Miroslav Leicht

„A blue Volha stopped there and two blokes got out of the car. They went to see my supervizor. He hated me, he was a bolševik. I provoked him, too. I could see his glee behind the glass of his booth. He said: ‚That’s him, that’s him!‘ Those blokes rushed to me, they grabbed me, seated me to the back seat of that Volha, in between them. They took me to that building of thein next to the swimming pool. We took the lift to the fourth floor and they started right away: ‚So, you… take everything out of your pockets!‘ I took everything out of my pockets, then. At that time, I already had my hair grown long… There was a bunch of keys in my pocket and on that, there was such a keyring that said Voice of America. These were handl out by the American attaches, those people for culture. And they were just: ‚Where did you get this? Where do you ID yourself with this one?‘ I said: ‚I found it somewhere at the railway station…‘ They slapped me on my face and then about twice more. So… that was the start of the interrogation. And that was because the bolsheviks had managed everything. Regardless of the Czechs being sort of moldable so there were snitches everywhere. At those reunions, at all the events in the woods and the like, the secret police had thein people everywhere. And all sort sof anti-Soviet, anti-Communist stuff was shouted out. They knew it word for word. And we and Cop, our band, played for those people.“

In 1978, we had more success and less troubles. Those bans and such. Bohouš loved all things Americans, he had a wartime Jeep Willys. And in this jeep, we drove to all concerts and everywhere and we tended to attract a lot of people who were seen as troublesome by that ruling régime. That was how we kept getting into trouble. We played in pubs, rehearsed, we never skipped one single wreath laying ceremony at the memorials to the U. S. army in the whole West Bohemia. Which meant that we were under surveillance and everything was documented meticulously. We thus couldn’t get a permit to perform publicly. The approval committees at the auditions were strict, whenever anyone got a tiny bit out of the line, they didn’t get it. We came to the first audition and we immediately caused a bit of ruckus because our banjo player mistook strong beer for the light one and he snarked at the commission that consisted of quite elderly blokes who used to play some sort of swing somewhere in the Continental Hotel or in the cultural centre. And they were to judge that American music of ours. We were the smartasses there, we didn’t listen to any arguments so they kicked us out and for half a year, as it was the usual thing then, we were banned from performing in public. We went there a year after, they kicked u sout again because we weren’t prepared for an exam in current political matters. So they kicked u sout again. So, for a year, we could not play with living people present. We travelled around in the woods, we played at reunions and wherever and it was pretty interesting.