"I then enlisted after school in České Budějovice, where I ended up after a few months, after the revolution. So I experienced the coup there, which was quite interesting, how the majors or generals gradually turned. When the recordings from Národní třída came out, which were first distributed just on VHS, a major politruk came to us and told us not to believe it, that it was actually recorded in Hollywood, that it wasn't Národní třída, it was a set."
"That was just interesting because there were young, ambitious bands [at the Festival of Political Song] trying to play some rock songs that were acceptable. And then we put something out there that was out of place, so actually the jury was unnerved. They didn't know what to make of it, so they ended up appreciating it and sending us to the next round."
"In Gottwaldov [in Zlín] it was only later in connection with the band that we came into contact with Bedřich Koutný and other people. So some [samizdat] literature probably came to us from that side as well. Information about the Charter, the magazine Sport at that time, and True story of Plastic People, or some older articles about the Primitives Group and so on. I used to transcribe that with enthusiasm on my typewriter, where the ten punches made the ten or eleven copies. So it was more of a naive activity, though, because there was so little of that literature that you wanted to at least keep it for yourself somehow."
Josef Sládek was born on 21 November 1964. He grew up with his parents Josef, Anna and his brother Karel in Mistřice in South Moravia. His father, negatively influenced by the collectivization of the 1950s, considered emigrating. Josef was interested in fine arts from childhood, so he studied design in the field of shaping machines and tools at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts (SUPŠ) in Uherské Hradiště and the same field at the university in Gottwaldov (today’s Zlín). Already in high school he was fascinated by the so-called second culture and underground bands. He was interested in independent literature and attended alternative music concerts around his home and in Prague. In 1984, he co-founded the experimental band Svoz řepy in the former Bata town. The unorthodox new-wave group “waged war” on the musical front against the absurdities of the communist regime using metaphorical lyrics, industrial sounds and provocative dance creations. Josef came into contact with samizdat in Gottwaldov. In 1987 he had to undergo interrogation by State Security Service (StB) for buying “pirate” music tapes. In 1989 he signed the petition Several Sentences. He lived through the Velvet Revolution as a conscript on basic military service. In 2024 he taught design at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Brno University of Technology (FSI VUT) and lived alternately in the Moravian capital and in Mistřice.
