The Plastic People trial

2010

The Plastic People of the Universe in performance, 2010. Their 1976 trial was the spark that lit Charter 77. Place: Prague District Court · the village of Bojanovice, the festival that triggered the arrests Figures: Ivan Martin Jirous (Magor), artistic director of the Plastic People · Vratislav Brabenec, saxophonist · Pavel Zajíček, of DG 307 · Václav Havel, observer in court The Plastic People of the Universe form in September 1968, six weeks after the invasion, around the bassist Milan Hlavsa. They take their name from a Frank Zappa lyric. They play psychedelic rock with Czech and English lyrics, much of it set to the philosophical poetry of Egon Bondy. They lose their professional license in 1970, play in barns and cellars, record on borrowed equipment. They are not a political band. The regime treats them as one. In February 1976 the StB arrests nineteen people connected with the band's circle, mostly after a wedding-and-festival in Bojanovice. The charge, distilled, is organized disturbance of the peace, hooliganism elevated to felony. The trial is announced as a quiet local matter. It is not quiet. Four defendants are tried in September: Jirous, Brabenec, Zajíček, and the singer Svatopluk Karásek. Sentences range from eight to eighteen months. The subject dates from 1976; this photograph was taken in 2010.