecting rock records which were of limited supply at the time, The Turkish labels were not that bad in releasing the now-classic names like Pink Floyd, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Deep Purple etc. but the albums were not being released simultaneously with Europe and the import LPs were expensive to buy for a teenager. The college teachers and the new friends at the US base helped a lot to these young folks in requiring the records they wanted. There also were good shows on the radio by legendary DJs such as Engin Arman, Umit Tunзag, Izzet Oz and Bьlend Ozveren. Obviously these were not completely enough; the possibilities of reaching the products for the youth of its time could not even be compared to Europe, States or Japan but it seems that this was OK and especially you had freedom and there were nothing to stop you if you didn't bother the conservative part of the society. Largely owing to many traditional aspects and facts (that's too long to argue here due to lack of space), the young bands' musical efforts did not mean anything to their parents. It caused a funny situation as when you had no resistance from parents about your musical teenage concerns, it was simply illogical to rebel and the notion of rock'n'roll in the western world of being "the voice of socially and sexually frustrated teen" was seen simply as a pretentious theme over here and was not taken for granted; here was a once-an- empire now-under-developed country with little industrial base. We didn't go through a common historical mayhem such as WWII that was vital in binding the European and US cultures closer and which was an actual formation fact of the whole generation of youth of 1960s; thus such a scene actually never happened in Turkey as it did in US or Europe. Understanding of rock music over here was very different. A part of the youth passionately wanted to be a part of the movements taking place in Europe and US but these could not evolve to be counter cultures over here, The Turkish society has a very strong feeling of conservatism of family relationships and a sense of respect to the relatives, especially to father and mother. As long as the families didn't have vital needs for money that they would seriously bother their sons' or daughters' affiliation with playing music, they let alone their kids to do whatever they want until and if and only if they get to leave making music when it's time to go to university and grab a real job! High school bands were some sort of a hiding point for the teenagers since when they were a member of these "school bands", they were not much disturbed by being continuously reminded such as, "It's OK now that you're dealing with music but be ready to face the realities and grab a real job when it's time for life'" Musicians and musicianship have always been regarded with respect but parents almost never supported their kids to become musicians due to difficult economic conditions. It was obvious you wouldn't be wealthy if you were not a star and that just didn't happen to everyone. The teenage musicians that formed the Izmir College High School Band were some kind of an exception at the time since they were remarkably supported by their parents, their English teachers and their visionary music teacher (who enjoyed Stravinsky as much as Bach) was open to styles such as jazz and rock (rare qualities for a music teacher in Turkey at the time since the neo-western classical artists were largely ignored let alone the more rawer in sound vagabondous bohemian soul of jazz and the simply dirty rock musics!). After the triumph of the but also more Kadikoy Ticaret Lisesi (the Kadikoy Trade High School of Istanbul) in 1969 with their self-penned loud complex and refined psychedelic rock tunes "Sexy Girl" and "L.S,D.", the high school bands took matters into their hands in its compositional more seriously and decided to go for the rock with their own compositions. This hinted at a jet propelled elevation of compositional quality and most of the 1970 singles of these high school bands that the singers show a distinct difference to the '69 records which usually had cover tunes. In 1970, Izmir College attended with "Yalnizligin Sesi" (The Voice of Loneliness! by Цmur Sцlendil, one of their members. The band included a very young Andreas on organ and that caused a bit of an and they had argument since Andreas was only at Junior High class 3 (about three years older than their soon to be graduating High School "brothers" in the band). There were no written rules that a boy from junior high shouldn't be in the contestant band but the common practice was that of the only high school boys would normally form the group. This didn't put them off of coming in first in that year's competition! After some names of this band graduated, some of the ambitious new boys of the high school part of the college kept the name of their school's band alive. By 1972, one of the best line ups of this school band was formed. They were Haluk Цztekin on guitars, Harun Kapancioglu on drums, Yusuf Цrnek on vocals, Sinan Hasertьrk on bass and Andreas Wildermann on organ and they started playing Creedence Clearwater Revival (very popular in Turkey at the time), The Who and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. "Right at the start of our high school period, we rubbed hands and went straight into covering eyes of the record "The Magic Bus" by The Who" says Haluk Oztekin, "We also did parts from Tommy at some school business over here, shows and Milliyet contest performances. Our English teachers and especially music teacher Naci rock music was only Onoz was supporting us very positively; he would say, '... Just go for it. You are capable of playing rock music, Mozart, anything..:". The band continued to enjoy themselves and the small circle of friends and by 1973 when they were getting ready for graduation, they again came in first at the Milliyet contest by their self-penned tune "Fatma Nine" (Grandma Fatma) and won appraise by the music critics. One youngster that time who saw them live on the semi-finals in izmir was Alp Gьltekin: "They were a very tight band refreshed itself with with excellent vocal harmonies a la Crosby, Stills, Nash... It's sad to see that even now we don't have young forces almost vocal bands of that high calibre. They were really astounding". By the summer of 1973, Haluk and never happened in Turkey. Due to ti Andreas decided to continue making music after high school and both of them won university exams and got accepted into Ege University Medical Sciences. It was one prestigious and hard place to study but they were confident about forming a new band and called in some friends whom they knew from the Milliyet contest days who were Aron Serez (bass), Seyhan Eris (guitar) and Halil Yildinm (drums) to fill in the new line- up. In a meeting with the new kids, Haluk and Aron mentioned that Alp Gьltekin was playing viola and this sounded interesting to the other members: "I somehow knew Haluk and Seyhan but we didn't see much of each other until I coincidentally bumped into Haluk and Aron when they were simply trying to find me, looking for me in the streets thinking, "Where can we find this guy?!". Then the sextet made its first meeting and to this day Andreas still remembers the event: "On the 13th July 1973, at 11 o'clock at the 11th bus stop all six of us met and when we arrived at my house in Bornova, 21.PERON was formed!". The band spent the first six months trying to discover themselves, person- wise and ensemble-wise. "We literally tried out everything from Anatolian troubadours such as Karacaoglan to the cowboy tunes!" states Andreas, "When we found that we were dabbling in conventional themes, we simply opted to go more experimental and distinctive sounding. We decided to cross the stiff boundaries of pop. Rather than making customary stuff with vocals we decided to use the viola as the solo instrument. It was also a very good coincidence that our point of view with Alp proved to be quite common". After a fun period of 'baby crawl', the band started to find its own sound and approach. Their influences spanned from Genesis to Frank Zappa, CSN&Y to Gentle Giant but the intense impact of the day's Anadolu Rock movement also crept in the band's sound. Anadolu Rock was a mature form of a crossover between Turkish folk and rock music which had its heyday between 1969-1975. Especially Seyhan Eris and Alp Gьltekin were bringing in such musical ideas and sources. In Turkey, there was a popular argument at the time which was between folk based folk musicians and western music based Anadolu Rock musicians about how to integrate the two distinct styles of Turkish folk and pop music forms with each other correctly. The band took this case seriously and did their best to do quality arrangements; they studied local rhythm patterns, tried to eliminate customary sounding cliches and tried to fuse these different aspects as good as possible. By 1974, the band was visited by Ьmit Tuncag (one very important DJ at the national radio supporting jazz and progressive musics) and they got on pretty well. "He recommended us to lean more on jazz" Andreas recalls, "We later did a jingle for his show! It was the first and last prog rock jingle which was composed and played exclusively for a show in Turkey." Ьmit Tunзag and izzet Цz gave a tremendous amount of support to the band all along 70s and they did to many other quality pop, jazz and rock musicians at the time and they certainly deserve very good credits. Enter 1975 and the band had firmly settled down their sound. "Our compositional process was were respectful and tried get it to very naturally evolving" says Andreas, "For instance, Seyhan would find a riff or a melody and then me or Haluk would add up a counterpoint line then we would make a bridge. Following that we would leave Alp's creative side to play something onto the basic structure which Aron and Halil would have rhythmically worked out as we were in the making and there you had it! We never worked with sheet musics or something. In each rehearsal, the tunes could have changed while improvising anyway, it was all very spontaneous." When we look back at those days we come across with many bands in Turkey which made music in similar styles: psychedelic, folk psych, progressive, avant garde, you name it... But almost none of these bands got to release their records due to countless reasons which are all linked with the day's social and economic circumstances rounded with oriental capitalistic beliefs. Near mid 70s, the Anadolu Rock movement was drawing to a close with the best bands (Mogollar, Kardaslar, Dervisan, Dadaslar etc.) having their heyday. The talented musicians working in these bands always wanted to do more experimentation and wanted to play a kind of music which was more rawer in sound, but also more complex and refined in its compositional part. But the fact was that the singers fronting these bands were of "star" status and they had inevitable commercial ties with the labels, hence with Unkapani (the district in Istanbul where all the labels' offices are gathered, forming the heart of the music business in one centre). In the eyes of the record business over here, rock music was only reserved for the stars or star candidates and a thriving rock music scene with a solid record industry that refreshed itself with young forces almost never happened in Turkey. Due to these facts, the sound and recorded work on vinyl never got to achieve what the musicians wanted themselves - instead, it eventually turned out to be a strange balance of commercial woes and ambitious arrangements. You had to listen to them live to get the full scope (such interesting examples include Erkin Koray giving first examples of oriental psychedelic heavy metal in 1974 with a trio on stage and releasing bewilderingly different sounding music on vinyl or Erol Bьykburьrз, the incomparable Turkish pop star, playing with an underground hard rock band on stage which he also used them as backing band in studio as well; you can hardly hear any guitar on those records!). As for "completely free" or independent music, it all stayed in concert halls and open air "tea gardens" where the amateur or semi-pro bands could take place. There also was a counter-movement to Anadolu Rock at the time in the shape of bands like Oksijen, Tehlikeli Madde or TANK, which all had the common goal of making music of a more complex sense but with more harder edged sound. Unfortunately all these bands almost never got the chance to record anything as they were constantly denied by the record companies. Turkish pop music was having its best days, Anadolu Rock was on the way down and the disco wave was knocking at the door - there was no time and need for the adventurous long-haired guys anymore. If you add up the nervously increasing political unrest between leftist and rightist camps and the accusation of the leftists on rock musicians claiming them to be the "servants of the corrupt capitalistic cultures", many musicians in this field gave the hard work up, thinking "it's no use". They were correct as a matter of fact but there also were a few bands who didn't care and carried on. 21. PERON was one such band and although they didn't run after any record deals that much they continuously went after perfection, never surrendered and captured a level of quality that's even hardly paralleled outside Turkey. "This is got to do with each of the members' sincere dedication" Haluk Oztekin states, "...and oh yes, Andreas' strict Fьhrer discipline (pun intended] also didn't let us go. I think because of this, each 21.PERON member became a perfectionist" . As for the live shows, as much as they greeted fans who were spotting some similar lines of their music to Yes or Genesis and surprising the band with their high level of interest and attention, there were also others who asked, "Why isn't there any vocalist?" or stated, "We didn't understand a thing but it sounds nice" or wisely recommended them that, "This music will go much better with European audiences", The band worked quite hard and built a large following but the performing conditions were not that great: "We were playing in gym halls or theatres with bad acoustics" Andreas recalls, "The sound system could not even be called as a system, no sound control guys around, no monitors we couldn't hear ourselves, of course no PA either..." and the list goes on but he smilingly continues, "I have to be honest and say we were never booed; people who didn't understand in the first place were respectful and tried get it together in their minds" and humorously states as, "If it was for today, with that music, we would have needed bullet proof jackets to play outside izmir probably. People are much less tolaretive to such music anymore". When the spring 1975 drew closer, the band was ready to make their first serious recordings but there weren't any professional recording studios in izmir, They decided to keep their cash and with the aid of one of their close friends, they did their first recordings completely live in May 1975 in his apartment's living room, The first five tracks on this LP are from these takes, They offer unbelievably well balanced and skilfully crafted examples of a type of sophisticated rock music that blended elements of classical symphonic, neo- classical, Anadolu Rock and some jazz. "Anne" (Mother) was a tune they composed after Seyhan Eris's mother passed away and features two very old and famous traditional lullaby melodies, "18400 TL" was just a name they came up with after an amount of debt someone owed to a band member for a long time, "F.M.O. (Film Muzigi Olabilirj" (Could Possibly Be A Soundtrack! was one 'arranged improvisation' they figured that would go very well as a thriller movie soundtrack, "Petruska" had its main theme by Igor Stravinsky and the band elaborated extensively on it and "Cocukluk Anilanm" (Memories of My Childhood] found a sensible-mysterious meaning with Haluk Цztekin's mandolin, (There actually are more recordings from this long session which hopefully will see light of day in the future). Not long after these seminal recordings first, bassist Aron, then Seyhan left the band due to personal reasons. But the band now had a momentum and the core three didn't want to lose it so they recruited two musicians from the old "college" who were only a year or two younger than them who were Erden Erdem on drums and Gцkhan Akзay on bass and vocals. Also, the pupilship of Haluk and Andreas in Ege University was still in order to catch up with the school, some long and short gaps had to be taken. When 1977 came around, the band had new songs in its roster and wanted to record a selection of old and new songs, now in a professional studio! They had heard that Attila Цzdemiroglu and Sanar Yurdatapan (two very important names of Turkish popular music) had formed a label that was open to young talents to record and release records, so the band took a trip to Istanbul. When they arrived at the label's office, it became apparent that their music was a bit far stretched for the label to release. Although everybody at the office obviously saw these guys were simply great, their openness to young talents had to be balanced with the market's rules. The last six songs on this LP and the accompanying single, "inilti" (The Moan), "Bes" (Five), "Sarap Mahzeninde Gece" (The Night At The Wine Cellar), "F.M.O, II", "Arap Bebegin Dans!" (The Dance of the Arabian Baby, an elaboration on the main theme by Claude Debussy), "Anlatamlyorum" (I'm Unable To Tell, the lyrics are actually a poem by one of the most famous Turkish poets Orhan Veli Kanlk) and "Kay Dьgьnь" (The Village Wedding) are all from these sessions. So, in the end, the band only got to record these songs, take the tapes under the arm and go back to izmir, but in the end, these recordings actually were used: that national broadcasting corporation TRT kept some copies and the old OJ friends izzet Oz and Omit Tunьзg gave radio airplay using these tapes. Television was introduced at a surprisingly delayed date of late 60s in Turkey, TV soon became popular and it was from onwards 1971 that the Turkish public seriously met with it and then it became the most important medium as with anywhere in the world, Especially in the days of the 70s when there was only one channel, it was severely important to be seen on TV, 21, PERON appeared on TV first by a jingle work of theirs for a quiz show (strange indeed!) and then twice for Izzet Oz's TV show once with "Sarap Mahzeninde Gece" and once with "inilti". By 1978, the band slowly started working on some new songs with vocals; they have been avoiding vocals from their music for a long while but they wanted a bit of a change now. In March 1978, the band made probably the first serious "rock band meets classical orchestra" experiment in Turkey. Alp Gьltekin invited some of his friends from the conservatory and the band made new arrangements for some songs. "Petruska" was played live with this full orchestra with strings and horns in a scorching 12 minute version! (Good quality recordings of this event exists and hopefully these will be released in the near future as well). One other interesting concert that the band took place in 1978 was the gig which they supported the German legends Embryo! The respectable German prog/rock/jazz band had now decided to go for a more world music approach and in order to achieve this goal in its most sincere sense, they decided to take a tour only with buses and caravans that would start from Germany to the East and the bouncing point would be Calcutta, India. On their way were Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They gave concerts and wherever possible, jammed with local musicians (which are all splendidly documented on LP, CD and video as "Embryo's Reise"). In Turkey, they had two concert spots, one in Ankara and one in izmir, On the izmir leg of the tour, they were greeted with sheer excitement by the audience and worried thoughts by the backing band 21.PERON since our heroes had just lost their viola player all of a sudden! Andreas: "Just two weeks before we would gig with Embryo, Alp had to leave the band due to the overwhelming amount of study he had to take for his finals; suddenly we were like chickens without heads!", Despite the technical indifferences, the band performed well and the attendants of this memorable concert reminisce members of Embryo holding the unsituatible microphone stands to the band! After Alp's departure the band saw that the style they've been working on had come to a dead end, "In order to spice up our sound and make a difference in our approach we decided to do more vocal numbers and make a more easily accessible music" Andreas states, "and we recruited Maria Rita to the band", Maria Rita Epik was a member of the Italian minority of the city and now the band had a female vocalist. It was time to do something different and Andreas recalls, "One day we thought, why the hell don't we attend this Eurovision song contest when everybody else does?", The Eurovision song contest was one event that Turkey took quite seriously in those days but due to the low quality of music offered in this somewhat grandiose Euro-pop event, the band treated it as a joke. However they took composing the song for the contest seriously and at the Turkish finals, they came in first! This was a result that they were also surprised about but they never could make it to the European finals in Israel. The reason was as stupid as simple it was: the terrible fuel crisis of 1979 got Turkey trapped under many countries in the Middle East and some of the Islamic countries actually threatened Turkey to cut fuel transfers if Turkey let its Eurovision contest band went to Israel, Jerusalem! The prime minister of the time thought the contest was not that much important and wilfully lost the face off, thus 21. PERON stayed home! "We weren't that much excited about it anyway" says Andreas half laughingly, "What extra it could have brought us? We would have seen Israel, that's it...". The band recorded a full album with their latest line up but the sound of the LP is unrecognisably different than the recordings you hear on this LP! They recorded a completely pop music album with soft rock overtones which was again alright but very far from their progressive days. "We actually wanted to put in some of the symphonic tunes" recalls Andreas, "But the producer simply rejected and we left Maria Rita, deciding we should be on our own again"'. This didn't last long. It was 1980 and it was obvious that the spirit had stayed back in the 70s, Also, the guys were now doctors and the responsibilities of earning livings had come by inevitably. Since there was no hope in making good livings out of music, the band called it off in early 1980s. The thought of releasing 21.PERON's recordings as a "previously unreleased album"' seriously came into consideration in August 2002. As a matter of fact it is obvious that if this LP had been released in 1970s it would probably be a very collectable album changing hands for hundreds of dollars but in real life, even that couldn't happen, leave alone the consideration that it possibly would not have sold much if it had been released at the time. There is something very fluent and mystically attractive in this music that's beyond worries of introvert artistic expressionism or reflections of its time and social engagements. What we have here is a group of young musicians in their mid 20s who had to confront many deprivations but made unpretentiously eclectic and complex form of rock music surrounded by a magnificent aura of such a beautiful lively city. Eight different young people, university students, musical drop-outs who managed to fuse neo-classical, Anadolu Rock, progressive rock and atonality so effortlessly well that they took literal photographs of the newly developing Turkish metropolitan society which was in a search of identity; feeling trapped between the tradition and the western influences, trying to find a way out. It simply feels great to see that there were people in this country which managed to perceive themselves and the land they lived in free of dogmas and despite disheartening social conditions, they managed to take the grand picture unhesitatingly, working and sweating hard to achieve quality in what they were doing. But as we said, whatever importance they may symbolise, the sole fact is that these are only youngsters and they are offering their work to you for the very first time, (the label) Arkaplan proudly presents 21.PERON! Audio-technical details: Unfortunately, we have to underline the fact that the transfers on this LP are not up to the best standards. The 1975 recordings were done on two different tape reels and somehow one of them got lost. The material we have here from these sessions are some of the band's best performances so the band felt we should use these takes even though they have only survived on third generation cassette tapes. What's more, the tapes were not kept under good conditions (they were only considered as ordinary personal copies and it was too late that they gained special importance when it was realised that one of the reels actually got lost). Andreas had made a good mastering job from these tapes in Germany in 1991 and we found that the best source to work upon would be these '91 CD masters. There was still a considerable amount of tape hiss on these 'worked' masters so we saw we had to take the matters to the studio with today's technology. After days of researching on sound restoration possibilities, we were left with the decision of either applying the best level of noise reduction and offer the album with a remarkable 'clean' sound or applying less noise reduction but getting the frequency levels high and energising the sound. A third option as applying both (noise reduction and energising at the same time) proved to offer a quite muddy and disturbing sound so that choice was out. It was a hard decision since everyone has its own taste. We decided that the spirit of the music needed the second choice since going with that way, we could hear the details better and the original recording sound did not deteriorate that much. As for the 1977 recordings: we could not transfer them from the master tapes either but as their original recordings were done professionally, we worked comparatively more comfortably on them, careful ears will catch many anomalies and errors when listening especially to the 1975 tracks but we should ask your understanding on these historically very valuable recordings where the crackling of a wah wah box or a innocent pick hit at the guitar magnetics show a nervous amateur young band making their own tapes, We perceive them as 'signs of life' on such recordings and think they are nice to hear as they reflect and capture the 'moment'. Our special thanks goes to Mr. Baha Boduroglu who spared his precious time and worked hard on the project. On the other hand it was a strange twist of fate probably since it was himself who was the person at the recording desk when the band came to Istanbul to record in 1977 and he was delighted to work on the same music some 26 years later! Where are they now: Alp GUltekin: He is the viola player in the izmir Symphony Orchestra of State. He also works as a teacher in a private school. Ando: He has expertised on the internal diseases and working as a doctor in this field in izmir. He also plays in a band called Smirname. Aron Serez: He's an architect in izmir and plays bass with Smirname from time to time. Erden Erdem: He's a dentist in Nazilli (a developed town close to Izmir] and plays drums in the band he has formed over there. Gokhan Akзay: He's a surgeon and still composes music in his home in Edremit (a nice old town in Marmara region) Haluk Oztekin: He's an orthopaedist and still composes and plays on his own. Seyhan Eris: He's a construction engineer in Bodrum (a very old town in southwestern Turkey, now one of the most famous holiday resorts) Track 1-10 have originally been regarded as an album by the band. Also offered is an unreleased single with this LP.
Liner notes : Gцkhan Aya. (c) 2003 Arkaplan ltd. Info : arkaplan@arkaplan.com.tr
ALBUMS:
1975 - 1977 - 21.PERON
Members.
- Alp Gultekin / Violin
- Andreas Wildermann / Keyboards
- Haluk Oztekin / Guitar
- Erden Erdem / Drums
- Aron Serez / Bass
- Gokhan Akcay / Bass
- Seyhan Eris / Guitar
- Halil Yildirim / Drums
01. Anne (7.34)
02. 18400 TL (7.04)
03. F.M.O. (Film Muzigi Olabilir) (2.55)
04. Petruska (5.28)
05. Cocukluk Anilarim (4.22)
06. Inilti (2.48)
07. Bes (3.34)
08. Sarap Mahzeninde Gece (2.46)
09. F.M.O. II (Film Muzigi Olamadi) (3.26)
10. Arap Bebegin Dansi (5.07)
11. Anlatamiyorum (Bonus) (3.24)
12. Koy Dugunu (Bonus) (2.58)
Total Time. 51.26
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