With the MotoGP riders tearing round the track in Brno at the moment, now seems as good a time as any to revisit the story of the Czech Republic’s – nay, one of the world’s – greatest ever rock ’n’ roll bands: The Plastic People of the Universe.
The Plastics have become something of a cult concern among fans of esoteric music in recent years and listeners of Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6 Music will almost certainly know the band by name. But there’s a lot more to the Plastics than far-out and agreeably shambolic psychedelic rock. When the band got together in Prague at the end of the 60s they weren’t part of some easygoing hippy counterculture; they instead symbolised defiance and freedom of expression at a time when totalitarian rule was tightening its grip on the country.
It was just after Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to trample the 1968 Prague Spring that the Plastic People formed – and they couldn’t have been more anti-authority if they’d stripped naked and stood outside Communist HQ requesting a Big Mac. Milan Hlavsa’s band wore their hair long, they sang in English and their native tongue and they were inspired mainly by The Velvet Underground, relying more on broad mindedness than any virtuosic talent.
Like the Velvets they had a noisily sawing viola player, as well as their very own Andy Warhol in manager and artistic director Ivan Jirous. Add a few more noggin-twisting influences – Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and Greenwich Village band The Fugs – and the Plastic People of the Universe were among the most formidable rock ’n’ roll freaks on the planet. Only no one got to hear them.
What makes them so compelling today is that even without contextualisation they still sound weird. And when you do think about the circumstances in which they found themselves, the music sounds even more attitudinal and aggressive – punky even. The Communist government were so threatened by the Plastics that they revoked their musician’s licenses in 1970, forcing some of the band to work in forestry. But they weren’t to be stopped, not even by imprisonment.
Their first album proper, recorded as late as 1974, was called Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned. Loyal followers, including future Czech president Vaclav Havel, formed activist groups that eventually took part in 1989’s Velvet Revolution. Tom Stoppard even wrote a play featuring them called Rock ’n’ Roll. But the band, which is still going today, claim politics always took a back seat to being famous and recklessly creative. Said Hlavsa before his death in 2001: ‘Rock ’n’ roll wasn't just music to us but kind of life itself.’
A similarly inspiring story is repeated in Bahman Ghobadi’s fictionalised account of an Iranian indie-rock band No One Knows About Persian Cats, and in Kevin Fritz’s film Wasted Orient, which follows the Chinese band Joyside on a national tour. It’s true that too many of our rock ’n’ roll bands today seem about as dangerous as cotton wool buds but that doesn’t mean rock ’n’ roll's revolutionary spirit is completely dead. Does it?
In a small post script to this tale of musical defiance, a whole host of fine independent record labels are fighting for survival right now. During the London riots a distribution warehouse on the edge of the UK capital was raised to the ground, destroying the stock of many great imprints – some of which we hailed here. Domino, Warp, Angular, Finders Keepers, Thrill Jockey, Buzzin’ Fly and Drag City are just a few that need your support. Do your bit and buy a record, such as the latest by San Francisco’s thunderously heavy The Wooden Shjips. The Plastics will approve.
Want more?
Comments
Add a comment