One of You

One of You is my friend’s mom. She left Czechoslovakia during the crackdown in 1968. Everyone in Prague was always talking about how great and amazing the rest of the world was and how the communists were lying when they said the West was bad. When she came to Toronto she remembers being “crushed, totally crushed”. The city was so ugly and the people were strangers to each other. She wrote some songs about her feelings of alienation and sadness about this new place and the world in general. She couldn’t read or write music but wrote out her songs in code. Years later she and her husband recorded some of these songs and self-released three 45s on their own Scarab label.

“Faded Flowers”
[audio:One_Of_You_Faded Flowers.mp3]

“When The Sun Comes Up”
[audio:One_Of_You_When_The_Sun_Comes Up .mp3]