The Plastic People* – Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned

We used to trade tapes of tapes of this record when I was in high school-I got a VG copy of the record at a junk store for next to nothing in the 90's! I finally found out what the lyrics are-the booklet included has the lyrics in Czech w English translation

i once bought a copy of this from a mail order distributer (Systematic, San Francisco CA) that specialized in international HC Punk in the mid 1980's. i wish i would have held onto it. i remember it sounding somewhere between The Easter Monkeys and "Earthbound" era King Crimson. i loved both of those then, and still do now. but it didnt hold my interest enough and it wasnt long before i took it to a local 2nd hand shop and got a couple dollars credit towards whatever new HC Punk EP's were in stock. oh well...not the only stupid record thing ive done over the years.

...if ever there was a case of hep cats having trouble with the squares and agents of oppression it was these chaps...over there in prague in the seventies the government was running scared of any thoughts and ideas that had an air of free spirit and freedom, hence the plastics getting the bums rush and suffering all kinds of harassment and bad vibes...having party style gigs in out of town farms and such well away from cops and various prying eyes the combo were well supported by the czech underground and this spurred them on to tape their music in secret and this is their first full album recorded in '74 over a period of months...smuggled out across euroland the tapes ended up in france and pressed up and egon bondys happy hearts club banned found it's way onto the market in '78...originally it came in a foldout sleeve complete with a thick, 60page 12" book giving the history of the underground counter culture czech style...usually compared through the years to such luminaries as the fugs / zappa/ velvets, which is all true but their influences and style and interpretation / creation comes from a broad spectrum which must include the full jazzbo vibe along with krautrock droning / quick cut edits (not to mention singing in funny voices), intense real poetry and centuries old folk grooves and the thing that kept them going through the years of the downpresser man and time in the joint - a sense of humour, the words maybe in a language foreign to most but the humour shines through canterbury style with a softs / caravan type thing, though more in the groove than the sound and ain't no right-on cat going to miss it...there's a basement creepiness to this that's straight out of zappas cucamonga period of sleazy beatnik shenanigans...add this echoed creepy voodoo to some eastern mystical riffs and brother there's an intense trip looming ready to transport the listener to different times and ideas, ideas of basic freedoms that horrified the power structure into a frenzy of bad karma spiralling ou of control ever onwards...these thoughts of freedom even today paralyze most squares, freedom is okay in abstract form, non specific and harmless but those thoughts in action will bring ferocious pig activity or 'directives' to go shopping like the wives from stepford...another prime example of the sound of the disk being almost as important as the noise, that the way of the production / recording is the path to the toppermost of the hep/underground poppermost such as blue cheers vincebus / the screech from stooges first three wax / german oaks bunker bad trip plus many many loner / stoner / bad drug basement psych / echo chamber drone outs...an important document that has much to say in this century as it did in the last, the struggle continues in many ways on differing levels, freax must be vigilant for the futures uncertain...

I bought this from the Recommended Records mail order catalogue back around 1979. There was always great stuff from RR in those days. For instance - highly limited things like this and Sun Ra El Saturn pressings too.
Anyway - for reasons I now can't remember I took this to a record fair sometimes in the late 80s and sold it. Two Czech guys found it on my stall and bought it for £30. They told me (after they paid) that "you can't find this anywhere - not in Prague or in Paris". So that made me feel bad about selling it.
Then the internet came along and I was happy to get one off Discogs for about £50.

One thing - I don't know if there were two different books. I seem to remember that the first one I had was printed in English - whereas the one I have now is all in French. Would be good to be able to read it. Should've studied harder at school. Oh well.

Anyway - the book is fantastic 'Le Ghetto Joyeaux'- it's large format 60 pages, 11" X 11" (that's inches for you non-metric types). And has tons of photos and clippings on the Plastic People. If only I could read it, damn.