Introduction

Most readers of this book will have had at most a fleeting acquaintance with the music of some of the groups described in this book. Groups such as Laibach (from Slovenia), Borghesia (Slovenia), Pankow (the GDR), and Gorky Park (USSR) have concentrated on the Western market and have acquired followings in the United States and Western Europe.

Other artists and groups, such as Boris Grebenshikov and Aquarium (USSR), Sergei Kuryokhin (USSR), Goran Bregovic and White Button (Yugoslavia), and Plastic People of the Universe (Czechoslovakia), have also seen some Western exposure. But for the most part, the rock music of that part of the world is terra incognita to Westerners.

So too is the story of their uneasy coexistence with communist authorities from the time that rock first appeared until the collapse of communism in 1989. This book aims to fill that vacuum.