Zdeněk Piras

* 1952

  • “[I have] a funny memory: I was not allowed to go out on 21 August. Given the fact that Viktor Parkán used to organize 'merrymaking' and I think that Sváťa Karásek was also there back then. I remember him fondly, too. I ran away from the police officers somewhere as I had taught. Poor them, four cars were patrolling around my house all night, they did not know what was going on, or where I was. I managed to come back from the event in the morning. They did not arrest me at that moment when I went home, but they stayed there. It was only in the morning, when I went to my car in my shorts, because it was nice and warm, that they arrested me and took me somewhere in my shorts. To a police station in Chodov, Lokt, or Vary. They were angry that they had to wait there all night."

  • “The performance in front of a qualification commission took place in such a way that the commission was invited to a place, you played three songs, and based on them the band got an opinion. It was given as a percentage. An amateur band had to gain from 40 to 90 percent to be allowed to play. Based on it, you could even charge money. We swindled a little at that time. We sent a car for them and organized it in Královské Poříčí. We prepared food, I mean treats there. Of course, we did such a – it would not be okay today. It was quite normal at that time. Long Tom sang a song about how we wanted to work; he had its lyrics written on a loudspeaker because he did not know it at all. To cut it short, we swindled them, and we gained 90 percent. It was a bit of a problem later because it became known quickly. We then had to avoid those places [Karlovy Vary].“

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    Karlovy Vary, 23.03.2022

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There were few Charter 77 signatories in our town, and the pressure on us was enormous

Zdeněk Piras in 2022
Zdeněk Piras in 2022
zdroj: Post Bellum filming

Zdeněk Piras was born on 13 June 1952 in a family of an engineer from Karlovy Vary Josef Piras. His parents moved to Karlovy Vary in 1958 when they bought a family house in the Tuhnice quarter. He played electric guitar and founded his first bands from the end of elementary school. He graduated from the vocational school of measurement and regulation in Nová Paka. He managed to get a Blue booklet (Document of proof of incapacity for military service – trans.) and after graduating from vocational school, he spent four years as an employee of the fuel combined company in Vřesová. He later worked in District Housing Enterprise in Karlovy Vary. He founded amateur bands Zase and Spektrum. He was in touch with representatives of the North Bohemian underground and visited them in „houses“ from the second half of the 1970s. In 1978, he became one of the first Charter 77 signatories in Karlovy Vary and found himself under enormous political pressure. Because of that, his older sister Eva emigrated in 1985, the family had to sell their family house in Tuhnice and he and his wife Jana got divorced. After it, Zdeněk Piras lived in a dilapidated house in Nové Sedlo, which he reconstructed on his own.