HAVEL AT COLUMBIA:

Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic

By Ashley Cleek

Columbia University

 

After the death of one of its founding members, after disbanding in the early 1980s, after being dubbed “the greatest obscure rock band of all time’, after thirty years of playing together, what does a band do to stay relevant? In the West, you put out a greatest hits album or you market your famous songs for commercials. This is not how it is done in Eastern Europe.

 

            The Plastic People of the Universe was formed during one of the most explosive times in Czech history, a month after the end of the Prague Spring, a period marked by the encouragement of artistic expression. The founder of the Plastics was Milan Hlavsa, a bass player and poet, who was enraptured with Ginsberg and the Velvet Underground.

 

The Prague Spring was over, and censorship began. The Soviet government was quick to discover the popularity of this self-proclaimed psychedelic group and revoked its license to play as “professionals.” Demoted to an amateur status, the band was forced to be creative in booking venues. They dubbed their shows “demonstrations”; Hlavsa read poetry and the band would play as a closing note. Due to the constant threat of being broken up by the authorities, their shows were kept secret and would often take a month to orchestrate. Even so, the Plastics developed a following of Czech youths who were looking for an alternative to state-produced art and music. “Most of our followers were pretty sad, depressed kids”, said Paul Wilson, the band’s briefly employed English language singer, at a lecture at Columbia this November. He then laughingly mused that perhaps the nature of the fans was the reason that some of the main ingredients of a rock and roll lifestyle were missing from the Plastic’s concerts.

 

In an environment unfriendly to artistic development, things only got more difficult for the Plastics.  In 1976, after playing at the Second Music Festival to the Second Culture, the Plastics were arrested. When asked about the arrests, Vratislav Brabenec, the saxophonist who joined the band in 1972, is as flustered as he might have been at the time. He was only imprisoned for one night; however, he was kept in a work camp for 8 months, and upon release, was billed for his time there. “It was more expensive than a hotel,” Barabec joked when I asked him about this. Paul Wilson was also arrested and questioned, and, when he would not give up information, was deported.

 

After the arrests, the Plastics became “icons of the revolution.” When asked about their status, Barabec seemed confounded: “Because he had mentioned us in Charter 77, Havel asked if we would sign. We were pushed to be dissidents.” The Plastics’ songs never really dealt with political matters; instead, they were based on poetry and philosophy. Regardless, in the 1970s, this group stood at the center of a revolution initiated by the dissatisfied youths who attended first their shows. 

 

The rest is history… until now. The Plastics are still together. They still have day-jobs and all but Barabec live in Prague. Though they have not put out an album in five years, they have new songs. The bassist and singer, ­­­­­­Eva Turnovǎ is sure that there will be enough for an album in a year. In fact, though she is the youngest member in the group, ­­­­­Turnovǎ doesn’t seem daunted by task of putting out a album of new songs. “The music sounds better than it did then, it’s timeless,” she excitedly said. It is this excitement that can make these rock revolutionaries go on forever.