He comes back

The Plastic People Of The Universe - Vrátí se [sample]
from album "Midnight Mouse (Půlnoční myš)", 1987, Freedonia 1436; also on CD "Půlnoční myš (PPU X.)", 2001, Globus Music 210219-2


original LP sleeve (front/back), front drawing by Karel Nepraš

After re-reading Milan Hlavsa's straight and honest autobiography (actually an interview by Jan Pelc) Bez ohňů je underground (Without Fire That's Underground, BFS 1992) I think it's time to introduce you to the funkier side of the Plastic People Of The Universe. It's not necessary to repeat the complete history of the group which has already been written elsewhere, and you will surely find even more if you use e.g. a well known search engine. Some background info is also available in my introduction to this blog. But for the lazy internet surfers here's a couple of basic data:

The Plastic People Of The Universe (PPU) were founded in 1968 by bass player Hlavsa (1951-2001) with his school friend, guitarist Jiří "Přemek" Števich. Their concept was a psychedelic band with mystical show elements, musically inspired by Velvet Underground, The Fugs or The Mothers Of Invention. They started to perform publicly in 1969. Their freaky show made such an impact on the music scene that they almost instantly received a professional license. Since the early 70s the core of the group consisted of Hlavsa, ex-Primitives Group Josef Janíček on keyboards and guitar, Jiří Kabeš on violin and guitar and the jazzman Vratislav Brabenec on reeds. When the communist authorities systematically began to destroy the active Czechoslovak rock scene, PPU initially even tried to pass the "requalification exams", obligatory for all musicians. Of course they failed due to their musically uncompromising attitude and from then on they were prohibited from playing in public all the way through until they officially disbanded in 1988. In 1976 Hlavsa with his band-mates, with their manager and "art director" Ivan Martin Jirous and with a couple of their friends were jailed solely for performing a private concert. That particular trial gave other Czech dissidents the impuls to form the Charta 77 organization, the first serious effort since 1968 to form an opposition against the communist regime. It needs to be stated, however, that according to Hlavsa, PPU were actually very apolitical; they simply only wanted to play their music. Some group members were forced to emigrate afterwards (e.g. Brabenec, Pavel Zajíček, but also Števich who already left PPU in the early 70s), others were systematically terrorized by the secret police over the years to come. Nevertheless, the group continued to work within their possibilities. They have managed to release a couple of albums on labels in Western Europe and in Canada, all of them clandestinely rehearsed and recorded in Czechoslovakia under conditions that certainly cannot be called ideal... (keep that in mind if you listen to any PPU recordings until 1988!)

Vrátí se (He Comes Back) comes from the PPU's last "illegal" album Midnight Mouse (Půlnoční myš), recorded in 1985 in Prague and released two years later by Freedonia Records (although in fact the true editor was Chris Cutler of the legendary Recommended Records). Hlavsa, PPU's exclusive composer and musical master mind, returned to writing short songs with much simpler structures than on earlier projects. The band also began to use more humorous lyrics, selected (but not written) by Václav Havel. There have used e.g. poems by German rhymer Christian Morgenstern (the title track) or, as in this song, absurd poems by Milan Nápravník: There he goes / He takes something from the corner / He puts it in a corner / He comes back / There he goes / He takes something from the corner... etc. And an interesting fact is that the first intention was to record an album with Marta Kubišová as PPU's lead singer; Kubišová herself was completely banned by the communist authorities since 1970 until 1989. Although they even started to rehearse together, later the idea was dropped for security reasons.

In the mid 1980s, when I was already living in Switzerland, I met some people from the PPU circuit, although none of them were from their then current line-up. For example in 1983 our family was in close contact with ex-guitarist Jiří Števich, with whom we visited a very funny meeting of Czech emigrants in Alsace, France. I was even performing there on a jam session that lasted the whole night until 7 a.m. - I was sixteen and it was, aside from playing street music, one of my first public appearances on stage. :)


jamming in the Alsace sun in 1983: Přemek Števich & myself

Another indirect personal connection to PPU, although coincidental, was the group's favorite pub in Prague: Klamovka (not the same venue as Klub Klamovka). In the 1970s I grew up in the surrounding quarter. Later, when I was visiting Prague in the 80s, I spent a lot of time (and beer) in that pub with my old school friends, often seeing the PPU members sitting at nearby tables. We never dared to contact them though. We knew that they were regularly observed by the secret police and we were scared that we might get into trouble or that the police wouldn't allow me to return to Switzerland anymore... (Don't even bother to visit the Klamovka pub today, by the way. The pub has been sold after the original owner retired and nowadays it's a boring and ugly family restaurant.)

Plastic People Of The Universe reunited in almost original line-up in 1997 for the 20th anniversary of Charta 77. Sadly, Milan Hlavsa passed away in 2001 due to cancer, aged mere 50. PPU with Brabenec, Janíček and Kabeš continue to play their music until present day, most recently they performed in Prague's National Theater (!) as a special feature in Tom Stoppard's play Rock'n'Roll.

Buy Plastic People CDs.

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In memoriam, twice more...

(Yet another almost off-topic post!)

Seriously, what's going on lately?!
Remember: in February, Sleepy Dan, one of my closest friends and a former bandmate passed away, aged 46. In March I've stated that everybody seems to be dying lately after a friend of our family has left us as well, aged 59. But then only one week later a young friend of my wife also died, suffering from a heart disease. She was mere 26. At that time I thought: "Three persons have gone now, actually that's been already enough people for this whole year." Obviously I was wrong.

Last week I've been informed that yet another two former members of the Ugly Blues Connection/Ugly Bluz, our band in the mid eighties, have passed away recently. Roman Gondolán was one of our regular drummers in 1984 and 1985. As a big fan of acts like Earth Wind & Fire or George Benson he loved to play light and funky disco grooves. Although that didn't really matched our style then - besides of playing blues rock we used to listen to more freaky stuff like Zappa, George Clinton, Slickaphonics or the very early and yet-to-become-famous Red Hot Chili Peppers - Roman was probably the funkiest drummer who joined our band in the eighties. Like me, Roman was a Czech emigrant in Switzerland. He became a close friend of my family and he even lived with us for more than a year. He originated from a famous Roma family of musicians: his father Antonín Gondolán (planned to be introduced here on Funky Czech-In very soon, by the way!) used to be a member of the Karel Gott Orchestra. After spending a couple of years in Germany, in the early 1990s Roman returned to the Czech Republic. As far as I know, he mostly gave up playing music actively. The last time we met, it was by coincidence in a street café in Prague about ten years ago. Roman died of cancer in November 2006, aged 42.

Johannes Lange, a.k.a. Hännu, was from Berne, Switzerland. He used to be my neighbor in the mid eighties, living in the same house where we lived with my mom, my brother and... with Roman. He was hanging around with our band and sometimes he acted as our road technician. With his 8-track mobile recording facility he was later the sound engineer of an Ugly Bluz session in 1987 which we originally planned to release as an LP; unfortunately that never happened, three songs from that session still appeared on local compilations though. Hännu also used to play bass guitar, around 1990 I joined his cover band named D.I.Y. as a drummer for a short time. (It needs to be said that I'm a horrible drummer though... :) In 1995 I've purchased his old analogue mobile recording equipment which I still have in my studio today - although I didn't use it much in the past years. The last time I've seen Hännu, it was six years ago when he rode 100 km with his bicycle from Berne to Basel to visit me and Sleepy Dan. And just two weeks ago I've sent him an invitation to the farewell party for Sleepy Dan (who died on February 21st) which will take place in May here in Basel. I was too late though. On the 6th of April, Hännu has obviously decided to put an end to his life. It was his 41st birthday.

Ugly Blues Connection (the "Dead Men" edition) - Crawling King Snake
live at Gurtenrockfescht Berne, Switzerland, on August 24th, 1985
2-track cassette recording from the mixing console
Sleepy Dan (1960-2007) - vocals, Roman Gondolán (1964-2006) - drums, Hännu Lange (1966-2007) - sound engineer. With Joel Kaiser on bass and myself on guitar. Either Sleepy Dan or our occasional special guest Boldi Debrunner was playing bluesharp on this track.


Hännu Lange at the Gurtenrockfescht on August 24th, 1985; photo © Lukas Machata


from an Ugly Blues Connection photo session on August 25th, 1985: Sleepy Dan, Roman Gondolán, myself, Joel Kaiser; (original photographer unknown)

Rest in peace, Roman.
Rest in peace, Hännu.

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In the green memory

Hammel, Varga & Hladík - V zelenej pamäti [sample]

from album "Na II. programe sna", 1977, Opus 91160493


original LP sleeve (front/back)

Despite its name, this blog is not only about Czech music. When I started with the writing last year I simply didn't find any elegant way to include the Slovaks directly into the title - although a blog called e.g. Funky Slow Vac would have surely promised some quite funny content... :) So I hope my Slovak readers or fans of Slovak music are not offended when I'm not bringing more of their favorite stuff. I began to dive more deeply into the matter only a few years ago and there has existed probably more Slovak funkiness than I'll ever know.

One of my favorite Slovak artists of the 1970s is Pavol Hammel (1948), also known as the leader of Prúdy (The Jets), whom he founded as early as in 1963. In the late 60s and early 70s they were one of the top beat groups and Hammel became one of the busiest songwriters in the country. In fact, he was probably the most important figure on the rock side of pop music in Slovakia of the 1970s when "rock" was considered an evil word. Hammel recorded a couple of well received albums. Among them were the hippiesque Prúdy debut Zvonky zvonte (Ring Bells Ring) which holds the unofficial title "Slovak Sgt. Pepper", the conceptual fairy-tale Šlehačková princezna (The Cream Princess), the successful pop album Hráč (The Player), or the more progressive Zelená pošta (The Green Mail) and Na II. programe sna (On The 2nd Channel Of A Dream).

The latter two LPs were recorded in collaboration with organist Marián Varga, yet another legend of Slovak rock, who used to be one of the early Prúdy members and who also played on their debut. In the seventies he gained international fame with his classical-rock combo Collegium Musicum. Another special guest was the Blue Effect leader Radim Hladík on guitar, thus both records were actually released as a Hammel/Varga/Hladík "supergroup". And while Zelená pošta from 1972 sounded more like a Varga concept album, Na II. programe sna consists of 13 short and compact songs in a more typical Hammel manner. Nonetheless, both records can be stylistically positioned somewhere between Gentle Giant, ELP and - of course - Collegium Musicum.

V zelenej pamäti (In The Green Memory) seems to be quite a unique track in Hammel's discography however - and for that matter also in Varga's or Hladík's one. I'm not aware of any other Hammel song with such strong latin rock influences. (And in fact, as far as I know, the only other Czechoslovak rock band who recorded a couple of latin rock songs in the 1970s were the František Ringo Čech Group featuring Jiří Schelinger with two pretty straight Santana cover versions. Soon to appear on Funky Czech-In, by the way!) So, this tune was cross-over world music before there even was world music: the East meets the West and the South; Slavic folk inspired melodies with a contemporary Chicano groove.

Besides of Hammel, Varga and Hladík, among the featured musicians on the record were the Collegium Musicum drummer Dušan Hájek, the Prúdy bassist Ivan Belák or guitarist Tomáš Rédey. The special guest on this track only was Fedor Letňan on the Fender Rhodes piano who's adding a lot to the song's overall latinesque touch. The album lyrics have been written exclusively by one of the most popular Slovak lyricists, Kamil Peteraj.

Like many other Hammel or Varga albums, Na II. programe sna remains quite popular until these days and therefore it's available on CD (a double CD with Zelená pošta). As for vinyl, you already know the usual sources...

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Chain of fools

Komety – Chain Of Fools [sample]
from 7 inch single, 1968, Supraphon 0430547; also on 7 inch EP Artia/Supraphon 133043


original SP (a-side/b-side in a generic Supraphon sleeve)

This one is a true gem and probably the first Czechoslovak recording that really deserves the adjective “funky”. Don Covay’s composition Chain Of Fools was a huge hit all over the world, especially the 1967 version by Aretha Franklin which will still shake up any dancefloor even these days. In the 1960s many people in Czechoslovakia were secretly listening to Radio Luxembourg, thus it didn’t take very long until these chains hooked all “fools” behind the Iron Curtain as well. The most popular Czech rendition was surely the one by Marie Rottrová & Flamingo from their 1970 debut album and its later English export version This Is Our Soul respectively. And suprisingly, Flamingo already had this song on an LP before: a live cut that appeared in 1969 on the 2nd Czechoslovak Beat Festival 1968 compilation. That version was sung by Rottrová’s predecessor though, the young Hana Zagorová, who was then desperately trying to find a trace of soul in her rather thin voice.

Komety (The Comets) were the first Czechs who recorded it, however, and they did best by far in my opinion, with a mean and lowdown beat and lots of dirty fuzz guitar. The group was one of the legends of early Czechoslovak rock’n’roll and beat music. Among the founding teenage members were the guitarists Jiří Kaleš and Jan Reiner as well as the future Matadors organist Jan Obermajer (later known as Jan Farmer Obermayer) who used to blow the clarinet and the saxophone. They played their first gig on a 1959 (!) New Year’s Eve party in a Prague restaurant for which they had kidnapped Obermajer’s parents’ tube radio receiver and used it as an amplifier to plug in their home made “electric” guitars. The first years they played a lot of pub dance parties in Prague, thus their repertoire consisted of rock’n’roll and R&B hits as well as many popular dixieland standards; they also used to have a bunch of horn players. The fluctuation of the group members was immense in the first half of the decade. Like most Czechoslovak young men, also Kaleš and Reiner were forced to make a two-years break when they got drafted. But Komety kept on playing and they seemed to act as a good school for quite a number of teenagers who were about to become respected Czech rock musicians in the future: Radim Hladík, Jiří Helekal, Miroslav Žižka, Vladimír Mišík or another future Matador, Otto Bezloja, who was obviously one of the first in the country to play strictly on an electric bass guitar instead of the commonly used double bass or cello.

Unfortunately, Chain Of Fools, falsely credited to A. Francklin [sic] on the label, was the only vinyl that the group recorded in the sixties. The exact recording date seems unclear. While one source believes it was in late 1967, another one lists June 1968; the latter seems less likely to me though. Nevertheless, both possible dates fit to the era when R&B and soul began to spread over the Czech music scene. Kaleš and Reiner found the perfect frontman for that new “craze” in the legendary ex-Hell’s Devils singer Miloš Vokurka alias Reddy Kirken (not to be confused with a similarly named Czech pop group of the 1990s). At the drums still sat Miroslav Žižka who would soon move on to Apollobeat. Depending on the recording date, the bass was played either by Ivan Pešl or by Pavel Pešta who came in the first half of 1968 when Komety traded their bass player with the psychedelic Primitives Group. As for the b-side of the single, The House That Jack Built is a nice Alan Price cover but compared to the Chain it’s nothing earth-shaking. (Coincidentally, Flamingo and Rottrová later also recorded a song with the same name, albeit the completely different and funkier one from Aretha Franklin’s repertoire.)


Komety, promotional photo 1968: Miroslav Žižka, Jiří Kaleš, Miloš “Reddy” Vokurka, Pavel Pešta, Jan Reiner

Komety de facto disbanded in the summer of 1968 when Reddy left to replace Viktor Sodoma as the Matadors’ lead singer. Matadors (without Hladík and Obermajer though) then left Prague for a lucrative job in Munich, West Germany, to perform and record a German version of the musical Hair. Kaleš and Reiner continued as the New Comets with Vladimír Mišík taking over the lead vocals, but the timing wasn’t all that great due to the invasion of the Warshaw Pact armies in August 1968. The New Comets quitted before they even appeared in the public. Kaleš with Reiner switched to the “safe side” and became members of František Ringo Čech’s Shut Up orchestra, one of the Semafor Theatre’s house bands. Reddy on the other hand remained in Germany with the rest of the new Matadors crew including Bezloja. Later they were the founding members of the legendary international brass-rock combo Emergency, whose first drummer was the talented young German jazz-rocker (and vastly untalented yet eventually later enormously successful solo singer) Udo Lindenberg.

Komety sort of reincarnated in 1973 when Kaleš, Reiner and Obermajer (who was then an ex-George & Beatovens) got together again. As far as I can vaguely remember from my childhood days, that edition inclined more to pop music. But who in fact didn’t in those days...? That period has been documented on four singles, one of them was a popular cover version of Les Humphries’ Mexico. Komety disbanded for good in 1977. Their last lead singer supposedly was a certain guy named Michal Prokop...

(Credit for parts of the biography and trivia goes to the extensive Czech online article at popmuseum.cz, which itself is a transcript from a Rock&Pop 8/1996 magazine article by Aleš Opekar. The photo, the hint about Emergency and a couple of other details courtesy of my friend, neighbor and former Matadors roadie Josef Voříšek.)

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