At the lecture, you will hear how Frank Zappa almost became an economic adviser to the president of Czechoslovakia. You will learn about the connection between Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the fashion for white sneakers in Prague in the winter of 1965, why the “long-haired musicians” did not like Karel Gott, the “Golden Nightingale” of Czechoslovakia, or how it happened that all of Prague sang Elvis Presley’s worldwide hit Jailhouse Rock as “Bloodthirsty Cancer,” and what took place at underground punk concerts at the height of Communist normalization. We will tell the rock-and-roll and rock history of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s-80s, trace the history of Czech rock from imitating the famous Beatles, Chuck Berry, or Elvis Presley to distinctive Czechoslovak bands and scandalously provocative underground show-concerts that ended in mass political trials, the creation of Charter 77, the Velvet Revolution, and worldwide concert tours after it ended in the early 1990s. Lecturer – Tetiana Okopna, Bohemian studies scholar, translator, Czech language lecturer at the Czech Centre