I attended this block party, sponsored by the Hideout, located in a wharehouse district near the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago.
The line of bikes at the entrance were parked in similar fashion but mostly unlike the lineup of bikes I'm familiar with...
The above is not in Wicker Park...
So... a picture of the venue, which is a parking lot for "The City of Chicago, Department of Fleet Management." (Basically, this is where they park the garbage trucks.)
There were bands from Israel, Hungary, and other locales, but most interesting were the Plastic People of the Universe from Czechoslovakia.
The sax player - Vratislav Brabenec,
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keyboardist - Josef Janíček,
viola - Jiří Kabeš.
These guys have had quite a storied life...
On that day, September 21, 1976, as the four defendants sat handcuffed in the dock, rock and roll went on trial. It was the hippies versus the Communist state. The prosecutors cited vulgar lyrics in some songs and described their music as an "anti-social phenomenon" that was corrupting the Czech youth. The defendants responded with dignity, defending their right to write and sing the songs they wanted. Two days later, all four were found guilty of "organized disturbance of the peace". Jirous was sentenced to 18 months, Zajicek to 12 months, and both Karasek and Brabenec to 8 months in Prague's Ruzne Prison.
The Yanosik article describes the band's history beginning with "Prague Spring", the subsequent Russian invasion, and more persecution of artists and musicians which included the burning down of farms, interrogations by the secret police, beatings, imprisonment etc... It's an interesting story with characters including Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, the Beatles and poet Allen Ginsberg.
There is a thorough review of the entire event written by Robert Loerzel.
