A parliamentary question to the culture minister in Berlin has revealed, in a 58-page bury-it-deep reply, that the federal government is not just subsidising high culture for the betterment of the nation.

It is also pouring tens of thousands of euros into elderly rock bands that perform a dubious diplomatic service with hissing, spitting,Die Toten Hosen

borderline-fascist acts in emergent nations in the former Soviet Bloc.

Die Toten Hosen – the dead pants in any other tongue – pocketed 68,000 Euros of taxpayers money for five gigs in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Read more here.

It’s not so much the money they took as the nature of the regimes they entertained. All three are hard-line authoritarian police states that jail people en masse for a mere hint of dissent. What appeals to them about dead pants? Maybe this.

Ivan Martin Jirous, known as ‘Magor’ (or ‘Loony’) was artistic director of a psychedelic rock group that challenged Czech communism. An art historian by training, he was jailed in 1973 for singing an anti-Russian song in a pub and eating a chunk of an official newspaper. The gestures may have seemed futile but they kindled hope in a silent generation.

Magor’s death has been announced in Prague, aged 67. Vaclav Havel, a close friend, said ‘I am glad he lived to see better times, for which he contributed a lot.’

Plastic People of the Universe were the unseen heroes of the 2006 Tom Stoppard play, Rock n Roll. When the play transferred to Prague’s National Theatre in February 2007, the original group was reconstituted to give live performances of the opening and closing songs.

 

Good to have news of Simon Estes, one of the first Afro-American regulars on the international opera circuit.

Estes broke into the Met in 1982 for a belated debut and was busy ever after. Now 73 and still singing concerts, he  has founded a Simon Estes Youth Chorus in South Africa and is a leading voice in Aids awareness. This week, he’s in Iowa, dispensing money, aura and wisdom.

Nice.

Read it here.