you are right it is good time for some history:
we have corresponded together for the first time in 1992 or 1993. it was rather turbulent time after breakup of czechoslovakia and i was at the time director of "radio prague" - the foreign service of czech radio. that was the year we have become first european radiostation connected to internet . it was after i was given the task to get rid of all the secret police collaborators at the radio.... about three months after i fired about 130 people in one day and in person (i don't think you want to know many details).
prior to 1990 there was very little "western" music on airwaves in czechoslovakia. capitalist music was pronounced twisted and not fit for consumption.
so we all listened to ostereich 3 when on trips to southern parts of the country and mighty radio luxemburg on am in the night when am bounces better of the ionosphere.
sometimes someone would get record from relatives in the mail and censors at the customs house would let it slip through so we would all make copies on the tapes and copies of the copies of the copies.....
i don't think many of you here in usa have even faint idea how the life was behind the iron curtain. it was in some way very simple - everything was run by communist state and all you had to do is shut up and don't get out of line unless you had any ambition. than you would have to brown nose, denounce, become communist party member or secret police collaborator. normal people would collect their measly wages and go stand in the line for toilet paper and pickles or anything that was so called "short profile" - which could have been anything . imagine mccarthy commission and patriot act at the same time unleashed on every single american - poking in their private life, recording their every phone conversation, keeping files on everybody, deciding what you can do as a job, if you can marry someone, if your kids are going to be allowed to go to school or work in the coal mines instead. ...all with omnipresent gitmo being there for everybody if you do something the state doesn't like.
any good guitar was worth about ten times what we are paying now and they were scarce. information about guitars was unobtainable. strings were hard to come by. to perform somewhere you had to have special permit from communist party entertainement overseeing body - you could perform only what was approved. very few people were permitted to perform and those were mostly collaborators with the regime. the rest of us unlucky musicians were playing @ semi-legal practice rooms and garages and pubs far out of prague hoping the police will not come calling.
in 1989 right after my two year! mandatory! military service i had enough and left for scotland st. andrews university thinking i will never go back there. the glitch was that all my family would be stripped of their normal jobs and my father would not be able to publish (he was a cartoonist at the time) so after long time i decided to go back. i came to prague on september 28 - some 45 days later than i was supposed to be back from my university sponsored trip. i was instantly flagged as suspect and i was called for interview to secret police headquarters for 19th of november 1989. than "velvet revolution" started on 17th november with riot police beating up peaceful demonstration of students and so i never had to go to that interview. the regime fell. and czechoslovakia became democracy again after 41 years of "rule of working class". i have landed the job at radio which would never ever happened under communists since i was suspect due to my views and family background.
my rickenbacker first encounter was seeing tp damn the torpedos cover picture. i have been instantly in love with the idea of 12 string electric. so first 12 string was some weird bulgarian thing called "orpehus" that i scored though the local add. i had my mind set on that 12 string ric. well the first one was not 12 string - i have been extremely lucky in 1984 to score 481jg from friend who was sent one with major obstacles from his uncle in western germany. he decided to part with it so i gave him my framus strato-deluxe (prize of its own back then) and still owed him year worth of my wages for it...
that guitar still lives somewhere in prague. the second was rather special 362/12 mapleglo that by some mysterious way got there in early 90's. it was beater but great. that one was stolen from my car trunk in 1992 in city of jablonec in nothern part of the country. i got so upset that i took large loan on like 20% interest and went the same week to germany and bought my 360/12fg in frankfurt. i paid equivalent of today $3500 for it back then. i guess someone can pull usa price list from the period to compare it.
in 1998 my wife nora got very homesick after living in europe for 9 years so we took our two kids and moved to california. in 2003 we relocated already with three kids to ny since by that time it was clear to us that california had changed a lot from what she could remember....
so here we are in western ny. now with some hope lined up here in usa i am with mixed feelings getting ready to move back to europe this year to care for my parents.
