More country comedy

Souvenirs from Slovakia: Songs and Dances
Eugene Farkas Gypsy Ensmble of Bratislava
Apon-2498, Apon, NY, Made in USA

You have to be careful in blog-world not to step on anyone's (copyright owners' expensive) toes these days.  I received a notice last week that my item on Ham & Scram was removed due to copyright infringement. It's back up now but without the sound. Now, I don't want to step anyone's toes and if the rightful representatives of a certain music don't want their property published within these parameters I'll be happy to remove the content. The weird thing about the notice concerning Ham & Scram was that I received it when the page in question was visited only one time. Copyright owners must be getting resourceful, they must have some alert built in to their computers so that if an item appears on line from anywhere in the world, they are notified and can block it immediately. I' m always conscious of this fact that certain musics are protected and publish only those songs that I believe are 1. old enough, 2. obscure enough, and 3. not available on CD. I truly believed that Ham & Scram met those criteria. Besides: I only post one song and not a whole album, and I rip it in the lowest possible resolution. If a certain album is for sale elsewhere on the net I think a post with one song, like mine, would provide some free valuable advertisement for those with commercial interest. Not according to whoever it was with an interest in Ham & Scram. That said, I don't think there will be any problem this week publishing a song from a record with even less internet presence than the Ham & Scram album. Where the Ham & Scram record was referenced about 5 times on line, I could not find a single reference for Souvenirs from Slovakia played by the Eugene Farkas Gypsy Ensemble of Bratislava. I like to think that this means that the record is rare and valuable but it's more likely that it's just a forgotten worthless piece of history that was only put out to make a few bucks on tourists. I'm sure if Eugene Farkas is still alive, he wouldn't think it was worthless, I don't think it's worthless, I'm sure Zuzanka Antošková would be thrilled to hear it. The number of records from Slovakia in my collection is proportionately very small (only two). During the golden era of souvenir records, as well as ethno-musicological records, roughly from the mid-fifties to the early seventies, Slovakia was not an independent country but part of Czechoslovakia. Zuzanka Antošková is the soloist with the Eugene Farkas Ensemble on the following track called Hore Hronom, Dolu Hronom (the Hron river).