we were the rookers!



so here you go - blast from my past. some people are afraid of their past. well, not me. during many years of playing with bands anything from rock'a'billy to folk songs in pubs of good old europe i also managed to put together my own band and record something with them. the name of the band was "the rookers" - taken from anthony burgess clockwork orange novel (with help of my good friend ludva michael bina right before his emigration to usa in 1988). the band had many different players and evolved in quite cool act that at the end had some following but than i 've got kids and regular job as  director of radio prague and my wild years were almost immediately over. our last two shows with the band were at now defunct "bunkr" club in prague sometimes at the end of the summer 1995 and later maybe one more at small tiny club batallion festival just a few days after my fist kid was born.

pictures

there are very few pictures of my band out there but those i have are here with little descriptive legends:

  three photos of our first show at vysehrad pub. and one extra pic from memorable second podebrady festival where my band just had lost drum operator and fireman in one person but just found a new guitar player.

sometimes right after departure of two memebers of my band - lead guitar vladimir valenta (now dylan st.germain of rhoad island) and drum operator stepan  (i can't recall his second name or wherabouts) i landed a job as a reporter of radio prague and found  guitarplayer martin sebek hiding behind mixing console there. during next couple weeks we were looking for drummer. martin went to some pub one day and found ales kyhos. the rookers were complete once again.

never ending saga of looking for rehearsal space ended when i rented this old countryhouse between prague and city of kladno in village called cerveny ujezd. the village had two! general stores and one pub just behind the pond. total count of the houses was like 80 there, i guess. the only problem was getting there and back since it was quite a remote location. we spent there couple months and we rehearsed core of our show there.  we took some pictures too since martin got himself brand new toy - a camera.

   

and one more taken in the morning after visiting local pub last night



these are the only four pictures from our last -absolutely last- show at batallion club downtown prague.

if you out there -anybody has some pictures of my band please let me know. i'd love to have some more.


records:

making living as a musician over there in czech republic is the same crazy idea as it is here in usa. the only bigger problem - the market there is much smaller and clubs are fewer. that couldn't stop us. anyway, we did untitled (i call it "songs from ujezd sessions") never officially printed cd that is still circulating out there.

once there was rock club "ujezd" later called "borat" and later "ujezd" again. there was a beer pub in the cellar, a small stage on the first floor, a bar in the second floor and a studio in the third floor. all the neighbours hated it. so now there is "semi_irish bar/pub" and the music is gone. why am i talking about it? ujezd/borat club_pub_studio was our home for a long time. i think there was one year that i spent more time there than anywhere else.

in good tradition of four piece guitar bands we did two short semi-life sessions in the studio "na ujezde"during 1993 and 1994 respectively. there was old 8 track reel-to-reel and very few things to use but hey it was enough for us. we recorded and mixed nine songs in four days with the help of friend technician daniel lundak (nicknamed by us brutor) who recorded everything in his very simple way while swearing at the "ambient miking" fashion in the recording industry. later during the mixing he added just a bit of compression. there are very few overdubs there. and we were done. so here they are - our songs for the first time in mp3 format.

before going on here, we have to stop for a second: you can play these songs at home or at work or simply for your own pleasure anywhere you like and wish but absolutely not for any and i mean any public performance or other comercial use including sampling, remixing and any other processing without written permission from all of us. all of the tracks were produced by me from my personal hard earned money so i am sorry but i have to  express the fact that these songs and none of their parts are in public domain so if you want to do something with them beside personal pleasure of listening you need to contact me first and upfront.

songs on the tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9 were writen by me - dusan palka between 1989-1993
song on the track 7 was written by me and peter smetana in the pub "na orechovce" in 1991 between two beers and shot of strong rum on the napkin with a pen we got from the tap person.

click blurry telecaster player to play a song - any song:

               

if you feel like having real cd i am all for it. when i get 100 people interested  i will do small run of them from my own company at $5 + shipping.  heck!  i will even include our v ideo or give me some time and i will make them anyway just for the fun of doing it.


video:

later we did video for one of the songs with our friend - total bugdet was something like $400 and i paid for it entirely out of my pocket! imagine how much money was it in the postcommunist economy! pcha! i can only laugh now when i see bands spending 1/2 a million bucks on bad short movie done in the dry river bed here in los angeles. i wil try to put it here eventually too since that's the only known video we did. it will be here as soon as i pull it from my vcr - so couple days i guess before i find the right cable.  :-)

so what's up with the rookers today? :

as i mentioned beforehand band went through many memebers (i can probably list them here eventually and will probably need to call some other people on the phone because i frankly do not remeber names well) but the last and most unforgetable constelation there was was:

-me (dusan palka) - lead and rhythm guitar, singer and harp player - live in california with my wife and three kids surrounded by top snuds of santa monica mankind.

-martin sebek - lead/rhytm guitars - is  still working for radio prague over there in czech republic and bringing up his first kid at prague

-peter smetana - our bassplayer - is living in town of litomerice north of prague with his growing family and as far as i can tell he's  still supporting his drinking habits.

-whereabouts of ales kyhos - our brilliant drummer - are unknown

and of course how could i not mention our ever faithfull helping hand vratislav plichta who is living in prague and performing his famous pub tricks to the amusement of the people sitting around the same table. when you see him ask him to show his famous "teeth trick"  to you and that i (dusan) send ya. thanks to martin and his camera here's the preview how that trick can go:







and one last thing to say: i miss you guys all very much!


(c) 1989 -2003 and on palka.com