Jan Soldán

“Vlasta Marek was the first and he had a lecture where spoke about space, about plants and all kinds of things. Vlasta Veverka (Otakar Veverka – auth.’s note) played the Spanish guitar for about half an hour, and then the band Extempore, which was the MCH Band at that time, performed. When it started, Mikoláš Chadima said that they arrived from Prague and that since they were not allowed to perform at Rockfest, they would make an Antirockfest instead. Vlasta Marek played there, and Mikoláš Chadima, too, and a bass guitar player whose name I cannot recall. They all played in Extempore and they said that for that day they would call themselves Extempore. Gorleben played their music there, too, and Posádková Hudba Marného Slávy, Orchestr Bissext and Hally Belly. It was excellent, great. The weather was wonderful and they were all lying in the garden in T-shirts or without them. When I saw pictures from it two weeks ago, I was very touched by it. One remembered how perfect it was. Secret cops were staying there in the driveway and pretending to be wedding guests who were listening to the music. They told us that they were wedding guests and we replied that we knew. We made fun of them. At night we grabbed drums and we drummed right in front of them there.”

“At that time I lost everything. My wife with children left me. I did not have anything. Maybe one or two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, a bare-bones flat, with a mattress on the floor. I did not have anything. I was in shit. I fell to the very bottom and I found out that I had the most of all. I started believing in God. I knew how strong I was and I knew who I was. I found myself and at that moment I understood that they no longer had any power over me. They threatened me with army service and things like that. StB policemen came and they asked me where I was. I told them that I no longer wanted to talk to them. ‘What do you mean by this ‘don’t want to talk?’’ I said: ‘I have nothing to talk to you about. You are you and I am I and we no longer have anything to talk about.’ Fine, they stopped and they left, they let me be. And then I received a draft order for five months of military service.”

“I wrote a letter to the BBC broadcast and asked them to play a song from the Plastic People in their songs on request program. Cops got into my post box and they discovered the letter. The StB cop Bartoň beat me so hard at that time that I was bleeding. I was sixteen (fifteen – auth.’s note). He took off my clothes and he was beating me with his fists and with a baton. Then he told me to go away, and he kicked me out just for the last train at seven in the evening.”