2024-08-23 11:59:58
On the day when the Czech Republic commemorated the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, the Pardubice rock band Vypsaná fiXa celebrated its thirty years of existence with a carefully conceived open-air concert on Prague’s Strelecky Island. There was so much interest in it that she had to add a second performance a day earlier.
Both nights were a little different with a few songs, but the essence remained the same – a 140-minute mixture of rock’n’roll and punk played almost in one go, delivered with high commitment.
Between the opening song of Wednesday’s concert Stereoid and the closing song Dezoláta, the group fit almost thirty others. She fully showed what her strength is. In the middle, it has the charismatic singer Michal Mareda alias Márdi, but the quality of the ensemble lies in its compactness and willingness to give the audience all the positive energy until the body is torn apart. And what is important: everything the foursome does feels natural, unpretended and unplayed.
It’s everyday, normal, one might even say humble, but it works thanks to the way the musicians communicate Márdi’s songs. They are exceptional, but their natural quality is devotion to music. And the result? Two-thirds of the audience on Strelecky ostrov were younger than the thirty-year-old Vypsaná fiXa, and yet they took her as their generation’s band, which speaks for them, which does not rise above them and sings about what they themselves live.
The pop-punk band Vypsaná fiXa, along with Starý hadry, later renamed Chinaski, and the ensembles Ready Kirken with singer Michal Hrůza, Walk Choc Ice or Imodium belong to the musical generation that we could call the East Bohemian wave in the future.
Bands that emerged around the second half of the 90s of the last century no longer profiled the Czech mainstream of the previous decade with energy, aggression and protest like their predecessors. They turned to everyday life, intimate human concerns, they contained the joy of life, including its painful aspects.
Michal Mareda alias Márdi (left) founded Vypsana fiXa in 1994. | Photo: Václav Vašků
They replaced the occasional convulsive humor with relaxation, smiles and often poetry with interesting Czech texts, in the case of Vysvásna fiXy often described excessively as surrealistic.
FiXa has recorded ten albums in thirty years, the last one so far, Pieces of Joy, created during the pandemic, was released in 2022. There are several songs on each that are easily stuck in the memory. Márdi has a feeling for catchy slogans, he knows how to insert unusual expressions into songs, which the listeners look forward to, because they can get involved in the text themselves.
In the audience for their annual concert on Wednesday, there were crowds who could sing not only Samurai Swords, She Had Short Bangs or Desolate, but all the items, including those that the band does not usually play live.
Márdi is something like a photographer of normal life, he can capture exactly those moments that have unexpected beauty in them. Often, especially recently, it happens that his snapshots come to life and the moment turns into a story, a photo into a movie.
The band’s frontman is, among other things, epic, and many of his songs tell stories. Often very strong, for example in Ester goes away or from the last album Bagristi z Suez. It is more difficult to place them in such a high-profile concert as the one on Strelecky Island.
The listed fiXa has one more specific feature that is particularly valuable at this time. Although its essence remains punk, it conveys a positive message. One could say that she is caressing the listeners, charging them with energy, that she herself is the antidepressant fish she sings about in one of her most popular songs: “And she swims / from organ to organ / eats weeds / that in the morning / wrapped around the brain / and the ankles at the end of the pelet”.