Vladimír Adamíra

* 1963

  • "Stodolní Street was created in 1991 when Stodolní Street was not yet Stodolní Street. There was nothing there, and I walked with Honza along Stodolní Street from the pub. We were on the stage of the Black Spider Antique Store, and we were standing there, and we were urinating, and Honza said: 'This is what I'm opening in a month, it's going to be mine. This is what I'm going to buy.' And he actually opened it a month later - Antikvairát Černý pavouk [The Black Spider Antique Store - transl.], where underground concerts were held, Zajíček exhibited there, there were a lot of concerts there, then it got bigger. Today, there are a hundred pubs in Stodolní, and it's nothing."

  • "In the 1980s, thanks to Herbert [Herbert Procházka], I started playing. Then I said my mother was a great typist, so he said, 'Well, she could rewrite something, couldn't she?!' So I came to my mom: 'I need to copy Plastic People, here's the poet, Zajíček.' My mom copied it, mostly at home, but sometimes at work, when she had time when she had nothing to do, she copied it in the office. She worked as a secretary for the technical deputy at the Přerov engineering works, who was friends with the head of the Přerov State Security, who was sitting next door. So it was quite daring."

  • "They cut my hair completely off, I was shocked. The next day, I woke up, and those pricks were yelling, 'Wake up!' I thought my mom was waking me up for work. I said, 'It's okay, just a little bit more, Mom.' But I was on the military service... I was completely in shock, suddenly, I had to put on camouflage, combat boots, take a machine gun and run somewhere, horrible. For me, it was a ripping out of my life. I used to go out for beers, I like big-beat, I never worked out, the guys there were physically better off than me, I had trouble during warm-ups. And the torture there was hard, the frogs, the ducks, the gas mask, I remember that... That was the worst thing I could have experienced: we had to run ten kilometres in a gas mask singing 'Over the burn, over the bloody rivers' and I threw up in the gas mask and I couldn't take it off, I had to run with it, so it wasn't pretty. There were guys a year older than me, graduates, sergeants, just a year older, and they were the worst."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Olomouc, 31.03.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:12:09
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Olomouc, 04.07.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:22:26
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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As long as I’m breathing, I can make a difference

Vladimír Adamíra with band Heparoid, Vsetín 1986
Vladimír Adamíra with band Heparoid, Vsetín 1986
photo: Witness archive

Vladimír Adamíra was born on 23 May 1963 in Přílepy in Kroměříž, as the younger of two children to his parents Jaroslava and Vladimír Adamíras. His father came from Liberec and worked as a labourer, and his mother worked as a clerk. The grandfather, Jaroslav Adamíra, was sentenced to twenty years in a political trial in 1950 and was released in 1960 thanks to an amnesty. In 1966 the family moved to Přerov, and the father joined the Communist Party. Vladimír trained as an electrician. Before the war, he got into the environment of the Přerov underground. He began to learn to play the saxophone, later the bassoon and clarinet. After dramatic experiences in the army, he managed to get a blue book at the cost of two stays in psychiatric hospitals. In 1984, he began playing in the band Heparoid, with which they performed at banned events. He continued with the spreading of samizdat, with his mother, a typist, helping with the transcription of printed material. In 1987, he moved to Ostrava, worked as a stage technician in theatres, and played in other bands. In 1988/1989, he attended dissident meetings in Dolores Šavrdová’s apartment in Ostrava. In 1989, he returned to Přerov and worked as a heating engineer in boiler houses. He signed the petition Several Sentences. After the revolution, he continued to experiment in the musical sphere, working as a DJ for two years, inviting various musicians to play. Among others, Lázaro Cruz, a Cuban jazz trumpet player. He was in the bands Heparoid, Black Rat, Absolute Abyss, Everything Seems to be Alright with the Hykls, Strayed, Good Old Handiwork, Sheeva Yoga, Super Tankers. He is still actively involved in music (Massola, Straka’s Traveling Circus) and is not averse to musical collaborations across genres. After the revolution, he has stuck to working in the boiler room, which gives him a creative outlet. In 2023, at the time of filming, he was living in Přerov.