*They're past retirement age and they seem to live inside bars now, but nothing surprises me about this story. This is pretty much exactly what I would have expected from these guys.
*Truly one of the weirdest stories of the 20th century... the only real rock and roll revolution the planet ever had.
http://u.tv/News/Children-of-the-revolution/c569bab2-e2a8-42b2-8269-c13f96721491
(...)
After the soundcheck in the local Kino - a cinema built in the then oppressive, now rather streamlined-looking Stalinist style - the musicians adjourn for a can of beer, cigarettes and chats with fans on the cinema steps, and before the performance, Josef Janicek and Jiri Kabes give a rare interview - both unassuming, serious people, without an atom of pomposity between them; with Barabanec, they form what the current band calls "the Central Committee" of original members.
"Havel is the only president of the republic who ever lent me 1,500 crowns," says Jiri Kabes. "And, come to think of it, I still owe it to him, I never paid it back. Only he doesn't really need the money now, and I do."
"They were such happy times after the revolution - what a time," says Janicek, with a terrible sadness, as though speaking of something lost. "It was a golden age, because it was so full of hope. No, not all those hopes have been realised. I mean, we are still the same people as we were before, trying to offer something that makes people think in the world in which they live."
The audience is a revelation, aged eight to 80, with every vintage in between. It is surprising how many long-bearded, ponytailed men and how many fishnet-gloved, purple-haired girls Unicov hides away during daytime. Some, like Ludmila Polednova, a mathematics teacher, had come because the Plastics "were part of my youth; they remind me of a strange mixture of having fun and being frightened - they were musicians that woke me up to what was happening, and also made me happy."
Back in the Shakespeare pub on the funky edges of Prague, tattooed women with tatty flowing dresses walk by the open door and large windows along the cobblestones, while other tattooed women with tatty flowing dresses enter the bar, to drink a glass of wine. Vratislav Brabenec greets and kisses each of them (and they kiss him back) as some old wizard might greet royal princesses arriving at court, only betrothed to someone else, someone younger, to Brabenec's disgust. "They are so beautiful," he says warily, "and I love them all. I also love my girlfriend, but she is with her boyfriend at the moment. Behold, the hero of the revolution!"
Yet Brabenec insists two decades later, as the world prepares to salute the heroes of 1989:
"I hate it when people talk about that year as a 'revolution' in Czechoslovakia. A revolution is supposed to change things. But what has changed? I don't consider myself any less subversive now than I was back then. I am no less a dissident in a society of shopping, shopping and shopping than I was in a society of socialism, socialism and socialism. It's all still s****, only different s****. Communist party, Nokia mobile phone party - what's the f**** difference? It doesn't matter whether the system is communist, fascist or capitalist: the creative people are the creative people and the s**** are the s****. The poets remain the poets, and the politicians are f**** politicians. So you see: the Plastic People are still the Plastic People. You must remember one thing above all others about this band and our so-called revolution: none of us ever got anywhere. This is what matters most."
