Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe, Billy Bragg
6 Červen 1990, Středa, Praha
Notes: Czechoslovakia, a country where a stereo in a shop window can still draw a crowd.
Dalmatians seem to be quite popular here, unless it’s the same one I’m seeing all the time.
I am a much better note taker than diarist. But somehow the hard covers seem to demand something more portentious [sic], more solid, than the spiral-bound cheap papered notebooks. I need to give some thought for Babel to the distinction between notebooks and diaries.
Finished recording today. Americans first, corpsing repeatedly on the line ‘I’ll burn in hell for that forever.’ Then Karl and Misty. Thanked the studio staff, particularly Susanna, who was humorous and helpful. The tapes must now be edited by Milena. She seems to think I’ve done a good job. She’s going to put me in charge of future recording sessions1.
Met Veronika. Tried the Čapek exhibition at Muzeum. It had finished. Walked up what was LIDOVYCH MILICI, behind Muzeum, to look at a flat. Nice woman. Nice high ceilinged rooms, horrible furniture. Whole place dusty from rewiring. Only away for July. Metro to the stadium, chilli gulaš in a hostinec.
7:30 Billy Bragg Concert [at Zimní Stadium]. Met Billy Bragg, Natalie Merchant2. Shook hands with Michael Stipe. Have already written to M+D and Paddy about it. It was very interesting to see the Czechs dancing, or rather flailing, skipping, spinning, kicking, bouncing.
Concert. Afterwards, taxi home. Me pretending to be drunk. Speaking no English. We paid about 1/3rd of what I do, as an Englishman, on my own. Spoke to Barbora and Ezra in the kitchen.
When people ask me what I did in Prague, I say I taught English. But, from the diary, I realise I was almost as much a producer of English language teaching materials — books and cassettes. If the print runs were around 100,000, as rumoured, then the Business Course was my first bestseller.
The only footage I can find is from Olomouc, not Praha. But it’s wonderful. A cover of ‘Hello In There’ by John Prine. They also did ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’, ‘Wildwood Flower’, ‘The One I Love’.
I leave out from my diary that, after the concert, we all went to a canteen. Karl threw a sausage at Billy Bragg, and almost got into a fight with him. Karl was perhaps angry that Bragg had sung ‘The Internationale’ and had spoken in favour of socialism (to some boos, as I remember). Karl, I think, wanted Bragg to stick to straight Leninism. Years later, I met Billy Bragg again, at a lunch organized by the New Statesman. He remembered the Czechoslovak our fondly, and said he could remember ‘that idiot chucking a sausage at me’.
In different ways, all these three musicians are very important to young-Toby. He loves their music. He has a fan-crush on Natalie. He said in an earlier diary entry that she has the best voice he’s ever heard live. ‘Verdi Cries’ is still one of my favourite songs. Young-Toby has a boy-crush on Michael. He’d quite like to be him. He adores Billy’s guitar. And admires but mistrusts Billy’s straightforwardness.
Oops, I’ve just found a Praha video —