Punks not dead! by

Posted on: May 28, 2005 11:49 PM

In the latest blogman video, you remember with awesome nostalgics the summer of 1994, and this also was a truly momentous year for myself. I am thinking that perhaps it will be in your interests to see and hear how things was on the other side of the world in that era, ok? And I must say that it was also massive hardcore, full power and total throttle!
The Jarocin festival for music of the young generation was the bigest and best rock festival in the East block. Here, in the dismal 1980's, young people could gather in sonic rebellion against the dictatorships of communism. Those years was very grey for everyone, but in this magical place you would find people that contradict and, dare I say, subjugated their realities in multifarious manners of dress, talk and dancing habits. Here, the people put the safety pins into their cheeks, consumed copious amounts of alcohol and enjoyed punk music to the oblivious point! It was a time to spit in the face of the totalitarians and marxism-leninism in particular. You would meet people here that you rarely saw in everyday life. Awesome people. Awesome music. Awesome struggles. And I, for one, was digging it!It happens that the epochal summer of '94 would be the last time I make the pogo at Jarocin. Of course, at that time we believed - as does your Bryan Adams - that "it would last for ever", but the times were changing in radical ways and it was dawning on everybody, notwithstanding the mayor of Jarocin town himself, that the festival was part of the bygone eras. In the tender years of slavic punks, the rebellion was directed at an evil regime and the prevalent conformists of that era. But with the emergence into capitalist democracy, there was much factional violence, as the punks spent most of the time in organizing urban warfare against the, at this time very fashionable, skinhead movement. And so it was in '94 that the violence swept the festival.
This was not radically inhabitual for me then, I remember many streetfights and vandalisms, and as a young anarchist, it was dangerous to walk about the town in small numbers, because you must always risk ambushes by the opponent guerillas. Personally, I think I was maybe a little lost at that time. I didn't see the impending gloom that struck at Jarocin '94 until it was too late: 70 seriously injured (of which 40 policemen), 300 metres of vandalized buildings, many anihilated vehicles, 6 volleys of rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon, 3 hours of battle... and, worst of all this: the end of an epoch.
Because of these tragic events, the Jarocin festival received a bad name, but it was not always like this. Above all, it was a place for young people, for anarchist counter-culture, for music. Of course, there was always a deal of violence, but it rarely made results as bad as that of '94.
Eight years before, maybe the best band of Polish New Wave, Republika, played their show that started with many large quantities of tomatos and soured milk being projected onto them, so that the musicians had to ask the public "Does somebody have the rag so that we can clean the instruments?" and surely enough a rag soon was thrown at him. Fifteen minutes later they begun to play and blew away the audience, so that, in the end, everybody was asking for an encore, but the singer says: "You are not a public that is deserving of us! Go to hell!"

Maybe the most powerhouse of the punk bands, titled Dezerter also made great concerts here, in the epochal festival of 1984. Many of the songs I have posted on here is by them, and as you can feel inside your bones, it is like being in contact with God, or maybe rape, or something truly awesome that will never make you untouched and mollusc as you were before!
I was too young to partake with Jarocin when it was King. This is probably something I will always regret. But I acquired multifarious cassettes of the concerts there and I have digged them so much, the tape is getting thin! Ah yes! For you Americans this is exotic, but 1994 is also the first appearance of the CD in my regions (but no one was really buying it until some years later, because the pirate cassettes were cheaper and also the CD players were expensive). After Jarocin, the people also became rich, the punks became fewer, the skinheads (thank god!) also dissapeared and they were replaced by these rich kids the "skates" who wear the big trousers and Vans (I think it is also very popular in USA, yes?) and urban thug, which we call "sportswear", that beats you up but without any political motivations, just to retrieve wallet and watch. I myself also abandoned my radical attitudes that year. The apocalypse of Jarocin was too much for my brains. Later that year, I discovered Miko Mission and Ryan Paris, and thus was another adventure begun: the more smooth, classy and trendy of Italo Disco, to which I adhere until this day.

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