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The recording was published by the co-founder of the group The Plastic People of the Universe in 1997 with Jan Vozáry. Both worked in the Fiction ensemble at the time. Vozáry arranged and programmed the remake of Plastic People’s songs, while Hlavsa finished the vocals and guitars in the studio.
“I am very happy that I won Mejla for this project at the time. We were able to bring the music of the legendary group The Plastic People of the Universe to young listeners. I believe that the album will still find listeners today,” says Vozáry, a musician and producer known primarily from the group Oceán.
The launch of the album will take place next Saturday, March 14, at Prague’s MeetFactory at a festival that will commemorate 50 years since the trial with the Czech musical underground. The Magická noc project will present Vozáry with singer Luboš Vodák in concert form.
The festival will commemorate the events of March 1976, when 22 participants of the so-called II. Festival of the second culture in Bojanovice. The action of the communist State Security against the underground movement in the former Czechoslovakia culminated in September 1976 with the conviction of four protagonists: Vratislav Brabenec, Ivan Martin Jirous, Svatopluk Karásk and Pavel Zajíček.
In the mid-1990s, Mejla Hlavsa stated for the underground magazine Mašurkovské subterranean that he did not know what he would compare the Magická noc recording to. “But in any case, it’s a terrible power, a dense, rich sound. Drums, bass, vocals and hard sounds. I really like it. I think it’s such a power that even rock fans won’t bite. There’s a heavy drum, a bass and sometimes I hit a croak, otherwise it’s just rhythm. Heavy digital underground sound,” he described.
Photo: Profimedia.cz
Josef Karafiát, Jan Brabec, Josef Janíček, Vratislav Brabenec, Jiří Kabeš and Mejla Hlavsa in a photograph of the group The Plastic People Of the Universe, probably in the late 90s.
Milan Hlavsa nicknamed Mejla was a musician, composer, singer and co-founder of the group The Plastic People of the Universe. Despite the increased interest of the State Security and a several-year ban on public appearances, he significantly influenced the local alternative scene as a music author and performer.
His work was closely connected with the poetry of Egon Bondy and the ideological background of dissent from which Charter 77 emerged. He never stood still and always tried something new, experimenting with electronic music, for example.
He was born in March 1951 in Břevnov, Prague, into the family of a bank clerk. He founded his first band at the age of fourteen. Because of his long hair, he left home, school and work at the slaughterhouse. At first he tried to play the guitar, but when the first group was founded, he was left with the bass guitar, because he was said to be the worst guitarist. In the 1960s, he performed in the bands Blue Monsters, The Vagabunds and The Undertakers.
The story of Plastic People of the Universe began to be written in Břevnov. The line-up was originally supposed to be called Hlavsa’s Fiery Factory, because the band leader was late for the first rehearsal, the name was changed to New Electric Potatoes followed by the definitive one, created according to Andy Warhol’s statement: “I love everything plastic, I would like to be plastic.”
Plastic People of the Universe made their musical debut in the pub Na Ořechovce in February 1969 and already in April attracted the attention of amateur rock bands Beat Salon. Their music was a continuation of The Primitives Group, with which Ivan Martin Jirous started, who soon joined the new ensemble with Josef Janíček.
Influenced by psychedelic rock, the “Plastics” initially played covers from the Velvet Underground, The Fugs, Rolling Stones or The Doors, later they began composing their own repertoire.
As a composer of music, it was Hlavsa who in 1973 also founded – together with the poet and novelist Pavel Zajíček – the experimental group DG 307. Over time, however, Hlavsa concentrated only on Plastyky, who, however, came into increasingly frequent confrontation with the strengthening normalization regime in the early 1970s. Everything culminated in 1976 during the trial of the Czech underground, during which several musicians walked away from the court with unconditional prison sentences.
Photo: Profimedia.cz
President Václav Havel and Mejla Hlavsa at the Trutnov festival in 1999.
Hlavsa spent several weeks in custody, but was not convicted. At that time he was already married, in 1975 he married Jana Němcová, the daughter of the philosopher Jiří Němc – they had a son Štěpán and a daughter Magdalena.
Although Hlavsa avoided conviction, the trial was followed by increased interest from the StB, police harassment and a ban on performing. The musician was also fired from surveyors and made a living gluing plastic bags. At that time, he came into closer contact with the top of the dissent around Václav Havel.
At the end of the 80s, Plastici practically disbanded and Hlavsa played in the bands Garáž and Echt! He also founded Púlnoc, where the core of the original Plastic People went, and after its breakup, Fiction.
After November 1989, when Pavel Zajíček returned from exile, Hlavsa returned to the renewed DG 307 and from 1997 to the Plastiks. On the occasion of the meeting of two presidents in the American White House, Václav Havel and Bill Clinton, he performed there together with Lou Reed from the Velvet Underground.
In 1999, he released the solo album Madness, on which he experimented with elements of electronic music, he also wrote an autobiographical book Bez ohňů je underground. Less than a year before his death, he underwent an operation for lung cancer, from which he was able to recover and was even able to ride his favorite bicycle again. However, the disease eventually got stronger and Hlavsa died prematurely in January 2001 at the age of 49.
“I know about a lot of mistakes I made,” he said in one of the last interviews he gave in the fall of 2000 to Reflex magazine. “But life is beautiful in that you can’t change anything about what happened. It’s not like rewinding a cassette tape and recording something again,” claimed the musician, who always managed to get his way.
