Something odd happened yesterday, I found myself thinking about the The Plastic People Of The Universe. The Plastics, were a Czech rock and roll band that were born out of the ashes of the failed Prague Spring of 1968. The people of the former Czechoslovakia had tried to rid themselves of Soviet rule merely by changing their government. The Soviets didn't agree with the change and sent in the tanks and armies of the Warsaw Pact to re-establish "order".
Taking their name from a Frank Zappa song title, "The Plastic People", The Plastics performed everything from psychedelic rock to avant garde jazz. They never set out to be a political band, but the very nature of what they were doing was the antithesis of state control; creative expression, free thinking, and encouraging that in others is a totalitarian government's worst nightmare. This resulted in the band spending the seventies performing in fields and barns, with concert locations revealed at the last minute, trying to stay one step ahead of the secret police, and spending time in jail for subversion.
It was mainly because of The Plastics that the pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia survived and took shape. They became a rallying point for people like playwright Vaclav Havel, who became the country's first President after the Soviet's left, and inspired protests in favour of artistic freedom and freedom of expression. Even with members of the band in jail they continued to perform on a regular basis underground and had a quite a few albums released in the West via tapes of live shows that were smuggled out of the country.
It's a long way from Prague 1968 to Beijing 2007 in terms of distance and years, but when it comes to the spirit behind the creation of pop music, the similarities far outnumber the differences. You see, what brought The Plastics to mind was listening to two discs that former Public Image drummer Martin Atikns has just produced and released of Chinese pop music. Look Directly Into The Sun is a compilation disc of bands, and Martin Atikns' China Dub Soundsystem Made In China is a collection of music that Atikns recorded with musicians while he was touring China and then re-mastered once he was back in the West.
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