Wow, talk about a big tent - it was kind of hilarious to see this clip
pop up in the middle of the oh-so-serious deliberations on No
Depression vs. Alt-Country and the sources and tributaries of each.
But since there seems to be some interest...
FROM INSURRECTION TO RESURRECTION
by Carl Wilson
The Globe and Mail (Feb. 27/99)
Czechoslovakian band The Plastic People of the Universe never said
they wanted a revolution. From post-Soviet-invasion 1968 to their
early-1980s breakup, they sang mordant poetry about mayflies, tavern
beer and constipation. Yet unlike barnburning rock rhetoricians like
John Lennon, the Clash or Rage Against the Machine, the Plastic People
actually helped spark an insurrection.
It was the 1976 trial of Prague's beloved psychedelic band (followed
by the jailing of some members and expulsion of others) that prompted
playwright Vaclav Havel and others to launch Charter 77, the dissident
cluster that would birth Civic Forum and lead 1989's anti-Communist
velvet revolution.
Havel, in turn, as eventual president of the Czech Republic, was
responsible for reuniting the Plastic People two years ago for a
concert commemorating Charter 77's 20th anniversary. This led to the
band's current North American tour, a once-impossible dream that
brought them to Montreal on Wednesday and to a full house at the El
Mocambo in Toronto on Thursday night.
While it was repression that forced the Plastic People to political
extremes, the radicalism in their sound is supplied by sax player
Vratislav Brabenec, who joined in 1973 and convinced the group to
switch from western rock covers to original songs (which Milan Hlavsa
delivers in a talk-sing-shout recalling 1930s Central European
cabaret). Brabenec also brought jazz _ the forbidden music of the
previous generation _ to the Plastic People's stew of Frank Zappa and
Velvet Underground influences. He blows Albert Ayler-style free
screech over the ensemble's otherwise dated Smoke on the Water blues
riffs (executed on violin, keyboards, bass, guitar and drums, often in
unison).
The saxophonist lived in exile as a gardener in Toronto and British
Columbia for 14 years before the reunion. He said the tour is an
opportunity to retire the old repertoire in a new environment before
moving on _ perhaps _ to another phase. "Nothing musically has
changed," he said from New York before the band hit the road, "but it
is refreshed _ perhaps played with a new code."
Indeed, the band is something of a museum piece. But unlike
taxidermized rockers like the Rolling Stones _ who were playing the
Air Canada Centre the same night the Czechs took the ElMo by storm _
the Plastic People's show carried a visceral charge. It was rather
like a visit from Nelson Mandela.
Recalling the authorities' disproportionate reaction to the group's
frankly self-indulgent jams, Brabenec explained, "It wasn't necessary
to be politically organized. The threat was the influence on young
people. It was a circle of friends and fans, but it became a very
large circle, thousands and thousands of people." The Plastic People
mostly played private concerts at friends' homes, but when the
gatherings got too large, police waded in, sometimes with savage
beatings. It was as if the U.S. government had classified the Grateful
Dead as Public Enemy Number One.
Brabinek said the band was surprised to find how far their legend has
travelled. The audience in Toronto greeted them with rapture, as
pink-haired young cognoscenti jostled with grey-haired Czech parents
(some with young-adult kids in tow) dancing in transports to the
skronky sound.
A highlight was a cameo appearance by Toronto's own Paul Wilson, who
as a young visiting teacher in late-sixties Prague sang English lyrics
for the early Plastic People. On his return to Canada _ where he
became a distinguished translator and recently a contributing editor
at Saturday Night _ Wilson smuggled the band's tapes to the West and
distributed vinyl copies of their debut album, Egon Bundy's Happy
Heart Clubs Banned (1974).
Introducing the group, Wilson recalled how he'd helped sneak the
Roland keyboard on stage into Czechoslovakia decades ago. "It's great
to see it's still going," he laughed, and it was clear he meant the
stooped and balding noncomformists on stage with him, too. Still,
Wilson pointedly declined audience shouts for him to sing a number,
perhaps Sweet Jane (the band's encore). Some parts of history, he
averred, were better left unrevived.
Indeed, the reconstituted group finds itself in a new world. Its tour
is sponsored by the Czech Embassy, and organized by New York indie
rockers Skulpey, whose non-profit organization Tamizdat tries to link
Eastern European experimental artists with their Western peers. Back
home, there's recession and discontent. "It's still a long way to real
democracy," said Brabinek. "The society is concentrated just on
consumerism _ as it is everywhere. The bad habits of the west are
spreading quickly."
What role do the Plastic People have in this new dynamic? "Everybody
has to find a way to act responsibly. If we still have a word to say,
I hope we'll find something clearer than before. Sometimes we're
enthusiastic about that _ but sometimes we're tired." Understandably.
Yet in the smoky, boozy haze of the El Mo early Friday morning, these
wizened rebels seemed anything but worn out.
