Rock n Roll/Plastic People of the Universe

Here's a REVIEW

I haven't heard Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned, but their live CD 1997 rocks - all songs from the 70s. PPU fans I know rate it higher than their earlier releases, when they had little time to practice, their recording equipment was primitive, etc.

The whole history of the Czechoslovak underground is fascinating. Attention in the west has focused on the dissidents, the disinherited intellectual elite, while the underground was largely working class with a few middle-class emigres, such as Ivan Jirous aka Magor, an art historian who became the PPUs manager. Other than loathing the regime, the underground was if anything apolitical, and the concern was more with free access to books and music than with gaining political power. The underground lifestyle, the drinking and drugging, meant they were shunned by most dissidents, although Havel was one of the few who sought to establish links: hence the launching of Charter 77 in part as a response to the jailing of PPU members.

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There's a PhD waiting to to be written: "The influence of the Velvet Underground on Czechoslovakia 1968-89"

diaspora said:

There's a PhD waiting to to be written: "The influence of the Velvet Underground on Czechoslovakia 1968-89"

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When i lived there in 91 this had been replaced with wall to wall love for The Scorpions

I like Plastic People alot. Some great, inspired eccentric Euro/Velvets-beafheart-mothers jams going on, and their weird Czech lyrics are a hoot.