MUSIC:

Plastic People of the Universe

 

Well, you guessed it. This is The Band. I haven't heard anything like that abroad and there's not many bands like that in my country anyway.

This band got (rather unwillingly) into a big political play, when the regime's repression against it were the last "drop" to start Charter 77, the most important dissident movement in Czechoslovakia. You can't imagine a band more banned than this one!

I don't have many info on them, unfortunately. But they're two very interesting and well-researched articles about them written by Americans (and thus they're in English):

Abnormalization: Cultural Resistence to Brezhnev Doctrine is a truly scholarly work, but it summarizes very nicely what the Druha Kultura was -- on the example of the PPU.

The Plastic People of the Universe is a rather popular article tracking the history of PPU until the 1990s.

As for the lyrics... The PPU used work of quite a few authors. I feature some of them in the Literature section (Bondy, Wernisch).  When I figure up how to hook my tapedeck to PC you'll hear some music.

 

Psí Vojáci

... or "Dog's Soldiers" was another, somewhat younger, band that had a great influence especially on the young people in the late 80s. They're playing until today, but they're not as famous as they used to be anymore.

I'm looking for some info on them. Also, some music will be heard in the future (see the tapedeck problem from the PPU section).

 

Hopefully, some music will be added here soon.