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21.1.03
guide: cahier one: may-july, utrecht, paris. cahier two: august-february, czech republic. cahier three: march-april, paris, utrecht. cahier four: may-end, italy, budapest, etc.
9:50 PM
Hradec Králové Jazz festival, cahier 1, from the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski October-November
Mikhail was a little droopy eyed as he stared at me over the chess board. We were hunkered down in the smoke clouds inside U Vystrelenyho oka, racing through .51 glasses of Mestan beer that kept coming and coming interrupted only on occasion by a shot of Absinthe. Mirek and Miroslav, from Uz Jsme Doma, were trying to interrupt our already wobbly match by shouting about Kafka and black humor over and over again in different accents. Uz Jsme Doma, I'd already been assured, had fomed in 1985 in defiance of the Communist regime when they played music that was considered antisocial by the government, and for more than four years they performed in the Czech underground. Mikhail, on the other hand, was a jazz guitarist who worked in a music store part time and played around town with a variety of people who adhered to him and then fell away. Only the month before, we'd tried a quintet that failed miserably. Mikhail was really the only studied musician of the bunch. That's why he played around so often. Attracted hacks left and right then shedding them like a winter cold.
Mikhail kept staring at the chess board as if the longer he stared the longer the possibility would exist that the pieces might somehow rearrange themselves to his advantage. His crewcut drenched with the sweat of nausea. HIs face was mangled by a vague vertigo. He was no Zbynek Hrácek, for sure. I was up two pawns, a rook and a bishop. Mate, under the influence of less Mestan, would have probably been less than three moves away. My brain was lost, veering off the fox chase and running for the hills and I'd be lucky if I mate was discovered at all. Mikhail pushed his finger out at his pieces and knocked the king over. "Are you quitting?" I demand about the speculative king down resignation. He looks at me deeper with those droopy eyes and shrugs. "There is nothing for me here." he comments, finishing off his glass and standing up. "Why don't you come with me to the Hradec Králové Jazz festival? I am already playing and maybe there will be time for you on an alternative stage somewhere..." He raises his eyebrows. "somewhere where they won't notice you" He whispers clandestinely.
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A few days later Mikhail, Albert and I are sitting on cold benches with a few bottles of beer at a suburban bus depot waiting for a ride to Hradec Králové. A few old ladies and a school teacher going home for the weekend are waiting with us. The isolation is deafening. "So did you hear more about our performance?" Albert grumbles, lighting a no filter Start cigarette, coughing, red-faced and veins popping up in his forehead and looks expectantly at Mikhail. "Absolutely!" he nearly shouts, relieved to have a topic of good news to break the soul dragging silence hanging over us. The old ladies and the school teacher look over at us, accessing the level of our intoxication or insanity. "I've spoken with Jiri about it and he is convinced we can promote you as some sort of expatriot avant garde jazz duo of blinding importance. He likes your name, Stalin's Mother. He thinks it will draw people at least through the duration of a beer, no matter how horrible you sound." Mikhail says this matter-of-factly as though our ineptitude is so understood that even we should be convinced of it.
"Well, it's a relief that I didn't lug this fucking bass with me for nothing" Albert growled, giving the 6'5 tall bass carrier beside him an unfriendly jostle. He'd pissed and moaned about it ever since he woke up that morning. "This is going to be one heavy fucking thing to drag around with me all weekend." he began while the coffee was brewing. "Jesus christ, this thing is heavy!" he exclaimed when we'd gotten on to the street and were headed for the tram. Getting it onto the train at rush hour brought even more frustrated fury, angry stares, bitching and complaining and cursing in languages no one was going to bother to try and understand. His only consolation was the kiosk where he bought several large bottles of beer. "What a nightmare" he sighed finally, gratefully gulping his first mouthful.
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We got into Hradec Králové as the sun was setting. The first matter of order of course, was to stop at the first pub we found, instruments and all, and kill some time with the locals. Mikhail was from the neighborhood, knew alot of the people coming up to our table, introducing us as a "puzzling jazz duo", a "once in a lifetime chance to see jazz taken to its furthest parameters." We were in short, musical geniuses. That got us alot of free beer. Everyone who came to the table bought us a beer of welcome and it wasn't long before everything was quickly dissolving again into a Thompsonesque hallucination.
9:47 PM
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