Kalemegdan Disk - ROCK FROM EASTERN EUROPE

Supraphon Release Information

Petra Janu started singing an incredible fifty years ago, during which she has successfully tried almost every style and genre that exists in popular music. In addition to foreign and domestic mainstream songs, she has sung film and musical melodies, chansons, disco, soul and rock compositions. She has always presented herself as an energetic, modern woman who is not afraid of her age and ages with dignity with her audience. She created her own inimitable style and remained herself. It paid off.

The year 2022 is the year when Petra Janu celebrates two round anniversaries. Fifty years on the stage of our popular music and her seventieth birthday on 19 November. She will celebrate her birthday on 19 October with a concert in Prague’s Lucerna with her band Amsterdam and guests Petr Janda and the young Opava singer Petr Cieplý. The latter wrote the intergenerational duet “Odlišný generace” (Different Generation) for Petra and himself. “I’m celebrating 2 x 35 years, so each half of me will be grateful to all those who come to celebrate my jubilee with me in Lucerna”, says the singer, laughing her characteristic laugh.

The 2CD “Hity a rarity” (Hits and Rarities) is a cross-section of the singer’s career with a voice that is unparalleled in this country. Alongside the duet “Odlišný generace”, it also brings another hot new song – “Pár slov”, which Petra found in the repertoire of the American actress and singer Cher.

Petra Janu?’s current double album brings forty-six songs, thirty-five of which are released on CD for the very first time. They come from the archives of Czech Radio, Czech Television, Supraphon, Warner Music and others. Discophiles will of course find on this 2CD the greatest hits of the three-time Golden Nightingale such as “Jedeme dál”, “Moje malá premiéra”, “Ríkej mi”, “Už nejsem volná”, “Planeta lásky”, “A pak že to hrích”, “Léta bláznivá” and “Má pout”. But often in versions they’ve never had the chance to be heard.

In 1972, Petra Janu won the Silver Chain at the Young Song singing talent competition in Jihlava and attracted the attention of representatives of the Prague Semafor theatre. She joined this theatre in the 1972/73 season and performed there until the very end of the 1970s. Listeners have never had the opportunity to hear Petra’s recordings of plays at Semafor. They will find them only on this project. Specifically, songs from the plays “Zuzana v lázni”, “Má hlava je vcelín” and “Kytice”, which is the most performed play in the history of Semafor. It received six hundred performances and Petra Janu alternated the role of Bludicka with Hana Zagorová.

In the second half of the 1970s, Petra Janu became a rock singer par excellence, and the singer herself probably likes this period of her career the best, returning to it in the last decade in concerts with her band Amsterdam. That’s why she was very surprised with this 2-CD set to discover three recordings with the rock group Blue Effect – “Necekaná premiéra” (Unexpected Premiere), “Jdu zutá” (I’m Going Crazy and “Náhle blázen” (Suddenly Crazy). The latter is Petra’s version of Vladimír Mišík’s famous song “Slunecní hrob”. Petra sang it with Czech lyrics by Michal Horácek.

In 1985, Supraphon released Petra’s album “12 Famous and Awarded Movie Songs”, on which she sang songs that won the American Film Academy Award, the Oscar, and earned the singer the Supraphon Golden Record for 200.000 LPs sold at home and abroad. The album was originally planned to be released in a Czech version. It never happened, although Petra sang some of these world-famous songs in Czech. On this 2CD you will find two of them. In particular, the song “Evergreen”, which Barbra Streisand wrote for the musical film “A Star Is Born” and Petra sang it with Czech lyrics by Eduard Krecmar Plác. And speaking of film tunes, we must mention Petra’s recordings of songs from the films “Cikáni jdou do nebe” (Gypsies Go to Heaven), “Moulin Rouge” and “Bony a Klid” (Bonny and Clyde), which were released on this project for the first time.

A big hit in 1987 was the song by Karel Svoboda and Karel Šíp “Hou hey hou, všichni tancujou”, which Petra recorded with the then famous disc jockeys Jirí Pocta, Miloš Skalka, Jakub Jakoubek, Jožka Zeman, Petr Salava, Jaromír Tuma and Oskar Gottlieb. On Petra’s album Lovin’, intended for export, her diligent little bees, as she calls Jan Adam and Jan Fiala, who prepared this compilation for and with her, found a real rarity. The English version of this song, in which Petra’s partner is Miroslav Žbirka. “Who else but Miro could have sung it in English at the end of the 1980s in our country, right?”, says Petra, and she is still proud of the fact that she sang this song, which was one of the first to use rap music in our country.

Thanks to her role as Madame Thenardier in one of the most famous world musicals of all time, “Les Misérables”, Petra Janu experienced the beginning of the musical boom in this country. She then became a sought-after musical star and this double disc commemorates her work in musicals with the song “Žárlím” (Jealous), which Petra sang as the Queen of the Fairies Titania in the musical Midsummer Nights’ Dream. Fans of Petra Janu will appreciate that this double album also includes Petra’s duets with Petr Kolár, Karel Gott and Petr Janda from the musicals “If There Were a Thousand Clarinettes”, “Phantom of the Opera” and “Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll!”. And also the singer’s versions of hits from the repertoires of Karel Gott, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Rush, Celine Dion, Tom Jones and Queen.

Eduard Krecmar’s lyrics to Karel Svoboda’s song S láskou má svet nadeji (With Love the World Has Hope) were already topical at the time of its creation, when Petra Janu won the Golden Bratislava Lyre with it in 1986. And today it is even more topical. It is not only with love that the world has hope – it also has hope with Petra Janu, whose songs have brightened our lives for fifty years and made them more joyful and bearable.

Tracklist

CD 1

1. Mužem se rádi mít – ? 1988 3:19
2. Mám svou písen (I Got Rhythm) – ? 1993 3:02
3. Pár slov (If I Could Turn back Time) – ? 2016 4:13
4. Dech se mi ouží – ? 1975 3:08
5. Zustáváš (Superstar) – ? 1975 3:48
6. Mých tisíc bratrí – Recorded 1976, ? 1977 3:18
7. Jen pár mých snu (One Night) – ? 1978 3:25
8. Krajinou snu (live) – ? 1978 2:49
9. Kde jsi byl a co se stalo (live) – ? 1978 3:08
10. Necekaná premiéra (Maladetta primavera) – ? 1982 3:34
11. Cesta vetrem (Gypsy Song) – ? 1984 2:36
12. Už mi nevolej – ? 1984 3:36
13. Jdu zutá (live) – ? 1984 3:07
14. Náhle blázen (Slunecní hrob) (live) – ? 1984 3:29
15. Sek jsi sebou sám (Bring back that Leroy Brown) – ? 1985 2:21
16. Kaleidoskop (live) – ? 1985 3:51
17. Dej si ríct – ? 1986 4:06
18. Jedno slunce – ? 1986 1:50
19. Vzpomínka – ? 1986 2:29
20. Plác (Evergreen) – ? 1986 3:08
21. Ríkej mi (live) – ? 1987 4:08
22. Jedeme dál – ? 1986 2:34
23. Už nejsem volná (The Power of Love) (live) – ? 1987 4:22

CD 2

1. Pánové, klapka, jedem!!! – ? 1986 3:08
2. Tentokrát valcíkový (You Light up My Life) – ? 1984 3:07
3. Cím víc me máš rád (The Song from Moulin Rouge – It’s April again / Where Is Your Heart) – ? 1987 2:18
4. Hraj – ? 1987 3:06
5. Oliver Twist – ? 1987 1:22
6. Zvláštní prípad – ? 1987 3:24
7. Léta bláznivá – ? 1987 2:51
8. Hi hey ho, Disco that’s the Show (Hou hej hou, všichni tancujou) – ? 1988 3:00
9. A pak že je to hrích – ? 1988 4:44
10. Screenin’ on (Promítám) – ? 1988 4:13
11. Bludicka – ? 1988 6:20
12. Planeta lásky – ? 1988 2:47
13. Muj Strauss – ? 1993 2:44
14. Žárlím (live) – ? 1993 3:55
15. Párkrát mlcet (All I Ask of You) (live) – ? 1996 3:25
16. Má pout (Comme d’habitude – My Way) – ? 1996 4:12
17. Toužíš (Tell Him) – Recorded 1997, ? 1998 4:45
18. Cas ruží (Delilah) – ? 1999 2:08
19. Dotýkat se hvezd – ? 2009 2:34
20. Vzkríšená láska – ? 2010 3:34
21. Písen o poutnících – ? 2017 3:18
22. Odlišný generace – ? 2022 2:49
23. S láskou má svet nadeji (live) – Recorded 1987, ? 1986 3:49