“I was invited to a punk wedding, we were to play there with the band, but I know that at the time the guitarist had a night shift or simply couldn’t come. He couldn’t make it, so I drove there just with the saxophone guy, but the music didn’t work out in the end, or it might’ve done, but before we got round to it, the police arrived. First they checked all our IDs, and then they pretty much mashed us up into a single heap outside. They had some excuse, someone said something to them or kicked a car, and suddenly a load of jackboots in camo rushed out of the undergrowth, and we got treated to so much rubber I couldn’t believe it. I mean, sure, I’d had my share of bullying before – say, when they loaded me into a paddy wagon and then dropped me off somewhere, sure. But they really gave us a thrashing, boys, girls, they didn’t care one bit. Then they carted us off to stations all over Hradec. And then they brought us all Malšovice, to the crime squad, for interrogation. I know it was to be a proper show trial with the punk movement in Hradec Králové, which got put off because there were about 70 of us at the wedding, and we all diligently claimed something completely different than what the official version of Public Security was. Later, I heard such slanders like that we had supposedly been breaking up the pub, that we had tried to hang the bartender while stone drunk, just total bull, not a speck of truth.”
Štěpán Málek was born in Chlumec nad Cidlinou on 24 November 1966. He spent his childhood and early teens in Nový Bydžov. At 14, he took an interest in punk and “new wave” music. He attended the Secondary School of Stonemasonry in Hořice, where he was introduced to the underground culture. At 16, he was interrogated by State Security for the first time, when his artwork was interpreted by someone as allegedly demeaning the map of the Soviet Union. He joined the Jazz Section of the Musicians’ Union and helped establish several bands. He is still the front man of the punk band N.V.Ú. (short for “Nepřichází v úvahu” – “Not An Option”). He enrolled at the Faculty of Education in Hradec Králové but was expelled from the school, being viewed as a troublemaker. He witnessed policemen forcefully shutting down a concert at a wedding in Bělč; from then on, he was regularly interrogated by State Security. Extant records show that he was marked as a candidate for undercover collaboration and later designated as an agent, but his file has not been preserved. Štěpán Málek denies consciously collaborating with State Security. He took part in the demonstrations in November 1989. In the 1990s he studied sculpting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. At the time of the making of the interview (2019), he lived in Holice and taught at a private arts school in Pardubice.
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