Songs of the Underground
Various artists
F M Records
The Greek Archives 631
| Ioannis (Jack) Chalkias | "Tekes" in Minor |
| Giorgos Vidalis | In the Upper Neighborhoods |
| T Nikolaou | "Manghas" from Psirri Square |
| Stelios Perpiniades | Heroin and Hashish |
| Giorgos Mpatis | Camel-Driving Song |
| Kostas Nouros | Manolis the Hashish-Smoker |
| Maritsa Pandra | The Bag-Snatcher |
| Rol | Young Hashish Smokers |
| Charalambos Petropoulis | The Smuggler |
| Rita Abadzi | Hashish Smoker |
| Giorgos Katsaros | All Alone in the World |
| Giorgos Papasideres | Ousak Nini Manes |
| Stratos Pagioumtzis. | Baglamades |
| Marika Papagika | Dervish |
| Giorgos Kamvisis | Yannis the Hashish-Smoker |
| Rita Abadzi | You Are a Knave |
| Spiros Peristeris | Stavrakas' Entry into the "Tekes" |
| Giorgos Katsaros | Varka Yialo (Boat on the Beach) |
| Vangelis Sofroniou | Mortissa and Alanis (Witch and Tramp) |
| Giorgos Rovertakis | They've caught Batis |
An extraordinary compilation, this one, featuring rather a lot of naughty songs about drugs, stealing and smuggling. It is up to the usual high standard of the Greek Archive series, and comes with a 36 page booklet, in Greek and English, full of information about the recordings, the artists and the Undergound characters.
The first track is a beautiful instrumental recorded in the USA around 1930. It's a very early bouzouki recording of a theme from Smyrna that is still very popular.
"Stavrakas' entry into the tekes" is another classic, with a conversation between the shadow theatre characters Stavrakas and Nondas, who go to the teke for some hashish. The coughing on this track should act as an awful warning, smoking is not big and it's not clever. The bouzouki playing here is simply wonderful.
If you take a look at the track listing for this CD on Amazon, you will see that they think the last track is called "They've caught balls". Silly!