January 27–February 3, 2000

music

Prague Rock Diaries

How Philly’s Krakatoa and four other hometown artists rocked the Czech Republic.

by Brian Glaser

To paraphrase Mel Brooks’ To Be Or Not To Be, "We’re world famous in Prague." At least that’s the impression a handful of Philadelphia musicians got from the Czech Republic’s annual Alternativa music festival (whose program expresses the singular goal of "seeking novel forms of expression and the use of untraditional [read: alternative] methods of musical expression"). This past winter, the festival scheduled an entire evening titled "Welcome Worlds — Music from Philadelphia."

Most of the acts on the Dec. 4, 1999, bill are drastically unknown in their hometown. But thousands of miles way, the Alternativa organizers were not only aware of Krakatoa, New Ghost, The Meneses/Makihara Percussion Duo, Stephen DiJoseph, and filmmaker Peter Rose, they were eager to cover all the expenses of flying them over to rock the eagerly open-eared Czech scene.

One night. One city. Lots of sounds: Meneses and Makihara’s outlandish rhythmic assault, New Ghost’s free-jazz throwdown, DiJoseph’s physical pianisms and Krakatoa’s complex genre-delic fusions.

Three of Krakatoa’s four members — bassist Ted Casterline, violin player Glendon Jones and pianist Valerie Opielski — were kind enough to keep diaries of their trip to Prague (drummer Jay Horvath did not keep a diary) and turn them over for our perusal.

Krakatoa exceeded even our high expectations: The packet they dropped off at the City Paper was overflowing with photos, two of Prague’s English-language newspapers, a tourist pamphlet from the city’s TV Tower, a complete program of the entire Alternativa ’99 Festival and a "Bohemian Souvenir" sticker.

What follows is a first-person account by some awfully creative Philadelphia musicians who went on an awfully big adventure.

	Ted, Val and Glendon (l. to r.) preparing to jam at Klub Skansen.

Day 1: Prague or Bust

Ted: We just took off from Newark International on a Czech Air non-stop to Prague. On the plane with us are Rick Iannacone, John Testa, Elliot Levin and Keith Macksound, all from the band New Ghost. Toshi Makihara and Stephen DiJoseph are aboard as well.

Glendon: Entering a city like Prague is made more surreal by doing it after being awake for 22 hours.

Val: We were too excited to get any sleep, so we walked around for awhile, searching desultorily for some lunch (in my case, meatless — easier said than done in the Czech Republic!). Everything, at first, seemed to have meat in Prague — and usually also cheese, cream and butter as well, with a dollop of mayo. It’s hard to be a vegetarian here, but over the week it worked out OK. I was just grateful not to be Kosher or a vegan.

T: [Our hotel, The Hotel Axa] is right in downtown Prague, and only half a block from the Archa Theater, where most of the concerts will be held. The Archa is sort of like the Prince Music Theater meets the Painted Bride. It’s a very slick modern theater with a wrap-around balcony and a café/bar in the basement.

It’s now like 4 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, but no one feels like sleeping.

V: We walked around goggle-eyed until we absolutely had to have a nap.

Later, the band headed to the Alternativa show at the Archa.

T: The Japanese New Music night was so good, it was devastating. Zubizuva-X, the all-vocal, nearly vaudevillian trio, was my favorite. They all gathered around one microphone and let loose doo-wop, Gregorian chant and death metal vocals, sometimes all at once. The Ruins’ set left me speechless — it seems like every time I see them, they attain some new level of impossible complexity. Yoshida from The Ruins did a solo set in which he played keyboards, guitar, drums and sang, all pretty much at the same time. He makes The Lonesome Organist look like Al Alberts.

		Czechmates: Elliot Levin of New Ghost (left) and Glendon (center) at Klub Skansen.

Day 2: Meat Buffet and Der Simpsons

T: The continental breakfast included what could only be called a "meat buffet," which offered about nine varieties of sliced meat and cheese. There were also scrambled eggs and hot dogs. I certainly wasn’t complaining, but a bagel with cream cheese would have been fine.

G: The "meat buffet" at breakfast had three types of head cheese!

V: Most of us tromped around the city in a scraggly clump today, hiking across town to the castle and back.

T: We walked down past the Opera House, the Old Town Hall, and the Astronomical Clock. Jay and I split off for a few minutes to find the International Institute of Marionettes, so I could drop off some material for Ken Berman’s Dramation Theater, the puppet group that we perform with.

We rejoined the group at the Charles Bridge and proceeded up to the Prague Castle. I was particularly struck by the stained glass in St. Vitus Cathedral, which I believe is the earliest example of psychedelic art.

V: Before dinner, we watched The Simpsons in German, which I understand a bit of, but not enough.

T: Tonight’s show was comprised of mostly young, lesser-known Czech musicians playing in different combinations, some improvised, some idiomatic. The first group I saw was a female vocalist improvising with a drummer. Basically, the drummer just played rock beats and drum rolls while the singer made weird noises with her voice. The worst thing I can think of to call them is "cute," because of their utterly earnest presentation of avant-garde cliches. Maybe I’m being too harsh, though — I mean, people call Krakatoa "funny."

After the show, I went downstairs to the café to get a beer and saw Rick and Keith carrying Romek, the festival organizer, out the door. He had passed out from beer and exhaustion.

G: Upon seeing Romek carried from the café, it was observed that we should make sure to get paid before our show.

	Good reception: Prague’s TV Tower

Day 3: One Violin, Hold the Mayo

G: All the best sights in Prague seem to be at the tops of high hills and no streets go straight for more than a few blocks. Despite going out to concerts and bars each night, we are compelled to walk these winding streets to exhaustion every day. Prague is so beautiful that we must see all of everything. Walk, walk, walk.

V: TV Tower after rehearsal today. Ted hasn’t stopped talking about going since the taxi ride from the airport when he first got a glimpse of it.

T: [The Television Tower] was built in the late ’80s and is one of Eastern Europe’s most notable postmodern structures. It’s kind of like Prague’s version of the Space Needle, except cooler. I thought it looked like a giant version of the water monitoring stations on Tattooine in Star Wars. We went up 90 meters to the lookout area, from which you could look down on all of Prague. We ate lunch at the TV Tower Café (66 meters up). I ordered something called "Noodles Sombrero," which neither contained noodles nor was sombrero-like.

After sightseeing, the band caught some cosmopolitan music at Archa.

G: While watching Cvachtavy Lachtan (Splashing Seal), who were excellent, I saw the singer/violinist play his homemade electric violin with a sandwich (salami on long roll) and was reminded of another incident: The first time that Ted and I saw Toshi Makihara perform, he played the drums with (among other things) two toilet brushes. Ted said, "I wish I’d thought of that," and so I felt tonight.

Day 4: Eggs and Percussion

V: After doing some sightseeing in the rain and snow, Glendon and I had some Czech pizza for dinner — which had an egg broken in the center and baked with the pizza — and ditched the Festival’s first half in order to go and see a Czech folk band play. The concert was sold out, but they were willing to rent us a pillow to sit on in the aisle for $2.

T: Tonight’s show was all bands from the Czech town of Brno, the second-largest city after Prague. The first group, Dama Dama, was (and Val will hate me for this) best summed up as "French 75 meets the Theater of the Absurd," or "Anything can be a percussion instrument, let us illustrate in the most annoying fashion."

Day 5: Fred, Ginger and Dr. Cornelius

T: I woke up early today, around 5 a.m., because I wanted to see Prague in the early morning hours. I walked across town to a building done in the surrealist style. It’s called Fred & Ginger because it actually looks like two buildings dancing with each other.… I stopped on the way home to buy some bottles of absinthe, and now I’m watching Planet of the Apes in German.

Day 6: Showtime

V: Our show. It was wonderful to play to such a big theater full of enthusiastic people! From having dressing rooms and a grand piano to play, to being in Prague and playing to such a great crowd… it’s the sort of thing you dream about when you start a band.

T: Stephen DiJoseph opened up the night and played remarkably. Jim Meneses and Toshi Makihara both experimented with new instruments for their set. Jim played a malletKat (or MIDI marimba) and Toshi played a standard jazz kit, a departure from his usual yard-sale percussion detritus. Toshi really engaged the crowd with sporadic air drumming, dadaist/Butoh dance moves, and prop-driven antics.… Frank Sofer, who books The Ruins, cited them as his favorite act of the festival.

It was really surprising to see how many people showed up to see four unsigned bands from a city they’ve probably never heard of. After a film by UArts professor Peter Rose, we went on.

G: Waiting for our set made me more nervous than I can remember being for any previous Krakatoa show. The theater was not as packed as it had been for some shows we’d seen, but it was a very good turnout, perhaps the largest audience we’ve ever had. They were also a very enthusiastic crowd.

I broke a string during the show. That never happens. I might break a violin string once a year, at most.… Fortunately, I had [a replacement] string and we were up and running in just a few minutes, but it took me some time to regain my composure.

Despite that, the set went really well. Plus, we got to leave the stage, wait for as long as we could stand, and then triumphantly reemerge for our encore before the applause died out. Rock star stuff.

T: After our set, Jay and I went to our dressing room to "celebrate" by slugging down some absinthe. Absinthe is a type of liquor brewed with anise and wormwood, which contains a mild hallucinogen. It’s 140 proof and it sort of tastes like Jaegermeister meets rubbing alcohol. You’re supposed to water it down, but of course we just drank it straight. Only madmen do this, and I found out why. I took the first shot, which went down OK, and then handed it over to Jay. My second shot elicited the most violent reaction from my body. It took all the control I had to keep down the sandwich I had eaten before our set.

With that experience behind us, we grabbed some beers, and went down to watch New Ghost, who had just started. We sat in the first row, and with the absinthe kicking in, New Ghost’s music felt like sheets of lead dust lapping painlessly against my face, or something like that.

V: After the concert we all headed over to Klub Skansen, where Sharkiat, the Egyptian band, had played a second show earlier in the evening and were setting up to participate in the jam. I got up and played percussion, which is always a blast.

G: Val and I drank some absinthe after the show. Not as hard to swallow as Ted led us to believe. I got really drunk but it didn’t turn me instantly into a surrealist. I guess I didn’t drink enough of it.

Day 7: Hey, Pavel

V: Another day of frantically sightseeing, then the last festival concert. And what a one — Cikori was excellent! Even though I was impressed with most of the other bands in the festival, I hadn’t bought any tapes or CDs until this band tonight.

G: The jam session at Skansen was the best ever. Three guys got up and rocked badly, but with intensity, through Czech translations of "Paranoid," "Smoke on the Water" and "Hey Joe" (translated — "Hey Pavel"), while audience members called out, "‘Ace of Spades,’ prosim!" (please).

Day 8: Home again

T: Last night, we went on a no-holds-barred networking binge, handing out [our Plan Ahead] CDs like Fresh Fields hands out crackers. We have high hopes of returning for a tour next year. We are on the plane now, getting ready to take off. I feel sad and thoroughly exhausted.

This has been such an amazing experience for us. I mean, lots of bands tour Europe, but we got to hang out in Prague for a week, see all kinds of incredible music, and we got paid.

V: 20 hours in transit from door to door. Whew. Sleep.

Krakatoa will play with Tintinabulous on Fri., Jan. 28, La Tazza 108, 108 Chestnut St., 215-922-7322.