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HI, MY NAME IS RADEK (RADEK PASTRŇÁK)

(none) / 90 min. / Unknown

Zdeněk Suchý talkshow

"Hello, I'm Radek and I'm twenty seven...." sang Radek Pastrňák nineteen years ago. Get counting. A phenomenal musician. Wonderful texts of a kind previously unheard, simply imparted but full of imagery. An extremely strange, introverted and brutal sense of humour. Other famous players around him. And, finally, the music, especially at that time! A revelation. Buty.
For those with ears, Buty first appeared in 1986. For those who need help and can only perceive through the media, Buty and Radek's face first became familiar in Svěrák's road movie Jízda (The Ride), in other words eight years later. They were deprived of his jazz-funk period and his performances with Marie Rottrová. The imagery of Buty's songs requires a large amount of subtle imagination, because there is no hand-holding with the lyrics. When it works out, this little musical film becomes an experience. Every other person probably remembers a group of guys trampling a field full of brilliant golden rape flowers, where "the trumpet long trumpets its desire/ and by trumpeting gives the world a thing/a thing that first twists upwards/ twists upwards and then trumpets downwards," or the wintry funeral wake Nad stádem koní (Above a Herd of Horses). And absolutely everyone knows Mám jednu ruku dlouhou (I Have One Long Arm), that apparently meaningless slogan and theme song of The Ride.
Pastrňák has two long arms. He plays the guitar, writes music and fills poems with wonderful words and turns of phrase. Often, however, he amuses himself and us with empty babble, which still sounds fantastic in his music and coming out of his mouth. The figures in his lyrics are often waiting, smoking, staring and thinking about stupid things. In a flood of seriously-intended stupidities from pop scarecrows, banalities become treasures that do not have to be sought. We have been given them as a present by Radoš from Ostrava. "...I left school/then I left college/then I got a job/and did my military service/