Ancient Greeks

Last week I was in Greece. I started and finished in Athens - working at the beginning of the week, sightseeing and record shopping at the end - with a few days in Chalkida (the C is silent) in between.

I have been to Athens many times but this was my first visit to Chalkida. The city straddles the Euripus Strait at the point where the mainland and the island of Evia nestle up together and is quite ridiculously scenic as this view from my hotel room shows.

It also has a lot of history. There is evidence of settlement there on the island side going back to the 12th century BC and 400 years later it was a major power with colonies in what is now Italy. The first bridge linking it to the mainland was built 2500 years ago.

However apart from the 17th century Ottoman castle on the mainland there is not a lot of evidence of this history. Because of its strategic importance the city has been attacked, destroyed and rebuilt many times over the centuries. The same can't be said of its former rival Eretria 20 miles down the coast. Everyone lost interest after it was trashed in 87 BC so there are still a lot of Roman remains lying around. 

For anyone who is interested there are more photos of Chalkida, Eretria and Athens over on Flickr. For all the rest of you, let's crack on with the dodgy music. It's why you are here.

While in Athens I paid my regular visits to Basement Records in Kolonaki and Zaharias Records in the Monastiraki flea market, and as usual came away with lots of goodies. Picking up a copy of Bim Sherman's 'Miracle' album for just 50 cents was probably the highlight. That will no doubt feature here at some point.

One of the other purchases was the 1985 edition of  'Chrysí Diskothíki' (Golden Record Library), a series of CDs issued by the local branch of EMI covering the 1950s to the 1990s. Most of the tracks on this edition were fairly traditional folk and rebetiko songs that could have dated from any year in that period. These are the only two that you could say with any degree of confidence are from the 1980s:  

"Risko" - Fatme & Nikos Papazoglou

"Pimenikon Rock" - Giorgis Miliokas

Also big in Greece in 1985 - Lena Platonos and future Eurovision regular Marianna Efstratiou.