Libor Bálek

„The place was in Vratimov, on the river bank. I do not know whether it was the first place where the fair took place but along the river, there were stands with all goods which were not regularly available. There was cosmetics, clothes, we called it money exchange jeans [see note]. We did not set the trends, we had our own fashion. Skinny jeans, boots or sneakers. The other tribe were discophiles, those wore tapered jeans, colourful hoodies, with wild designs, pink ones. They had to have brand name sneakers, usually Adidas. One could buy it at the fair for unreasonable prices but it was not available in regular shops. Those who got hold of such goods would sell them at the fair with 50 or 100 % margin at the fair. There was a music corner. It was mostly us who used to go there. There were various records, CDs were gaining traction just at that time. There were people who sold blank casettes. That was big business. Those people had 20 or 30 casettes, one cost about a hundred crowns. I earned about 900 crowns per month so it was really expensive. We earned some money by selling some things, buying records, copying them on casettes which we sold then. All our money was stored in music.” Note: there was, Tuzex, a chain of stores which were selling imported goods either for foreign currencies or for vouchers which were paid to people working abroad in exchange for the foreign currencies they earned. It was extremely difficult for a Czechoslovak to get foreign currency. Foreign currencies or these vouchers could be bought, with rather disadvantageous exchange rates compared to banks, from illicit money changers. These earned considerable money and were able to buy foreign goods and trendy clothes by which they could be distinguished.

“It was in 1989, I worked in Delta then. It was sometime between the 17th of November and around the 15th of December and we got a request from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The seat of their district branch was here in Marianske Hory. It was a mad house, an aggregating place for all the bolsheviks. One of them came to Delta, they wanted us to do sound for some conference. And Milan came to me and said: 'You, Libor, I have a special task for you.' And I said, 'I'm not going there.' He, then: 'No, really, go there.' So I say: ' Well then, but I'm going to wear what I want.' So I went. Jeans, jeans jacket, black cross on my chest, chains around my neck. I came with the gadgets and the doormen almost fell off their chairs. 'What do you want here?' they asked. I said: 'I gotta do sound for some sort of conference.' I was not too confident, it was about three weeks after the things started to shift. And the place was soaked by that Stalinism. The atmosphere was tight. It was awful there, I felt terrible. But the worse I felt, the more I dared. They were totally crazy that there's a sound tech like this. For them, I was a total outcast. A hippie wearing jeans, they hated this sort of stuff, I was the foremost enemy in the class struggle. And suddenly, one such materialised in that nest of theirs. So that was such an interesting experience for me then.”