The Opatov Session (1997)

Phil and George managed to record all of their songs one afternoon in Room 1308 of the Hotel Opatov, Prague. They were both in serious need of beer at the end of this session, which is why Black Eyes was rather short (a great pity as it was a real favourite on the Charles Bridge) and Phil seemed to run out of steam during White Bird on Ivory.

This was recorded in June 1997 using the tape machine George used during his lessons when teaching English to the locals of Prague. It’s not a great recording, the two of them could have sat a bit closer to the machine, but what’s done is done.

At this time One Place was almost written and had not become a part of their reportoire. Zasackas (in English, say ‘zass-ATS-kass’) was somewhat curtailed and lacking vocals, possibly due to the beer drought at the moment of this recording. The Jam in A did not significantly develop any further from this point.

This is a curious mix of ‘unplugged’ songs, mostly from the back catalogue of Dark Company, with one each from The Ug Brothers, Rough Terrain and what would one day become Flicker, and a couple more thrown in from elsewhere for good measure. Some of these probably have no right to work acoustically, yet somehow they do. Hooray! Jeste jedno pivo, prosim…