Music Prague copes with the Bolsheviks in us
When Buddhist Leonard Cohen died, his hair had to fall off. And then he wandered the world until he incarnated in the song of the Great Word. Michal Ambrož tells her on her new descent with the band Hudba Praha with a Cohen-like, folk power.
It’s another Ambrož position, the lower listeners of his sharper Jasná páky, the “pop” Music of Prague, and at one time also the band Divoké srdce heading towards the country are not used to them at some point. And so it is necessary to get used to – an artist mature for eternity.
Photo: Marek Musil
Ambrož, 65, conceives of some topics almost in a teenager, as a “hook” as in the new song Pracha, for which he wrote the lyrics and where he sings: how money bothers you, your heart tears and love takes you. However, the simplification of a kind of city “folk song” has been accompanied by Music Prague, or Jasná páka, since time immemorial. And who says that every rocker has to invest money as sophisticatedly as Pink Floyd once did in Money?
Ambrožova Hudba Praha has other advantages. Above all, he plays divinely. And at concerts it’s even more noticeable than from the new album, where the arrangements stand out again.
Ambrož, surrounded by younger, perfectly won musicians, can evoke the atmosphere of a great rock attraction, even a smaller club, precious moments – this manifested itself three years after the release of the previous, actually Ambrož’s first solo album, albeit with Music Prague, called Heart Story.
It is necessary to recall the context here. Ambrož’s path broke with a heartfelt story. After two serious illnesses, from which he recovered and forced him to slow down, he left the original line-up of Music Prague. The now old repertoire called Music Prague is played by the Band. Ambrož, in the production of David Koller, his long-term music from the parallel band Jasná páka, recorded the band with new bands the solo debut Heart Story, which features rearranged older songs of Ambrož’s compositions.
At first glance, it’s hard to know. Especially when we go back to the roots: the energy bomb Jasná páčka, founded in the early 1980s, the Communists tore down during the campaign against the alternative rock scene, and Michal Ambrož had to establish a new group on a similar basis as mimicry.
She made her debut under the name Hudba Praha in May 1984 in the Prague Junior Club Na Chmelnici and then in the course she parted again and met again in a changed composition. In parallel, she started playing with Jasná páčka again. In principle, however, Hudba Praha and Jasná páka had two chairs moved to one of Ambrož’s tables.
Michal Ambrož with the current line-up of Music Prague. | Photo: Warner Music
And so we prefer to stick to him, because Ambrož has been the frontman of Hudby Praha since that first hop-making performance, the embodiment of her ideas. They were simple: he sang – he called it – booze, Bolsheviks and women. And this, in a slightly shifted sense, also applies to the current album with mostly the latest songs, although the Bolsheviks are no longer here. Seemingly.
Ambrose explained this in a recent interview with Headliner magazine: even thirty years after the revolution, the Bolsheviks have been huddled all around us, hiding even people who do not remember him. “Holt was brought up like that,” he says. And the social atmosphere confirms that it is not wrong.
Perhaps the current Ambrož Music of Prague could be called Těžká doba, as its bass player, Jan Ivan Wünsch, who died for twenty years, suggested in the 1980s in search of the band’s name. At that time, however, such a name would not pass through the papals.
Today, he would aptly name the spirit of Ambrož’s new album. Although you can look forward to how good rock music plays on it, the content of the song is no longer so cheerful. The lyrics are dominated by a mournful atmosphere, starting with the opening song Refugee.
The song Uprchlík from the new album Hudby Praha a Michal Ambrože. | Video: Warner Music
It was created based on a text by the poet JH Krchovský, in which the family flees the house during an earthquake, which can overwhelm it. And probably here Ambrose did not choose another Krchovsky poem, one that is typically sarcastic for him, which would cause at least a small smile.
For Michal Ambrož, the album is a picture of disaster and what comes after it. He perceives today’s world as destroyed, he told Headliner. It means destroying values and shifting the meaning of words.
Music Prague & Michal Ambrož
Photo: Warner Music
Warner Music 2019
And perhaps the hardest description of today, which one knows, considers the lyrics of the song, which is named the same as Ambrož’s parallel band Jasná páka, to be the new album. The author is Petr Váša, a “physical poet” and the main “loudmouth” is Jasná páky.
In the text, the ghosts in iron helmets looking for a way to the heart of the matter in the Czech streets describe some clear leverage: “Like fishermen without rods / like vampires without canines / like desperate alcoholics without an opener.”
Maybe with the song “existential rocker” Ambrož announces that he is disappearing in today’s world. The listener has the feeling that Michal Ambrož has found himself perfectly.