This is not (y)our regular drummer!

Back in 1998-2001, which were my forming years as a young poet and lyricist and composer (big word - composer!), I used to jam a lot with my friends. We played mostly punk music, and sang about revolution. We were 13-16y/o and totally out of it on cheap wine, cheap beer, cheap cigarettes, and cheap dope. I was a troubled kid, listening to Nirvana, Melvins, and the Butthole Surfers, slowly discovering 60s/70s psych, kraut, and stoner.

We had rehearsals at a military unit (psychedelic, literal - because of age - punks at a military unit - only in Poland 1998-2001!), and some soldiers were even trying to buy dope from us - but we were musicians, not dealers! So, the soldiers never got their dope. Good for them.

Anyway, in those years I wrote a few lyrics that survived the tides of time, and found their way onto my albums. I think "Navel of the Universe" was written back then. It's my favorite lyric from all the stuff I've written. It might have been written in early 2001, and set to music with Mateusz in 2002. I had the riff I practiced like crazy, a very simple E / F# riff, and the lyrics really sat nicely on top of it. Even back then I liked to keep things simple, and lyrics astral. You can read the complete "Navel of the Universe" text in the "Lyrics" section of this blog.

My punk rock friends were unavailable during the entire summer, so I also recorded lots of solo tapes on my Casio MA-120 organ, guitar, drums, and voice in the Neptun holiday house in Darłówko. And those were already quite psychedelic, some of those early sounds were incorporated into the A.J. Kaufmann album "Neptun" released on The Swamp Records. I lost most of the tapes, maybe as meant since they weren't really good, but miraculously found one unlabeled tape this year, and from this tape comes this excerpt obviously dedicated to He-Man. However, it was most probably recorded early 2002, so just a month or two before I founded a band with Mateusz Nowicki. I also recorded some folk songs, like Gordon Lightfoot's "There Was a Time", and stuff like that. I was soaking up with all sorts of influences, bad and good.

And so, in 2002 I was already quite confident as a lyricist and songwriter - I had a good supply of words and riffs from rich psychedelic sources, and also decided to write about sci-fi, love, philosophy, and the city (mostly). I practiced lead guitar, and organ, but never did I practice vocals. In music we were inspired by all sorts of 60s/70s bands - one summer (I think it was 2003) we even heard the legendary Cromagnon album. I was mostly into Amon Duul II and Hawkwind back then. Before we founded our band, I managed to write around 50 songs. Among them was this one, "The Nudist", re-discovered in old boxes of notes and tapes. Inspired by Pink Floyd's "The Nile Song" it tells a tale of a summer goddess. I liked the theme of summer goddesses! It was quite enchanting to an ugly little guy with a Kosmos electric guitar!

Those two raw pieces of audio best represent what I am still after in 2024. With over 20 years gone like one hot summer day it's hard to tell where I actually "started" or "where am I going to". But it is clear that the path stayed the same, and that I am not your regular drummer. Thanks for reading the memory of a head. More to come if you fancy. Those "Polish psych underground" tales never end!