Brian Turner at The South Bank Centre

Brian Turner gave a stiring reading of his poetry at The South Bank Centre in the afternoon of 30 October. Sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, Turner had his back to an aquatinted view over the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, then the Thames towards the Barbican Centre. This Brutalist aesthetic did not diminish the watery quality of the late autumn sunshine or the tone of Turner's delivery. However, this aesthetic is important, read on.

Looking distinctly "beefier" than photos from two years ago suggest, Turner provided his audience with accounts of sleeping in a bed once occupied by Dick Cheney and how he remains in contact with friends of the suicide, PFC Miller, but not Miller's family. Despite leaving Iraq and the US military, Turner's mind remains. His poem, "At Lowe's Home Improvement Center" is simultaneously a psychotic episode and a critique of "normalcy", undisclosed "collateral damage" and the degeneration of language as a political expedient.

This theme is more easily quoted in "Howl Wind", which ends:

"......a mortar round
howls a night wind over the city,
and just where it lands
we will see."

The theme of city as target and barricade, unidentified, scared and scarred returns in Turner's new poems. Turner challenged the audience that afternoon, to identify where the next random violent act would happen. He did this without irony, with considerable charm and without turning to face the view over towards the Barbican Centre. That view struck me as the same as the Twin Towers before they fell down.

In Praise of John Hegely

Among the piles of books scattered about my lodgings is a much-loved copy of John Hegley's "Glad To Wear Glasses", first published in 1990.

Fast forward to 16 September 2010, I found myself at the Camden Bookshop by Old Street Tube to witness "Monsieur Hedley" read from that collection and others, including his latest, "The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet". Well, I say read, but he also sang and played a mandolin, sometimes accompanied by a fellow using such things as a plastic skull and an inflated black rubber glove as percussion.

2010 sees Hegley expand upon his dog metaphor with a new collection enriched with a parallel French translation "and plenty of room to add your own drawings". The dog in question is called Chirac and as a symbol for our fractured age, cannot be equaled.

"TELEVISION IS BAD FOR YOUR CONVERSATION WITH THE DOG. His dog quietly keeps guard over his master's pile of pebbles" is at once, humourous, simple and indistinct. Who is the dog? Does this dog have an opinion? Does it actually matter? What are the pebbles? All questions for the reader to ponder.

Hedley on the evening reminded me of a young University lecturer of my acquaintance. His percussionist reminded me of more than one reformed abuser of Class A drugs. That those two images can fill the air at the same time as Hegley explores neglect, boredom and complex identity makes the world a better place.

Stuffed chair talks

Proof that the UK coalition does things differently comes today.....in a newspaper report, the Tory 'chair' in the House of Lord's says it does God.

I can't wait for the narrative stating that the economic crisis is a pestilence visited upon the world because of a lack of faith in God.

It isn't.

Tube Disaster

I laughed my fuckin cods off this morning when The Guardian reported the Real IRA will target bankers in a "renewed campaign of violence". I fell on the floor howling, shaking with disbelief when I read the companion piece. Apparently the clandestine meetings between the Real IRA and Mummy's boy journo Henry were like a scene from The Godfather.

I think the little diddums needs to get out more. What he described sounded more like the druggie scenes from "Withnail and I".

The world capitalist conspiracy of Jews, bankers and socialists, if there is such a thing, hasn't really had a good few days, has it.

First, there was all that reporting of those former lifestyle gurus at TUC Conference threatening action against budget cuts. Then there was some sort briefing that the Israeli-Palestinian talks had hit their usual stumbling blocks. I mean, these talks have been going on for years. What the fuck do they talk about? Book deals? Things have got so bad, Hilary Clinton has been forced to go to press. Now some cokehead fantasists with guns are threatening British bankers.

What are we to do....


But the good news is that the world's favourite puppy, Obama, has written a children's book. Lord help us....actually He won't help because, again, depending on one's point of view; Satan arrives in London on Thursday in the body of the Pope.

The only sane solution is to ignore all that crap and and get on with your life, here's a little help along the way...Tube Disasters by The Flux of Pink Indians

Monkey Phil falls over

I must confess a weakness for trials and tribulations of Phil Woolas MP.

One of my favourite memories of the 1980s is a sit down protest on Westminster Bridge in the evening rush hour with a bunch of "radical Marxist" students. As cars turned around and the police wondered about the overtime payments, we sat listening to Phil Woolas through a megaphone telling us the government of the day had taken notice of the protest and now please disperse. The response of course, was "Fuck off".

I really can't remember who coined the phrase Phil "Safe Labour Seat" Woolas but it certainly was around shortly after that incident. I had forgotten about him until completely until I read somewhere he finally got elected. Quite how many times he tried is left unrecorded....he wasn't elected till 1997.

What is recorded though is his rise to the improbable heights of Immigration Minister, before being moved because he was so crap. The man is such an apparatchik monkey, that unless he checks with the Labour Machine first, he gets into trouble with women wearing veils, anti-racism campaigners, plus his own expenses scandal. Do read down his wiki entry, it is most fun.

Quite how a Labour MP, even in a safe seat, could feed at the piggy trough, insult his electorate and still get re-elected is explained in today's Guardian. Apparently, he lied during his election campaign.

It would appear this isn't allowed and no-one at Labour Party HQ seemed to have told Monkey Phil or his monkey mates troughing in Oldham East....Hey Ho....He's appearing in a specially convened court to throw him out.

Being a good apparatchik, Monkey Phil is supporting David 'Wanker' Milliband for the leadership. He even nominated Diane Abbot on Milliband orders....the organ grinder has no sense of irony...

Anyway, Phil Woolas, the Monkey falls over. It won't hit the news, David Milliband will get elected as Labour Leader. We know we're fucked anyway, go and listen to some music instead! Try this if you need cheering up!

Pakistan knows it's fucked - Angelina has come a-visitin'

Early Autumn Greetings, my notional reader!

Please accept my humble apologies for not posting anything since April. I have devoted a lot of time to ignoring "current affairs" and the world in general and am happy to report that I feel wonderful as a result!

However, I simply couldn't resist commenting on the news that Angelina Jolie has visited Pakistan.

One simply can't avoid feeling a little sympathy with the inhabitants of that country at the moment. An area with a rich cultural heritage stretching back to before BCE 1500, a diverse literary, political and physical landscape....in short, a civilized place.

More recently, the area has been forced to endure institutionalized radical Islam, corruption, and more general incompetence from its government and "allies", chiefly the USA. Added to this, a catastrophic flood, an even more catastrophic reaction to it from the "international community" and a betting scam involving its cricket team. One has to wonder, what else can go wrong? What's left?

Now, if the inhabitants had any doubt it was a basket case, Angelina Jolie has come to town. The trip was beautifully stage managed, Ange was wearing a lovely cut-down burka described as a "robe" and she arrived to "to highlight the ongoing needs of Pakistan at a time when global attention is waning."

There is no doubt, Pakistan is fucked....and it's citizens know it!

The poetry of Vratislav Brabenec

In December last year I was challenged - or "commissioned" as I like to regard it - by Eva Turnová to produce an English version of Vratislav Brabenec's poem, poď .

I have lost count of the versions and I am not totally happy with this one but here it is. There is plenty of psychedelic intertext which I shall leave for the reader to wrestle with. I would draw your attention to the neologism, supersticians, which conjures up images of lying politicians, spin doctors, along with religious leaders and other quacks. (Well, you need to know that it isn't a typo!).

This poem, along with several others, has been set to music by the wonderful plastic people from Prague. You can catch up with their universe on Maska za maskou, released in December last year and premiered in front of an international audience in London in January.

Anyway, enjoy!

COME

Come look inside the flesh of the melon
and leave behind the knives,
burn the laws of the gorgon,
swimming is easier with an empty head.

Be a frog or be a fish
in evolution, a blemish,
a dream of birds, a secret
underneath an ocean of wreckage.

To taste the absurd is sweetness
to ride in melon juice, treacherous,
the soul is a burden and so is thinking of it,
in the garden of god there is time enough.

Stop giving birth to ghosts,
supersticians and hopes;
it's a leap in the clouds,
the bush burns within
and slanders in a coffin.

Be a frog or be a fish
in evolution, a blemish,
a dream of birds, a secret
underneath an ocean of wreckage.

To taste the absurd is sweetness
to ride in melon juice, treacherous,
the soul is a burden and so is thinking of it,
in the garden of god there is time enough.

Leaders' debate less rivetting the DIY SOS

I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to watch The Leader's Debate as it was announced with some fanfare a few months ago. The notion of a ""British TV First" seemed important to various mainstream media organisations and thus of little importance to me.

However, curiosity got the better of me and I persuaded my children to let me have a peek about eight minutes into the "show", for that what it was. I should point out, that the only time our children are allowed to use swear words without being told off, is when a politician comes on the telly. Though not encouraged to use such phrases as "duplicitous cunt" or "fuck off, shithead", I will not deny that a certain feeling of pride wells up when my daughter uses such phrases.

Anyhow, I digress. I managed to catch ten seconds of Gordon Brown sounding like an angry old guard dog before switching back to what my children were watching before. DIY SOS is more suitable viewing for your eyes and ears.

Nick Clegg was pronounced the winner of the debate by the Guardian and the other paper I bothered to check. Quite how Clegg could fail to beat a psychotic bulldog and a deluded poodle seemed to elude those same papers. He did and that's what they think is important, so it must be....Therefore I must be some sort of deviant for thinking the opposite.

Karel Schwarzenberg invokes Malcolm X in Prague today

I do love a bit of posturing especially by those pigs snubbed at the high trough. The trough doesn't get much higher than the dinner this evening in Prague after America's historically black President Obama signs something with Russia's histrionically puppet-like President Medvedev.

Quite what this something actually is will not be discussed much beyond this evening, as it is really all a polite bun fight.

One of those refusing to be part of this horrendous narrative is the delightfully anachronistic and aristocratic Prince Karel Schwarzenberg. A man who has campaigned forcefully, if at times comically, about pigs eating at troughs. (Or localized Czech corruption as the less well-born would describe it). He was quoted in the Prague papers this morning saying he will not attend this evening's meal as he and the other non-global diners are only there to act as waiters.

What does he mean?!

This invokes the memory of one Malcolm X, the straight talking black American unfortunately airbrushed out of online histories but you can find him speak here about house niggers eating better than field niggers. Not on that clip is the statement, "I'm not a diner unless you let me dine. Then I become a diner". Brother Malcolm was referring to the rather unfortunate history of the United States when it comes to looking after its own citizens.(Though this could apply equally to Russia and elsewhere for that matter).

However, in a moment of petulance rather than intelligent irony, Schwarzenberg does remind us of Malcolm X. Obama won't be paying attention but we should. Those gathered at the baroque trough this evening are dining on the future of this planet, paid for by the suckers who let them be there.

UCL, London's Illegal University

I must confess surprise that The Independent ran a story about how the CIA now holds data on 900 current and former members of University College London's Islamic Society. After all, it is 1 April and the student body itself and their representatives don't seem bothered that they have not only broken the union's own data protection guidelines, they have also broken British and EU law.

Never mind, Britain's own secret police aren't concerned either. Not only did they act outside Britain's Data Protection Act when they gathered the data, the secret police also acted outside the act by passing on the data to the CIA.

I am reminded of this lackadaisical attitude to data protection when I think back to UCL Union's Annual General Meeting held on 23 February, this year. The students' union were the very opposite of lackadaisical in the build up to that meeting. Emails to clubs and societies reminded "to send two representatives to this meeting, as important decisions about the future of UCL Union and about Clubs and Societies get made there" and threatened non-attendence with reduced funding.

Unfortunately, the lackadaisical attitude returned in time for the meeting:

James "Tubby" Hodgson, the Student Activities Officer responsible for handing over the Islamic Society membership lists was asked to give a report on his activities this year. In questions afterwards, only one student of the 400 assembled, actually asked whether he had acted illegally. He said that it was Christmas, no-one at the University was available to give advice, he felt under pressure to act to prevent further terrorist acts. That being the scripted way of saying, "yes".

And that was that. The "important decisions made" were that the student body was bullied into accepting minutes of meetings that remain unpublished and unattended and worse, that a paid officer of the students' union acted illegally was not viewed as "important" at all.

The AGM then continued on its merry way with its various gimmicks and novelties such as the wi-fi voting gadgets and the comedy French chair, who did hid best to sound like Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau.

Maybe the students were distracted by the entertainment of Dave Spart's grandson invading the stage to protest about the proposed staff cuts. Maybe the students just didn't know one of their own representatives acted illegally by handing over those lists and now the CIA holds that data, too.

UCL's branding, "London's Global University" has bothered me for a long time. Not because it isn't catchy, not because it isn't true. It has bothered me because UCL invests more in publicizing its brand than its staff or complying with basic human rights legislation. "Global University"? Well, its data is shared among global secret services. That bothers other people.

Shagger Norris still not in jail

A man cannot live by bread and poetry alone. The more rounded individual must, by definition, have other interests. One of mine is Britain's toy transport infrastructure.

Like other human beings, I simply cannot understand how train operators think they can get away with leaves on the line, or the wrong kind of snow, as credible excuses for rail delays. My current favourite comedy excuse was provided by Eurostar during one of the many cold snaps this winter. Apparently such cold temperatures were not anticipated....o deary me! This is funnier than Obama winning the nobel peace prize.

Today, the news was released that Jarvis, once Britian's largest construction company, has brought in the administrators, which is code for they've gone bust. Some of us with memories, will recall their involvement in a number of fatalities on the railways in recent years. They and Balfour Beaty between them created the need for corporate manslaughter legislation in this country after deaths caused by poor maintenance work carried out at Potters Bar, Hatfield and other places.

Jarvis chairman, Shagger Norris blamed the recession, a well-worn narrative that strangely ignores the fact that Jarvis's three main competitors have managed not to go bust in the same tough trading conditions.

One wonders not only how he found time to make this statement, as he seems to be a director of many other companies, but how on earth does this idiot remains out of jail? Other companies that have killed people simply fire their board, change their name and carry on counting their profits. (I think of Union Carbide and the Bophal disaster in particularly here). Alas, Shagger didn't even have the wit to do that and neither did the Jarvis shareholders despite years of manipulating trading statements.

No amount of obfuscation was able to persuade Jarvis's creditors from forcing settlement of their debts and yet Shagger still remains in charge. How can this be?

As none in the media seem surprised by Jarvis going bust, none ask why this fool remains out of jail. Then again, there are more deserving cases to pursue and those felons remain outside jail, too.

Joe Karafiát speaks about the Plastics, Havel, Stoppard, Rock ‘n’ Roll and audience antics at the National Theatre in Prague.

This is a translation of an interview which appeared in the Czech national daily newspaper, Právo, on 9 February 2010 under the headline "Joe Karafiát from the Plastic People: Vaclav Havel is a non-playing member of the group". The Original Czech version can be found here.

You launched your new album on 15 January in London, before the home launch. Why?
It was more to do with PR, nothing else. Our English fan, Mike, decided to organize the concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It is the kind of big theatre where the audience is seated. We played there three years ago and it sold out. Now we’ve played there again. Our friend, Tom Stoppard, the English playwright, also came to see us that night.

We sang in Czech, despite the largely British audience. Since we had sold quite a few copies of our new CD, and it contains a booklet with our new lyrics, also in English, so the language barrier was partly resolved. However, I think that the Czech language is interesting for foreigners.

Since February 2007, you have been performing in the old National Theatre building in Stoppard’s play “Rock and Roll”. What is it like performing under the inscription “The Nation for Itself”?

Personally, it was quite a shock. I have played in dingy dives my whole life and all of a sudden I was standing on the stage of the National Theatre. I felt proud. The first performance in particular was quite a triumph. The preview show was even seen by the sort of elderly ladies who go to almost anything the National Theatre puts on. One of them shouted at me from the front row to keep the noise down. I told her to complain to the sound engineer.

It happened again later on, during the performance proper. I think that a lot of season ticket holders weren’t expecting a rock ‘n’ roll band to play on that stage. But that space isn’t very suitable for rock music. The show is now moving to the New Stage. [i.e. the new Nat The. bldg., the glass cube (see top photo), as opposed to the old one referred to in an earlier question]. We begin rehearsals in February.

Former president Václav Havel also attended the Czech launch of the new CD in the Akroplis Palace Club at the end of January. He has never made a secret of his affection for the group. How do you feel about his presence?

Václav Havel declared himself to be a non-playing member of the band, recently, at the Meet Factory in Prague. He took a chair and sat with us on the stage, where he was like a non-playing member of the band for about half-an-hour. The relationship between the band and Václav Havel is a long-standing one; he knows the pre-(Velvet) Revolution members of the Plastics very well, they’re good friends. We enjoy meeting up.

Has he made any comments about your music?

Absolutely none. Under the communist former regime, when intellectuals like Havel and Jirous often talked about culture and politics with rock musicians like Mejla Halvsa. In those days that made sense, today there’s no need for it.

The Mask Behind The Mask is the first Plastics album for eight years. Why did it take so long?

In those eight years, we’ve not only done masses of concerts together, but we’ve also been involved in three huge projects with the Agon Orchestra. We’ve had a hectic schedule, even touring in America several times. Personally, I always wanted to make a new record. Mejla’s stuff is great, but I was convinced that the band should record something new. I’m glad it that it has been released.

You are responsible for the music for six of the tracks on the CD. Was it important for you to match their feel with the traditional sound of The Plastics?

Certainly. Though my main objective was to do what Mejla Hlavsa wanted at the end of his life – write songs. By then he wasn’t quite so keen on writing long serious compositions; he felt more like doing ‘songier’ things, things people would find more digestible. I still write for my other groups, Garage and the Joe Carnation Band. I always respect each group’s sound. When The Plastics started playing my songs, they attacked them with that traditional “creaky” sound of theirs, which was always their hallmark. Though I must say that in this respect, our association with the brilliant musicians of the Agon Orchestra has helped us a lot.

Was Mejla Hlava, who died in January 2001, present in some symbolic way during the production of the new record?

Not so much now; but it felt more like that in the years shortly after his death. But later the group moved on a bit. His influence remains, of course, though we don’t feel it so intensely. However, Mejla Hlavsa was a brilliant composer.

"It's only darkness"

I make an effort to wander through the Tate Modern as often as I can, which means two or three times a year.

I am particularly fond of going on Sunday mornings, before it gets crowded. There is usually something interesting to gaze at and the installations in the Turbine Room are great for young children, well, my children anyway....

If one tires of the art on offer there, one can also walk over the nearby Millennium Bridge and be reminded of Wren's genius in the form of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

However, on a weekday morning last December, I took two visiting Plastic People for a wander into Miroslaw Balka's "How It Is"

One of the many entertaining things about viewing 'public' art is the accompanying blurb...and I quote, "We associate the absence of light both with sleep and more sinister connotations.

The dark, by limiting visual clues that we usually rely on in order to make sense of the world, leaves us open to all possibilities, from the fantastic to the terrifying. How It Is invites us to embrace these potential experiences by plunging into darkness in the company of other visitors. Strangers and friends, emptiness and obstacles, time and space blur into new categories."

One could use that description as one way of viewing darkness, 'emptiness and obstacle blur' and so on.....but really, if one doesn't know what darkness is physically and emotionally, then one isn't human.....but I digress...

Alternatively, one could look at the whole thing as a big box with some dumbed-down PR attached to it. My view would be along the lines of something Vráťa said as we exited the dark box, "It's only darkness".

There's a difference between genius and darkness.

I'm not sure Balka's installation fulfilled any 'public' function other than reminding me I'm a human being who enjoys art for art's sake but only when it alters something chemical, electric or whatever within the brain. Unfortunately, Balka didn't.

Válav Havel throws bubbly over the new Plastics CD. (Actually, he didn't but took a swig from the bottle instead and got a big cheer anyway!)

Below is a rushed translation of an article which appeared online on the Týden website on Wednesday. For those of you who wish to view the original, please look here




(On Tuesday evening, in Prague). In a sold-out Palace Akropolis, the new studio album by the legendary group The Plastic People of The Universe was launched or baptised, as the Czechs out it, by former (Czech) President, Václav Havel. The recording, titled The Mask Behind The Mask, was first showcased on 15 January at the prestigious Queeen Elizabeth Hall in London. After the Prague launch, the legendary band will go on tour.

The Plastic People of the Universe are, arguably, even 20 years after the fall of the communist regime, the most famous Czech rock band abroad whilst at home the band is the one that is most wreathed in myth and mystery. After a nine-year break, they have released a new studio album.

The album was released last year on 23 December by the independent music label Guerilla Records. The CD, the first in the history of the band to include music composed by other band members. Their long-standing and sole composer, Mejla Hlavsa, died in 2001. “It is not a good idea to baptise a record with bubbly, that’s just wasteful, and I prefer to drink it,” said Havel on-stage to thunderous applause.

The band was joined on stage at the launch by cellist Josef Klíč, who also performed on the recording. The planned appearance of the support act Aku Aku was cancelled for technical reasons. After the launch, the Plastics are to go on a concert tour that finishes on 30 April in Dvůr Králův nad Labem. The main composer on the album, with six credits, is the band’s guitarist, Joe Karafiát, while a major part of the lyrics is in the form of the unique verse of Vratislav Brabenec, the remainder provided by (Czech poets) J. H. Krchovský, Andrej Stankovič or Jiří Kolář. (MS: Also, but forgotten in the piece, is Tiger in Prague by the pre-war Russian ‘absurdist poet’ Daniil Kharms.)

For the first time ever, the repertoire includes a musical setting of a text written by the band’s former manager, Ivan Martin Jirous (Magor).

Since the band formed in 1968 almost 40 musicians have taken a turn in it, most of them staying for only a short time. With the onset of normalisation in 1970 the band were stripped of their professional status and, with it, their equipment.

The (Communist Czechoslovak) state’s intimidation reached a climax in March 1976 when all The Plastics were arrested, which led to international protest. What later became Charter 77 was formed during the campaign to defend them. The band even recorded at Václav Havel’s country cottage.

Early election?

Will there be an election before May 2010 in the United Kingdom?

I ask only because this week I received literature from two political parties through my front door. The Liberal Democratic Party were the first with large format 'red top' style "Lewisham News" delivered on Wednesday, I think. Their headline for Lewisham voters was "Iraq Cover Up Shame". This leaflet was in a large pile of post and junk mail that day including business cards from "Catford Cars" which, struck me as potentially emblematic but I'll leave others to waffle on about that.

This morning, The Conservative Party were alert enough to push "In Touch....with your local Conservatives" through my letter box. Next to its headline was a photo of Boris Johnson, London's Mayor, with Jonathan Clamp, East Lewisham's Tory Party candidate. Both looking very dapper in suits and ties. The headline was "Conservatives Protect Freedom Pass". I didn't read beyond the headline......I know it's bollocks.....

Anyway, to continue....Do the Lib Dems and Tories know something we don't? Will the UK election happen earlier than May? The economic growth figures are due out shortly. I'm sure we'll find out we have a 'snap election' if they 'prove' Britain is 'out of recession', whatever that means.

It makes no difference to me at all. I haven't voted since 1986. I did go through a phase of spoiling my ballot card, including bringing various of my children in pushchairs to the election booth and inviting them to doodle in the ballot, too. These days, my children are older, less likely to do as they are asked and might question what they were doing in such an peculiar environment!

There is a metaphor somewhere there, too.

If the government wants my taxes, it can fuckin whistle

I joined Billy Bragg's nobonus4RBS facebook group this afternoon after reading an article online this morning at the Guardian website. I think it is a wonderful, creative and humourous way to protest.

Do I think the government will be quaking in its boots? No.

Like about a third of those in Britain who actually declare their earnings, I file my tax return online towards the end of January and pay up via a debit card. Last year and other years, I paid on time. This year, I'm not going to pay it at all.

It's a small protest. It will cost me an extra £100 on top of my tax bill which of course, HM Revenue will seek from me. However, I have taken a stand and would encourage others to do the same.

This government can get Gordon Brown to Copenhagen but cannot ensure the country's transport system operates when there's snow. This government can send an army to invade Iraq but struggles to protect it from a small number of dedicated young men laying road side bombs. This government has mortgaged my grandchildren's future to Chinese (and other foreign) banks and now expects me to pay the fools responsible...........again!

I keep hearing the same thing about executive remuneration. It goes like this, "one has to pay the best to attract and keep the best". My response is that maybe we should remember what best means. "Best" doesn't mean bringing down a financial system and then asking those who rescued it to pay an extra tip to those who brought it there. There are other words for that.

I'm not polluting the environment, I'm not invading a country without a UN mandate, I'm not risking my grandchildren's future: I'm just not going to pay my tax bill this year.

If the government wants my taxes, it can fuckin whistle.

The Mask Behind The Mask: The poetry behind the legend of The Plastic People of The Universe

For those who missed Friday's concert, here are the programme notes I wrote about the new CD. It's a bit long but then this isn't a regular bloody blog....

The Plastic People of The Universe release their latest collection of songs at a launch party in Prague on 26 January. This is the first release without the participation of Milan ‘Mejla’ Hlvasa who died in 2001. The title, Maska Za Maskou/ The Mask Behind The Mask, is enigmatic but offers hints at the other talents that have remained hidden behind the mask of The Plastics’ legend.

The legend, of course, is everything in rock ‘n’ roll. The Plastics’ legend goes something like this:

Friends got together after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia and started playing cover versions of songs by The Doors, Fugs and Velvet Underground (remember the colour velvet). They loved Frank Zappa and in particular, his song Plastic People. They grew their hair long, wore make up, mad costumes and played gigs and sang in English until things got heavy. After things got heavy, they carried on anyway and began getting into trouble with the normalised authorities in Czechoslovakia or “began socking it to The MAN”, in rock ‘n’ roll legend speak. Eventually, the band and some of their friends were thrown in jail for ‘disturbing the peace’. This blunt and stupid act catapulted the band into international consciousness and gave Václav Havel a book title. It also provided the the band with a subversive power – the exact opposite of the Soviet puppets’ intention. By jailing The Plastics and their friends, the 1970s Czechoslovak authorities actually acted to unite conflicting anti-government groups and individuals. Václav Havel and those very disparate people became known as dissidents and coalesced around a document called Charter 77. Thus, by implication, The Plastics became dissidents, too. Fast-forward to 1989 and the whole Fall of The Berlin Wall narrative. In Czechoslovakia, this is known as The Velvet Revolution (we did remember the word ‘velvet’, didn’t we?). Chain-smoking Václav Havel becomes president of Czechoslovakia and thus the myth is complete: The Plastic People of The Universe brought down the state and Frank Zappa joined the government.

Rock ‘n’ roll or what!

Can we imagine a globalized version of that myth where Al Gore replaces the chain-smoking playwright and The Killers replace The Plastics? No, The Plastics’ myth has more resonance, it has good guys, bad guys, suffering and ends rather like a rock ‘n’ roll fairy tale – the good guys take over and continue smoking, drinking and making music. Let’s remember that: the music. Let’s remember the music and also Al Gore is not rock ‘n’ roll.

This legend was quoted as recently as December 2009 when another smoker/ playwright, Tom Stoppard, wrote an article in the London Times under the headline, Did Plastic People Topple Communism? Both a character from his play, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and a character from the band, Vrata Brabenec, offer the same response, “that’s the story, I’m afraid”.

The story is The Plastics brought down Czechoslovakia’s communist regime in 1989 but like all stories and myths it both highlights and disguises a truth. In the 1970’s, it was the Soviets who created a mask for The Plastics. Brabenec laughs, “Those goons gave us the best PR possible”. This PR, as Brabenec calls it, was a mask. Now, The Plastics reveal and revel in a new mask, one they have recreated for themselves.
For those of a certain literary disposition, a title like The Mask Behind The Mask has that certain bit of poetic, Wildean whimsy. The analogy works particularly well when one thinks of the deterioration of Dorian Gray’s portrait. Are The Plastics exercising a certain aesthete whimsy of their own or are they exorcising the ghosts of their own perceived degeneration..four of them are in their 60s, after all…..the notion has a wonderful irony about it.

For those who have read beyond the British late Victorian “aesthetes” to encounter the French poetry of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine, the title The Mask Behind The Mask may generate some pleasingly decadent and gamey sensations in the synapses of their sensitive souls.

The sheer dandiness of the title may remind others that there was such a thing as political subversion in culture way before the Soviet Union had been a twinkle in Father Stalin’s eye. For those who have read a little too much Czech prose and cultural criticism, one is reminded of the energy and creativity in the stories and essays of Bohemia’s most extravagant Dandy, Arthur Breiský. Breiský encouraged the creation of as many masks as possible. He was such a masked dandy and legend that no-one can really be sure when or where he died. Was it in an elevator crash in a New York skyscraper in 1915, was it somewhere in Germany in the 1930’s or did he simply decide he had nothing further to add and left Prague in 1914 or later? Never mind the truth, the mask of the legend is far better!

Another legend hidden behind a 1970s regime-inspired mask is Egon Bondy, a poet so subversive he was classified as a mentally ill and sectioned by the Czechoslovak authorities. As The Plastics moved from cover band to composing original music in the early 1970’s, they were introduced to Bondy by another poet and cultural critic, one Ivan Martin Jirous. Jirous has also been described variously as the Plastics’ manager, artistic director and more often, Magor or loony. The Plastics were encouraged to set Bondy’s poetry to music and Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned was the result.
In the same way that describing Václav Havel as a playwright doesn’t quite cover everything, describing Egon Bondy as a poet doesn’t quite cover the breadth of his achievement either. Due to the times he lived in, it simply isn’t known how many volumes of poetry he produced, or how many novels he wrote. Then there was his history of philosophy. Bondy’s biopic is in production, the screenplay written by the son of one of Bondy’s psychiatrists!

Whatever Bondy’s achievements, it is fair to say that Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned is a wonderful introduction to his thoughts. However, it also provided The Plastics with the template for the rest of their output: poetry first, music later.
Bondy’s vision was encapsulated in what he called “Total Reality” and produced poems of striking but false simplicity. For example, Mír. In English, it is regularly translated as Peace with these lines:

Peace peace peace.
Just like a piece
Of bog roll

But the original is not too difficult
Mír, mír, mír
Jako toaletní papír

Unfortunately, the translation misses out important meanings. The Mír in the poem is peace in Czech but also Russian. It was also the given reason for Soviet intervention anywhere and the name of Soviets’ space programme. Toaletní papír was often in short supply in the peaceful Soviet paradise. So the couplet takes on a variety of meanings beyond peace being like bog roll. Peace is war, it is Russian, it is a rocket, it is misused science and it is in short supply.

Thus we have the beginings of Bondy for beginners: satire, cultural critcism and polemic all wrapped up in a sweet rhyming couplet but betrayed by a dissonant, dissident metre. A technique used again but more pejoritively in other lyrics on the Egon Bondy’s album. In Podivuhodný Mandarin, for example, it is never quite clear who, exactly, is the Mandarin. Also, adding to the ambiguity is the adjective podivuhodný. Podivuhodný can be translated as admirable or miraculous and is frequently translated as wonderous. I mention this because those adjectives conjure up magical, positive messages but the poem’s Mandarin is grubby, lewd, even bawdy. The cultural critic, Pavla Jonssonova, describes it today as sexist. However, the audiences listening in the 1970’s were able to make up their own minds. In those days, the Mandarin could have been understood as the Soviet “advisors”, the Soviet-managed Czechoslovak government or their collaborators. Sexism was one of many cultural crimes.
Those audiences at Plastics gigs also included the secret police, the civilian police and their many friends. Possibly before but certainly after Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned, The Plastics were living on borrowed time. However, Brabenec disputes whether the band could ever have been dissidents. He even disputes whether the poems they set to music could be regarded as anti-regime, even in the 1970’s. When he is asked about those days his responses vary but they follow a general theme: “we were musicians playing music”. This isn’t quite the story we began with. It lacks the legend element.

The political situation is different: Havel is not only out of jail, he an ex-President and an ex-smoker. Where was the band that night in 1989? Josef ‘Pepa’ Janíček, The Plastics’ keyboard man, was drinking in a bar - not demonstrating in Wenceslas Square. He was not ambivalent about the situation. Janíček continues,“The Bolsheviks knew the game was up when the sons of the Communists themselves wanted to become capitalists and entrepreneurs.”

On 17 November 2009, the demonstration on Wenceslas Square in Prague was recreated and Dan Bárta sang the national anthem in front of a tenth of the Czech population. Where were The Plastics that night? “We were drunk in Bratislava, it was a pleasant evening. I was glad I wasn’t in Prague in all that shit” continues Brabenec. “Politicians are still shits and musicians still play music”. According to Brabenec, the world remains the same.

Let’s get back to the music. The Mask Behind The Mask has something for everyone. It contains poems written by Josef Krchovský, Jiří Kolář, Martin Bauber and Ivan Jirous with a series of musical arrangements recalling the best of The Plastics’ psychedelic, rock, free-jazz and underground back catalogue. The highlights however are a series of poems by Vrata Brabenec set to music by Eva Turnova and other members of the band. Non-stop Opera, in particular, encapsulates their entire back catalogue and, as such, is possibly the finest song they have ever recorded. It begins with a rip-roaring opening guitar riff synchronized with the bass which is then joined by the widely misinterpreted “Velvet Underground violin drone” of Jiří Kabeš; before subsiding into a subversive “underground bass drone” for the opening verse. Brabenec, finally finding his singing voice in his late 60s, sings this opening verse with great passion. The psychedelia, dissonance and vision he describes can be distilled to one line:
I just envy the ashtray, it keeps all its butts together in good order.

When once the band were admired for behaving normally in the mad reality of a normalized Czechoslovakia, the band must now be admired for behaving like they are not dissident icons. This is because The Plastics remain a rock band. They always were.
So where is the poetry in The Mask Behind The Mask? Surely, it must be more than decadent whimsy and dandy pose. It must be more than the sum of Bondy’s total reality, the influence of the Velvet Underground’s drone and Frank Zappa’s freeform jazz-rock. Branenec, who wrote the lyrics to the title song, says only that it is “about transience”. The poetry in this collection of songs is more than the sum of its many parts, more than the legend. It is about being human in a world that often appears to be the opposite. It is The Plastics’ finest achievement to date.

The Search for Elvis continues

As we contemplate our mortality through the prism of TV review shows and articles outlining various narratives of the noughties and delusion, I would like to remind everyone of a small item of news about Elvis, which appeared in November.

It appears that the same CIA who lost six, seven or was it eight agents in Afghanistan has awarded Osma Bin Laden the codeword Elvis.

Now, I'm the last person to discourage an interest in the iconography of Elvis and I am certainly not going to bang on about how the CIA created Bin Laden and his aledged network of Evil, al-Qa'ida or whatever other nonsense comes out of Langley, The River House or any of those other places where the secret police forces are based.

However, I would like to remind everyone that Elvis actually died more than 30 years ago and the notion that the largest secret police force in the world is looking for him is beyond ironic. My prediction for the next decade is this:

While we refuse to acknowledge our culture is capable of producing nothing better than vacuous irony, well, no-one will ever find Elvis.