Czech rock legend Vladimír Mišík and his “most personal album”
Vladimír Mišík is a Czech rock singer, guitarist, lyricist and songwriter. Dubbed “The Legend” Mišík has long been a fixture on the Czech rock scene.
Over the years Vladimir Mišík was frontman of many well-known bands such as ETC, Blue Effect, Matadors, Energit and Kometa. Many of his songs became popular hits and listening to Mišík’s music during the communist era was seen as an expression of dissent, despite the fact that he had never sung any protest songs, nor was he an “underground” singer.
Although Mišík has seventeen LPs under his belt, two of the more recent ones are particularly worth mentioning. His 2010 LP “Ztracený podzim”, or Lost Autumn won wide critical acclaim. Although the name and the album’s cover might appear melancholic, the album is bursting with full, natural sound and raw energy. It was recorded in a way that albums used to be made back in the old days - not digitally, but in analog, making it softer on the ear.
His 2019 LP called Jednou tě potkám or I’ll meet you one day, is even more special. The singer and songwriter calls it “the most personal album he ever made”.
The reason is that it reflects his emotions during a milestone period in his life when the 72-year-old rocker from Prague found out who his father was. He never knew his father, and all he was told about him was that he was an American soldier who left for the United States after the liberation of Czechoslovakia and eventually fell in the Korean War. It turned out this this was not true. His father lived in the United States until the 1990s and had nine children - nine siblings whom Mišík only found out about at the age of 72. One of the highlights of the album is the song Brothers, sung in a duet with the Irish musician Paul Brady in Czech and English, which relates exactly to the moment when Mišík found out the truth about his American father and lost family. That is also why all the Czech lyrics on the album are translated into English in the attached booklet - so that his American siblings can understand the songs.
