Colin Smith witnesses beat group the Blossom Toes take their subversive 'Asian jazz' to Czechoslovakia
In the dressing room after the concert in Prague, a couple of Czech teenagers drift up to the British beat group and ask for hashish. The group, the Blossom Toes, shake their heads and autograph the fans' outstretched posters instead. The Czech boys say "thank you" and the musicians look them straight in the eye and wish them "luck", which is the sort of thing you tend to do and say in Prague, when somebody has just whispered that the skinny youth who has asked for hash was throwing bricks and molotov cocktails at the tanks last year.
The Smetanova Hall is a very dignified place. For 60 years, it has never been used for anything other than classical concerts, operas and the Ministry of Culture meeting. Then, last week, the men who rule Prague agreed to let the Blossom Toes, with their wild hair and long-lost clothes, give an hour-long performance at the hall.
About 500 young Czechs came to the concert. For most of the afternoon before the show, the police were busy tearing down psychedelic fly-posters – "Blossom Toes, group Auglicki" – which, despite the armed patrols, had appeared in the city centre overnight.
The westernisation of the fans was surprising. Most of them would not have looked out of place in the West End on a Saturday night. Their clothes were a little cheaper, perhaps, but the general effect of unisex casualness was the same.
The Blossom Toes were in the socialist republic to preach revolution. They preach it in their music, which is a strange hybrid of beat and electric guitar Asian jazz. "I'm a peace-loving man – but haven't you ever wanted to shout no," they scream and the crowd whistles back its approval.
Like most metropolitans, the Prague kids tend to be more sophisticated than their country cousins. The "underground" fans have not only heard of the BTs, but will also talk knowledgeably about other British groups playing similar music. Earnest young men who know hardly any English are quite likely to challenge you with: "What you feel on the Traffic now Eric Clapton late of the Cream is together with them?" You feel a little inadequate.
Among young people, even the educated young, western pop music seems to be synonymous with the resistance. In Bratislava, mature young men saunter along the banks of the Danube or around Hotel Slovan, carrying tiny transistors defiantly tuned into Radio Luxembourg.
Naturally, the authorities are not unaware of all this. Mr P Koci, Czech TV's deputy director for artistic production and a known conservative, has already come out against British pop music. "We shall definitely have to put a stop to beat music 'fillers' on television," he said recently. "Most of them sung in English at that."
This is an edited extract