southern records

It was the hot Summer of 1996 when Garreth, one of my American friends who was living in Cracow at that time, borrowed me a pile of new CDs he brought from States. There was some good stuff among them but the one I fell in love with was the self titled album by Boston trio called Karate. I was listening to the album almost everyday - the songs were absolutely brilliant and it was just about every emotion I was feeling at that time.

A year later the same person bought me a copy of "The Place Of Real Insight", another great album by this band and I became a die-hard fan. And then every couple of months I was pleased by another collection of great songs they wrote: "The Bed is in the Ocean", "Unsolved", "Some Boots" and "Pockets".

And then came the Summer of 2005 when I found this on Geoff Farina website:

"Karate has disbanded after 12 wonderful years of making music together. We played our last show in Rome on July 10th, 2005. I could no longer continue with the band for a number of personal reasons, the most important of which is that I have developed hearing problems from many years of dangerously loud stage sound. After seeing a hearing specialist and attempting to continue working with Karate, it quickly became clear that I can no longer play at the high stage volume that Karate requires. Over the next year I will continue working with my other various bands and projects, and I will also start working on a new band with a different instrumentation and stage setup that allows me to continue performing the songs that I love to write and sing. Of course Gavin and Jeff will also continue to make great music, and we hope you will all continue listening!"

I'm pretty sure we all will be.

And last but not least: THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC! I know it was another band, but there's nothing else I can say.