FOOLED AGAIN

(Thanks to Rinaldo Delvigo for sending this in.)

Prag Vec probings by Linnet Evans

PRAG VEC are a tough band to write about.

Because their music is tough, and won't bend into shapes that suggest Deaf School or Brighouse And Rastrick, or whatever your game is. Because their music is tough to find, seemingly available only at the Acklam Hall on the fifth Friday of the month if you're lucky. Because the band themselves, in a certain sense, are happy to play tough with the press. No lukewarm jive: this play's for real.

Prag Vec - "It means 'You are full of foolishness' in Polish." said Pope John - have a local reputation anyway. The kids from the next block in Shepherd's Bush wrote the band's name in red magic marker on the lift. The Thursday before, between three and seven in the afternoon. The band used to live and rehearse to a squat somewhere in the area. When the GLC proffered its squatters' amnesty, Sue and John were rehoused. Now they live on the 15th floor overlooking the M40. "Half our problem is dabbling," said Sue, "The other one is having nowhere to rehearse now."

Prag Vec were formed in approximately February of this year. Singer Susan Ann Muire Gogan and guitarist John Studholme were together previously in a band called the D----. Not being necrophiliac children however, they've no wish to live in its wilting shadow.

Meanwhile, drummer Nick Cash (not that one, bozo, this one's for real) met John on the steps of the 100 Club after they'd morally walked out on a band called M---- (ditto, ditto). David Boyd, bass, admits to once auditioning for a band called L---- but didn't get the job 'cos they didn't like his shoes.

And what s the hot poop? A well known agency called A---- have finally relented to pressure and given them the support slot to a naff lot called S---- D----. Which according to P--- V--- is blackm---.

Prag Vec play things like, uh, 'sensible music for now people, 'pop music for goats in trees'. That of course is any fool's answer to any fool's question. In a sense it would be very easy to tic a ticket on the band and force them into some enchanted corner reserved for esoterica. Or cranks. Or trendies. 'Music for urban monotony - canteen gurus - canteen goats - garage Kraftwerk.' Prag Vec rather want to be judged on their own merit, in their own time.

For example, an obvious response to the problem of no gigs is to 'become more commercial'. "You can't become more commercial by being like another band that is commercial. You become commercial when a lot of people are coming to see you," John explained.

Prag Vec songs tend to be short, pithy, obliquely personal, angular, full of sour chords and the odd necessary piece of vocal violence. Sue, who manages to somehow look quite unlike all the other punters around who look like her, is the fairly obvious centre of attention as she hammers with churlish tenderness through the malpractice lyrics. John usually wears a hat; David is the strong silent type (knows more about cam chains than shoes anyway) and Nick nips around like any Renault driver.

Four of the songs 'Existential', 'Bits', 'Wolf' and 'Cigarettes' have now gone onto the Prag Vec EP on their own Spec label.

"It's easier to make records than get gigs," said John. "We wanted to have a bit of product," said Sue, and you should know what that means. The label shows the four clinging to the side (one floor up) of a prominent building in the Harrow Road, though it's shot to look as if they're merely contorting on some huge grating. So far several tracks have been played by John Peel., who's also had the band do a live session - relayed no less than three times. "It was very informal," recalled Nick of that occasion. "They didn't tell us anything at all."

"In fact," said Sue of both recording sessions - quickies two, a few hours in the studio and a day spent mixing - "we were very uninformed about that side of things. We're still trying to find out what we sound like. But between the two occasions it was good experience."

Here's a tough option: you find out what Prag Vec sound like. Plus an endpiece, from 'Bits':

'I hope it is commercially viable
To say things like this
I hope I am nor liable to fall to bits.'