A band from the Czech Republic. Did you ever hear about them? The name is a bit familiar, isn’t it? They’re coming to Hungary now (press “English” there and click on the previous link again), and here’s their story. With some political background, and some Zappa-connections, of course.
3 thoughts on “Plastic People Of The Universe”
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We heard about them, many years ago.
PPOTU
PPOTU box
Well, in my not-so-humble opinion, Plastic People without Hlavsa is like The Mothers Of Invention without Zappa… i.e. something like The Grandmothers…
Being originally a Czech refugee, of course I know a lot about them. Coincidentally I grew up in the same neighborhood where Hlavsa used to live in the late 70 and in the 80s (and maybe later as well), but I didn’t know him personally.
Hlavsa was a true musician, he wanted to *play*, not to make politics or to be a “hero”. That’s why he finally quit PPU and started Pulnoc (“Midnight”).
The best PPU album is “Pulnocni mys” (“The Midnight Mouse”) from 1987 where some of the guys finally learned to master (and tune) their instruments a bit… The lyrics are also more fun (some are Christian Morgenstern’s poems) and not so religious like on some earlier recordings. This is still one of my favorite albums of that era. And the cover drawing by Karel Nepras has inspired some of my own later work as an illustrator…
And yeah, in the early 80s, as a teenager already in Switzerland, I used to jam with one of the former guitar players of PPU, Premek Stevich, who used to live in Germany at that time; he was a little in love with my mother for some time… :) (and vice versa)
Thank you, Lou Kash, really interesting! :-)