Štefan Škulavík

"At that time we played in Lomnice near Sokolov, that was another very strange conflict with the police. At that time the communists thought up that there would be non-alcoholic entertainment for the youth, so that the youth would not drink. They would finish at ten o'clock and there would be no alcohol. I don't remember the exact year, but I know it was after the Political Song [Festival of Political Song Sokolov, 1988]. Sometime after that. So we played there. At that time we played alone, other times we performed with Vindobona, Boron and other bands. Suddenly there was a policeman standing in the doorway... Actually, it was different. We were sitting in the dressing room. Karel Hrabak, who no longer played with us, had a birthday at the time. He was twenty-one. He came to us in Lomnice and brought two bottles of wine, the Prague selection, there was hardly anything else at the time. We were sitting in the dressing room next to the stage, there was an oblong table. We took some drinks with us, although otherwise we didn't drink much when we played. All of a sudden the door flew open and two or three policemen burst in. And, "Who's the bandleader?! 'I'm the bandleader. What's going on?' I said. Nobody knew what was going on, there was a normal buzz in the hall, that's where it was going. 'The entertainment is cancelled,' said the policeman. I said, 'Why?' And I was a bit defiant. He said, 'The party's being cancelled because there's alcohol.' Now he's seen it on our table. I said, 'It's a friend's birthday.' He was very drunk, his forehead was plastered, he was lying on the table. I said, 'It's Karel's birthday, so he came to see us because he used to play with us.' I tried to explain. And now he took this Karel, who had such long hair - he doesn't have it nowadays - and he grabbed him by the hair and picked him up and turned him around and said, 'Name, ID card.' And Karel, as he was already completely out of it, said this beautiful sentence to him, which is still said here among musicians: 'From twelve to twelve thirty.' And the cop was so freaked out that he left him alone and started checking other IDs. One of the cops went on stage where the microphone was. Our sound guy, Zlaťák, had to go to the desk and drop the microphone. The cop was standing there in his green uniform, I can see him like today, saying, `The entertainment is cancelled. ID check.' And Karel Idlbek was still talking to the cops. And now a policeman took him like this, grabbed him, threw him behind the bathroom door and slammed it behind him. 'What's wrong, what's wrong,' we wanted to resist. There was a sort of rumbling coming from the toilets. In a moment, the policeman and Karel came out. Then, of course, there was an ID check. One policeman and his dog stood at the entrance, another policeman and his dog went round the tables and did ID checks. Anyone who didn't have an ID was taken outside, and there they made a line. And all those who didn't have IDs were let in and taken from Lomnice to Sokolov to the police. The policemen left and left us there. We said, 'Why did they forbid it?' But afterwards I talked to people and I learned that those who didn't have ID and had long hair had their hair cut. It was quite brutal. And one more thing. I asked Karl what was going on in the toilets with the policeman. The cop was quite big, and Karl was like a gun against him. Karl said, "He asked me what my parents were doing. So I told him that my dad works for the ministry. So he froze, opened the door and let me in.'"

"And Sokolov... So we came to Sokolov. There were rehearsals. And there was that obligatory long table, where all the SSM people were sitting, I don't know, I'm sure it was some communists, but mainly the SSM, who organized it. And now it came to the point that they invited the individual bands there and now they were discussing with them the lyrics, what it was about. And now we sat across the table and waited for some verdict. And now the lyrics were circulating among those who were supposed to decide which band was the best. And suddenly one of them shouted out, 'Who put this band in here, that's not a political lyric at all!' And so we found out that we had nothing to do there. So we played at - it wasn't a gala - but there was a show before that, so we played at that show. And then we spent actually more time in Sokolov, here at the hotel, there were various receptions, and so we had a great time there. But we didn't get to the gala. But we were on that record [Planet of Peace, the LP of the Sokolov Festival of Political Song 1988], well, so it's a bit of a mishmash, which, when you think about it, is a testament to where socialism was leading. Everybody was doing their own thing. But nobody knows... and the ideology was so terribly strange."

"Playback, it was actually a rating of the band according to how the musicians imagined it, a kind of committee. Someone was there from the SSM, someone from the national committee, and the musicians were there. There was a Mr. Mrštík, he was the head of the military music in Karlovy Vary. They had a building in Stara Rola, a rehearsal room. Now imagine that you come there, you play big beat, and there is a person sitting there who plays brass band or some folklore, and now he has to evaluate the band. Actually, it was a kind of a report card, and we got a fee based on that. There were grades: one was the best, two was worse and three was the worst, but still playable. So they could say, for example, that the band didn't even get a three, and if they played somewhere, they played for free. We were given a notebook where we wrote down where we played, who we played for, from how much to how much and how much we played for. As Baro(c)k we reached a two and then it got to a one, that we were charging 800 crowns a gig. That was relatively high back then. But again, when you consider that you have five or six musicians, it wasn't that much. But it didn't really bother us, because we put all that money into posters and stuff like that. But I'll come back to the "playbacks": it was a kind of a custom that a hall was booked. We played under the House of Culture Ostrov at that time, which lent us a room, which we adapted as a studio, arranged acoustics and so on. And they allowed us to play in that hall. We set up a long table in the middle with chairs according to the number of members of the playing committee, two or three bottles of Prague Selection (Pražský výběr), which was the obligatory Czech wine, plates of open-faced sandwiches to make it work, and some cake and coffee, that was provided by the cultural centre at that time. But the worst thing was, we had to submit a playlist. They picked something out of it, and when we had our songs on there, they didn't know what it was. Most of the time they picked some Olympic. In order to play, we had to have 70% Czech production, otherwise they wouldn't let us play. So we played it and that's when Mr. Mrstik, may he rest in peace... At that time Karel Idlbek played guitar with us and used a booster. It's a box that distorts the sound. And when they heard the songs, we sat across the table from them and waited for a verdict. And this Mr. Mrstik said, 'Boys, you've got it nice, but... You shouldn't play those American chords.' And now silence, we didn't know what it was, of course we were nodding along. So we got a straight A at the time, so all good, promoter happy. We got a notebook and then I was doing this kind of not maybe office work, but I had to keep track of everything... We were doing something and they had to know about everything. The fact that, for example, they used to come just to watch us perform, there'd be a person there all of a sudden, and you'd know. All of a sudden there's somebody sitting there who doesn't belong there. There are long-haired kids, young people... and there was a person who was also young, but he didn't belong there at first sight. And now he started looking at what we're playing, how we're playing it, if it fits... It was just that time."