Various Banned in Czechoslovakia lp

lp
2012/1975-90
new
To play music in public in Iron Curtain Prague, you had to submit what you did to a board & get a license. Anyone who bucked the system had to build their own equipment, jerry rig recording themselves on hand-copied cassettes, & if they were good enough to get people to come see them play in a kitchen, risk being arrested and/or deported. If they could've, these bands probably would have been playing some sort of awful Zappa-Steely Dan-Coltrane hybrid. Instead their clawed guitars are so cruddy, their elation so bitter, that the result couldn't be more scratched-up & nasty. Also, turns out the Czech government was right: arrests of these same musicians is what inspired the writing of the Charta 77 that eventually broke open protests in the late 80s (though everybody here was still recording on shitty boomboxes). The Plastic People & related splinter bands DJ 307 & Pulnoc all appear. Tracklisting: DJ 307-Chameleon, Plastic People of the Universe-Podel Zdi a Doleva, MCH Band-Wer Heimbegt Tut Gut, Iva Bittovva & Pavel Fajt-Big Beat, Pulnoc-Pisen Pro Nico, MCH Band-Hobit, Mikolas Chadima & Extempore Band-Thema V 3rd Ach Neni Tu Neni, DG 307-Lepeni Okamziku, Uz Jsme Doma-Sopot, Plastic People of the Universe-Zacpa.