Show review: UTOPIE (FR) and STEZK (CZ) in Prague
Montrealer DLA contributed this show review from their recent travels abroad. A show review and brief scene report from Prague!
A punk show with hipster blazers and film photography? Let's go!!!
If in Prague and if in need of a concert, do yourself a favor and hit up Eternia Smichov. I found myself there on a cold Tuesday night in March after some deep diving into the depths of internet forums sent me to the Berlin lefty/punk aggregator page StressFaktor (https://stressfaktor.squat.net/termine), which in turn, after even more digging through bandcamp tour listings, led me to a French post-punk band who was currently on tour and playing a show in Prague.
Loosely translating their website, Eternia is located in the Smichov neighborhood of Prague and hosts a vegan restaurant, skate ramp, tattoo studio, rehearsal rooms, music equipment rentals, a pole dance studio and spaces for shows and events – in addition to hosting a bunch of different organizations, including Extinction Rebellion in Prague, and an archive of dissident Czechoslovak punk zines and other things from the Communist era.
The space for the actual show had a bar, comfy couches, a bookcase of zines, a community sale rack for clothes, shoes, CDs, and a skate ramp – as the crowd filtered in, we enjoyed our 30 crown beers while flipping through some Dutch and American zines, mostly from the era of Bush 2, including a really insane zine from a bunch of NYC people published soon after 9/11 – both about the NYC scene, and also about seeing the aftermath of the event and the increase in policing in the city.
STEZK (https://stezk.bandcamp.com/album/na-pokraji) were up first. Their bandcamp describes them well – a perfect combo of 90s emo and hc/crust, some dramatic/upbeat riffs, shrieks, and lyrics you can’t understand since they’re in Czech. Shoutout to the more spoken word sections of some of their songs, I think it adds some great atmosphere.
UTOPIE (https://utopielille.bandcamp.com/album/virage-lp) were also great. They play dancey, fun, and heavy post punk with a definitive cold wave influence, hitting us with a bunch of live vocal effects (love to check out everyone's pedal setups). You can't help but to dance to their shit. Lyrical content includes anxiety, probably also a bunch of stuff about capitalism and the oppression of everyday life (you can tell my French isn’t good enough to catch all of it). Talking with the band after, they said they were going to come for a festival this past summer, and it didn’t work out – so maybe they will come to Canada in the future! You can also follow UTOPIE here: https://utopunx.noblogs.org/
In addition to the great bands, what I deeply enjoyed about this show was seeing a different scene in a different city totally new to me. Of course, everything seems especially cool when it’s new to you, but it was fun being at a show with no more than 25 people for the first time in ages. I always love people watching at shows, and I’m still shocked at how toned down people look outside of North America (and probably the rest of the anglosphere but I’ve never been to the UK so don’t come at me about this), even when in a space like this. My limited take at this point is that I think it’s a little less of a principled rejection of a need to look a certain way to participate in a scene, and is more just a representation of the overall culture. A lot less tattoos, a lot fewer piercings. Two separate indie millennial looking guys with glasses and tweed blazers, one of whom was taking film photos of the show – and a normal collection of punk dudes, people wearing street clothes, and a strikingly gorgeous girl who looked very Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction in a floor length black coat.
The blazer guys specifically reminded me of a friend telling me about his read on the hipster scene in Saint Petersburg – it felt more organic to him, when not a little hipster passé, than scenes he’d experienced in New York. It’s as if the scene was able to create its own stylistic or aesthetic sensibilities that were truly original because of its distance (geographical, linguistic) from others. It’s maybe just a romantic idea, but I love a throwback and reaffirmation to the fact that small stylistic changes like dressing a little old fashioned (although still in dialogue with global trends) is “dressing punk.” To be fair, we see this in Montreal too. I was super impressed by a girl last Saturday at Bâtiment 7 wearing a kilt, a plaid hat, and a floor length red coat, showing up to see some bands play and some dudes strung up on flesh hooks. At the end of the day, this shit is all about doing you want and finding community in that – full stop, and it's always good to get a reminder of that.
The venue/organization/building -- whatever you call Eternia -- is also super impressive. We’re all frustrated by how expensive things are getting in Montreal, and the fact that the rent is too damn high for people to do the work they want to do, and create the art that’s important to them. There’s also not enough space -- industrial buildings and non residential leases want tons of money per month, evict and kick out bands and practice spaces, or have already been converted into condos. To me, spaces like this show us how fucked up our conception of “real estate” actually is in Canada. There’s absolutely enough determined people with the will to build spaces like this -- and we’re prevented by the continued commodification of the housing market.
All in all -- great show, super cool venue, I would highly recommend checking out their schedule if you ever find yourself in Prague. And as a bonus for shows and counterculture in Berlin: check out https://stressfaktor.squat.net/termine and https://knox.p-u-n-k.de/db/! Stressfakor has community events, free food, manifs, shows, and an encyclopedia of lefty/radical addresses, groups, and businesses to visit. I recommend viewing on a computer instead of your phone so you can translate the pages from German to English.