Balak, Miroslav/ Kytnar, Josef,
Ceskoslovensky rockna gramofonovych deskach,
Brno 1998: Indies Records, 590 pages
ISBN 80-902475-0-4

Indies Records is a small independent music publisher in Brno. It is specialised in publishing music products of Czech artists from the alternative and experimental scene. Their first book with the edition of 1 200 copies in Czech has been realised with financial support of the Czech Ministry of Culture.

The book arose not from order, but it is result of fanciery diligence and passionate collecting. The Authors Miroslav Balak and Josef Kytnar valorised their original amateur preference in this encyclopaedia and gave it a professional and sophisticated system. All groups and interprets of rock music and allied genres, who published at least one song on a gramophone record of Czechoslovak labels are alphabetically lined, from 1960 to 1993 (including Slovak interprets). From 1993 to 1997 just only Czech interprets are mentioned.

In principle the entries were allotted to groups, while to interprets only in exceptional cases, when some important soloist played in different groups. Each entry includes: main entry, (C) commentary, reference, type of record, publishing year, list of songs, (p) list of interprets,(R) information about recordings of songs, (s) information about record sides and length of music, (L) producer, catalogue number, notes about cover, (C) commentary related to title, (E) foreign publishing. The end of the book includes long lists: index of names (more than 4 000), index of LP records (600) and index of titles with songs (more than 11 OOO). Because of its good quality the book is unique and useful. Something like this hasn't existed before in Czech literature about music.

Pavel Jirasek
Faculty of Philosophy
Masaryk s Univerzity Brno
Rybarska 9
Brno
Czech Republic