Článek - Toyen

„Czech U2“ to invade Ralph´s diner tomorrow

Walter Crockett

When Scott Murphy saw Toyen last year in a rock club in Prague, Czechoslovakia, he was reminded of a band he had seen more than a decade before.

„I was in Ireland on my summer college vacation and I saw this great Irish band,“ Murphy recalled last week. „I went to see them every night. I kept thinking if I had the resources at the time I would try to help these guys. And that band ended up being U2.“

Murphy, a Worcester native who is a director of marketing and program development for ABC News in Europe, had the resources this time around. Shortly after „discovering“ Toyen, he helped finance a six-song CD and arranged for a brief U.S. tour that included shows at CBGB´s and the Shooting Gallery in New York City.

The tour concludes tomorrow night with a performance at Ralph´s Chadwick Square Diner, 95 Prescott St.

Politically inspired

„ I work a lot in Prague,“ Murphy said over the phone last week from his New York office. „I happen to spend some time in the clubs there and I saw this band performing a couple of times and I was really very interested in their music. I had the strong feeling that if it had the chance to get a wider audience in the States, people would like it and there might be the beginning of a new wave of Eastern rock bands becoming successful in the States the way the Irish bands became successful.

„My feelig is they´re sort of a Czech version of U2. The music is politically inspired. They talk about problems. I think the lyrics are very powerful in much the same way.“

Labels don´t hang easily on a band like Toyen. Some people compare them to U2, some mention the Smiths. The strong beat and pulsing guitar textures carry an English new-wave feel that goes all the way back to late-´70s bands such as the Vapors.

The most current parallels to Toyen´s sound can be found in bands of the recent British rock resurgence in Manchester and Liverpool.

„We are easy boys. We are ordinary people,“ said Toyen drummer Jiri Simecek. „We play rock ´n´roll with soul and heart.“

Political Oppression

Three of the four members of Toyen got their start 10 years ago in a popular Prague band called Letadlo, which became successful playing music inspired by the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Letadlo broke up in 1983. “They were stopped from playing simply because they became very popular,” Murphy said. “They decided they didn´t want to be an underground band.”

“For about three months they wrote about us in the Communist newspaper that we were stupid and that we played bad music, capitalist music,” Simecek said. “My own father didn´t believe me that we didn´t do anything bad. With the political thaw in Eastern Europe came Toyen. The band was formed in 1989 and it can now play whatever it wants and travel wherever it can afford to go. Toyen has won awards in Czechoslovakia, but life hasn´t been easy.

Competition is tough

“We now play only music (for a living), but itś very hard because in Czechoslovakia exist only three, four, five music rooms which have some big famous people – and this music is heavy metal, hardcore,” Simecek said. “Our kind of music is not like that. Itś not the major interest of the audience. We must fight for fans.”

The songs on the Toyen CD – sung phonetically in English by guitarist Petr Chromovsky – are interestig, tuneful and danceable enough to make waves in the United States, particularly if Toyen can crack the music video market. Chromovsky has a strong, clear voice. You´d never guess that he doesn´t speak English.

The tunes are moody and atmospheric, but always driving. The lyrics can be as surrealistic as the Czech artist from whom the band took its name:

“The world outside looks just like 1960/I try to follow disappeared railroads/With Milos Forman a few steps ahead of me/I walk the tracks under the growing storm.”

Six Encores

Toyen is not an overly emotional band on stage. The members basically stand around and look withdrawn, letting the music speak for itself. But reviews from Eastern European papers tell of audiences demanding up to six encores. It should be noted that Worcester rock audiences have not always supported interesting bands from out of town. Bix, another excellent Eastern European rock band, played here this summer to small, but enthusiastic, crowds. If we want to maintain our station on the rairoad from nowhere to MTV, we´d better be prepared to meet the train when it comes in.

(Telegram and Gazette, November 14, 1991)