EDDI'S STORY
It was very pleasant to sit in "the box" (the friendly nickname for our communist style concrete apartment in Prague) one sunny spring morning in1998, and decipher the contents of a kind of scribbled postcard I'd just received from Germany. It appeared to be from a musical acquaintance, Scott White, who was wanting to come for a visit and search for old Czech basses. Well this prospect suited me just fine, especially considering the very pleasant musical and personal chemical reaction that had happened between us eighteen months earlier at an experimental jam session in Victoria, Canada. Based on the jam session we would probably have formed a new band if it wasn't for my plan to leave Canada the following week for a year's journey/musical pilgrimage to India.
Towards the end of that year in India, at 4:30 am, somewhere in Baltisthan, on a bus from Leh to Srinagar, I fell in love at first sight with a beautiful Czech girl named Barbora, hence my new residence in a concrete box in Prague.
On the weekend that Scott and
Flanny came for their visit, between my rehearsals for a new, and short-lived
Arabic band, and scouring the Czech countryside for old basses, Scott
and I managed to have some meaningful conversations in which we reconfirmed
our common musical aspirations. Over the next few months, working around
Scott's busy schedule as bandleader for a "Cirque du Soleil"
show in Dusseldorf, we managed to get together with Emil, and our sitar
- bass- percussion, Indo/jazz/rock trio gradually emerged... but the problem
was "what to call it?". We racked our brains but could only
agree that the name should have the word "sitar" in it. Well,
getting home to the box one night, starving, after a classical sitar/tabla
concert somewhere with Emil, I said to Barbora as she served me a midnight
snack... "We really gotta think of a good name for this group!"
She replied, "Oh, don't worry so much. Here, eat your friedsitar
and potatoes!".