velvetine radicals

up late researching the history of Chezk literature and poetry I stumbled across a fascinating bit of rock and roll history: The Plastic People of the Universe.

Influenced heavily by early Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, and sounding like a precursor to such modern groups like Guts Pie Earshot, !!!, and most industrial music, the PPU were the driving force of the Chezk underground in the late 60's-80's when the communist regime was pushing their campaign of normalization. Though they didn't have a specifically political agenda, they refused to fit in to the standards for performers and ended up playing underground barn shows for thousands until they were all arrested for disturbing the peace in '76. This is where things get interesting: these arrests are said to have led playwrite Vaclav Havel to pen the Charter 77, the main opposition to communist rule that eventually led to the Velvet Revolution in 89 and the overthrowing of communist power in the Chezk Republic.

Despite not being activists, here is an incredible example of music becoming a force for social change, the name of the revolution itself harking back to the Velvet Underground, who represented to the members of the Plastic People all that was right and unique in rock and roll. Despite the fact that the "underground" in New York in the 70's had nothing to do with political oppression, that spirit of rejecting normalcy and pushing the arts to new edges carried through to the Chezk people and gave them the courage to reject the stifling influence of the communist regime. Of course, once the Iron Curtain was dropped, and the emigre' writer's books were finally sold in their native country again, the anger and intensity that had fueled the arts scene almost completely died out, and in some articles I've read from recent Chezk musicians they almost wished they were living back under communist rule so there would be something to inspire them to create art against.

I also went to see the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery yesterday (odd to see such art up on gallery walls), and was struck that what fueled these artists, besides a desire to be doing their own thing, was the horror and absurdity of World War I. That their art was the only way for them to express their outrage and fear at what was going on in the world around them. The collage, scrap art and military aesthetic of their art later went on to shape the aesthetics of punk, the feminist collages of Hannah Höch being the almost direct precursor of the work of Crass artist Gee Vaucher, Crass being another rock band that had a vast political impact, during their time singing out against the Falklands War and Margaret Thatcher's regime in 80's England, but also (in my opinion) as the main reason anarchism and hard politics got integrated into rock music as a youth movement, making them responsible for the current anti-globalization movement.

The irony being that despite the continuation of the Iraq war and the tightening civil rights at home, most modern american musicians and artists don't seem all that oppressed or horrified by what's going on in the world enough to make a really clear statement against it, or if they do, such messages have been heard so many times before that they don't stand apart from the spectacle to make any sort of real impact on it, and even punk is distancing itself from an explicit political message, as if that was so last century. it's not like anyone's telling them that if they don't confirm they will not be allowed to continue playing.