A brief history of Czechoslovakia’s psychedelic dawn
When you think of the music of Bohemia, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is not necessarily the music from Bohemia itself, but the music inspired by the lifestyle that spread from the old country across Europe, and especially into Paris. The music of Puccini’s 1895 opera La bohème, about the French bohemians, or of Charles Aznavour’s 1965 chanson of the same name and topic. Perhaps you still think of Django Reinhardt and his exquisite, free-flowing gypsy-jazz guitar style and lifestyle.
But, after Reinhardt died in Fontainebleau in the early 1950s and Aznavour was singing softly about the Bohemian children of Paris through the 1960s, back in Bohemia itself, a very different musical movement was taking root.
After decades of geo-political turmoil, war and civil unrest that included the formation of the independent nation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a Nazi occupation and annexation, liberation, a 1948 coup d’état, and a Soviet invasion, the region of Bohemia was bursting with people in need of escape and distraction, and they found it in the music.
Against this fractured backdrop, so much of the music being made in clubs and bars around the cities of Prague, Bratislava, Brno and beyond was heavily inspired by a much less destructive invasion. Perhaps owing to their shared love of American artists like Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, the young musicians of Czechoslovakia were heavily inspired by the sounds of the British invasion, and bands like The Beatles, The Kinks and The Animals.
Groups like The Matadors could rock and roll all the way down to the pit with anyone from the British Isles, and their biting guitars, call and response vocal harmonies and reedy organ embellishments will sound familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in the soundscapes of the 1960s.
And Czech out groups like Olympic, who started out as straight American rock and roll style outfit in the early 1960s, but who expanded into a more experimental and psychedelic sound after hearing their British counterparts for the first time, even including the most Baroque of all the psychedelic rock instruments, the harpsichord on their songs at times.
Songs like their six-and-a-half minute ‘Psychiatrický prášek’ show off their more outlandish side, as they toy with various tempos and rhythms, guitar techniques and reverb, and utilise the kind of studio effects more in common with what The Beatles were tinkering with back in the UK. Not only do their far out sounds predate the kinds of experimentation the wider world would come to expect from groups like Pink Floyd, but you can also draw a clear line from the work that Olympic were doing to more recent releases from groups like Deerhoof.
Elsewhere, groups like Flamengo and frontman Karel Kahovec were getting closer to the kind of sound you’d expect to hear from The Doors, with a moodier, funkier, grittier and more atmospheric, seductive style. Almost as if to prove that they were more in tune with the American bands than the invading British groups, Flamengo moved away from the psychedelic style before long and began to incorporate more and more soul songs into their repertoire, including Wilson Pickett’s ‘Land Of 1000 Dances’, James Brown’s ‘(I Feel Good) I Got You’, ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’ by Sam & Dave and Allen Toussaint’s funky ‘Get Out Of My Life, Woman’.
Some bands, such as Prúdy, were heavily influenced by Dylan – as were all of the British invasion outfits and American bands of the era alike – and Flamengo equally drew on his more poetic songwriting style. However, following the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the groups would have been better served by Dylan’s anti-authoritarian protest writing style than by his poetry, as the country became increasingly more despotic in its government. Rock music was all but outlawed in the country by the early 1970s, and the experiments being conducted by groups like George & Beatovens, The Blue Effect and Olympic were put to an unceremonious end.
Some groups, such as The Progress Organization (whose song ‘Klíč k poznání’ sounds like a slow-jam tribute to the Kenny Rogers classic Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In), Atlantis and The Yearning Lorry would continue into the early 1970s, but not for long.
One band did manage to prosper among the uncertainty, though. When organ player Marián Varga left Prúdy in 1969, he joined forces with bassist, guitarist and singer Fedor Frešo to create the band Collegium Musicum before adding Dušan Hájek on drums and Frešo, also from Prúdy. The group combined their love of experimental rock and psychedelic explorations with another shared love of theirs: classical, and, in true prog-rock style, would go on to have a rotating cast and ever-changing line-up of musicians for the rest of their time together, and were renowned for their long, meandering, exploratory live performances.
