Suddenly, I felt the energy inside of me, we wanted to help and break the system.
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Pavel Kaplan was born on April 13, 1962, in Český Brod, where he lived together with his parents in the nearby village called Pečky, located in the Central Bohemian Region. Between 1968 and 1970, when the youth organization Junák was restored, he attended the Scout club. During the adolescence years, he started to take an interest in independent culture, especially music. After graduating from primary school, Pavel started at the railways’ vocational school in Nymburk, a period followed by two-years military service in the Slovak city named Piešťany (starting 1981). Even there he stayed in contact with the alternative culture, as he used to copy and spread the texts and poems written by the Jazz Section via teleprint. After the military service, he worked at railways and went even deeper into the underground culture. He became a member of the so-called Jazz Section, was attending underground activities, even expanding the unofficial audio recordings of rock bands. After November 17, 1989, he founded a local branch of the Civic Forum in Pečky and actively participated in political negotiations. In 1990, Pavel accepted an offer to serve as a manager of the Civic Forum branch in the Kolín Region. However, after one year in service, the same year when the first free elections after the revolutionary November took place, he decided to leave the Civic Forum, a decision made out of his disappointment with politics.
