Category Archives: Europe

Festival Review: Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival (EJBF) July 2022

Text and photos by Fiona Mactaggart

This year’s lavish, multi-venue, ten-day juggernaut of an Edinburgh Jazz and
Blues Festival (EJBF) opened with a bang, with a ‘Mardi Gras’ in Edinburgh old
town’s Grassmarket and an Edinburgh Festival Carnival along the beautiful,
new town Princes Street getting the party started over the first few days. EJBF
has now screeched to a halt while some other festivals Edinburgh is famous for
have taken off, and it feels timely to reflect on some of this year’s jazz festival
offerings.

Bigger than ever this year, EJBF encompassed a wide range of jazz and blues
and prompted the feeling that there may have almost been as many bands
coming from overseas as from within Scotland itself.

EJBF

De Beren Gieren

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Plastic People of the Universe

An Amazing Story: The Plastic People of the Universe and Why All Musicians Should Know Them

Text by Joe Yanosik

The Plastic People of the Universe

Copyright of image: The Plastic People of the Universe

The Plastic who of the what?  Never heard of them and I’ve been playing music for decades, you might say.  Well, it’s not your fault.  Even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean where they’re from, the Plastic People (actually from Czechoslovakia, not the Universe) remained obscure.  In America, fans of alternative music may simply know them as a cult band who made weird, experimental music.  In fact, the Plastic People of the Universe were one of the greatest rock groups to emerge from Central Europe during the Communist era and their incredible history should be known far and wide by everyone who plays music for a living.  

Formed in Czechoslovakia in 1968 shortly after the Warsaw Pact Invasion in which Soviet tanks and troops crushed the liberal period known as the Prague Spring, the Plastic People of the Universe endured two decades of persecution from the Communist regime simply because they refused to conform to the Soviet “normalization”.  Since the era of Stalin, the Communists knew the importance of controlling the art in a society and they used art as propaganda to promote their own fake reality.  They were fully aware of the power of music and art and couldn’t let it be created freely for fear that the truth would escape.  

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Is Rock Dead? 6 Acts That Could Save Rock?

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Miles Davis declared Jazz is dead (it’s) the music of a museum. Frank Zappa said Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny. How about rock music?

The Guardian (UK) said in January: “It is a claim made before by, among others, Lenny Kravitz and the Swedish garage band the Hellacopters. But today, after years of struggle, came evidence to support the fearsome claim: rock’n’roll is dead.” Read more.

Anyway I don’t care whether certain music styles are dead. On the contrary, I only care about bands which play emotional and passionate music. I mean, music that really feels alive and speaks to me.

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