"They didn't give us the approval to play out. They said, 'Yeah, you guys want to play? Do you at least have a third grade clearance?' We're like, 'No, we don't,' and they're like, 'Well then you don't exist effectively.' If you didn't have a stamp, a piece of paper, you didn't exist. Petr was trying to get it; he found this Mrs Mrázová in Prague 4. He explained our lyrics to her, giving her a completely different meaning from what she thought. But the communists were so messed up... Listen to what happened to us in Bílina... We had some photos from Jarocin 88 and... they were just paranoid. There was this chairman of the culture centre in Teplice and he would approve exhibitions and stuff. I went to the director of the culture centre in Bílina and I said, 'Look, we have photos from the Polish festival here and I think it's quite interesting because you don't see a lot of this stuff.' We did the opening and played right there, at full blast in that little room. She calls me a week later and says, 'Come and get the pics and take them away,' and I say, 'Why?' and she says, 'Don't ask me, ask the secretary.' I wondered what happened. Coincidentally, the guy lived two blocks away in an apartment building, and I went up to him - I don't remember his name - and I said, 'Mr. XY, why was it cancelled?' He said, 'You better not ask any questions, Vláďa, and be glad you're not in trouble.' The communists were really messed up. I found out that since the label said 'Jarocin 88', they thought and claimed that we had touched up the photo and that it had actually said 'Jaro činů 68' [the Spring of Action 68]. They fabricated this idea. I said, 'You can't be serious, nobody meant it that way, and you can see it's not even possible.' There was no software like the Corel or Photoshop back then to touch it up. I said, 'How would I do that?' He said, 'Hey, for the sake of peace, let's just not do this!' They were so frightened beforehand that they simply cancelled our exhibition."
"When I was in the army, I would get different fanzines and collect them. There was no internet, so I devoured just about any fanzine that came in, that people brought in... I lived in Žižkov when I wasn't in the barracks, and somehow I took one fanzine to the barracks in my locker. Suddenly, there was a search - heads up and all. They started throwing things out of the lockers and found it there. They didn't know what it was because it was written in English and there were a bunch of bands. All they could read was 'Charter 77'. They saw it as anti-state press, took it to the political leader, and he was a very reasonable man. He said: 'Vláďa, now what is this?' I said, 'Well, I don't know; I mean, it's a music magazine, and there's a band in Sweden called Charter 77.' He said, 'Okay, let's not get into this.' He effectively deleted the problem because he knew it was so petty. See, I might get fired or go to jail, and then basically I'd have to do a two-year spell, a two-year service. I had just started a family at the time and I didn't want that."
"There were nerdy student who studied all the time. We'd go to rehearse in Block 11 at like noon or in the morning, and they'd be sleeping after drinking or night jobs, and they'd complain about us. We'd just say, 'Yeah, sure, whatever...' and told them to bugger off. I stayed in Block 10. One day, we were waiting by Block 7 to get the keys to rehearse. It was agreed that we'd get the keys every Wednesday at 11 o'clock. We went to get them and were told, 'The janitor lady forbade us to do it.' I got angry and I kicked a box or a wall, and a socialist youth union guy saw me and ratted on me. I was kicked out of the dorm over that - for 'anti-socialist conduct'. The friend who gave me the approval stamp previously told on me and then said, 'Hey, it couldn't be helped. Everybody agreed, so I had to as well. Just move out of the dorm, man.' I didn't have a place to stay in Prague, but luckily a classmate lent me an apartment, which had its benefits. I was allowed to move back in six months later. It didn't really hurt me, but getting kicked out of a dorm was a problem."
Vladimír Volman was born in Most on 1 August 1965. He grew up in Bílina where he also graduated from the local high school. He played music from an early age. He first learned to play classical instruments, but the guitar appealed to him the most. He started his first musical formations with his classmates in high school, and also sought out and listened to foreign music. During his studies, he first encountered punk music at a concert of the Teplice band FPB whose music appealed to him. After graduating from high school, he studied architecture at the Czech Technical University, and this is where he had a fateful meeting with his older classmate Petr Rajtora, with whom he founded the punk band V3S. While they did not succeed to play many concerts in a year, the group’s great success was their participation in a Polish festival in Jarocin in 1986. The following year, the band broke up but Vladimír Volman and other musicians formed a new band called Do řady! The group drew attention with its lyrics that were antimilitaristic and critical of the period regime. Vladimír Volman and his new band managed to perform at a Polish festival and at the same time recorded their first album in Katowice in 1988. He spent his military service as a scribe with a construction regiment in Prague. After the Velvet Revolution, he started pursuing architecture full time while continuing to play with Do řady! Petr Rajtora also regularly performs with the group again and together they play on the domestic and international scene and enjoy great popularity. Vladimír Volman lived in Bílina at the time of filming.
