Catapult (band)

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Katapult is a Czech rock band that was banned in Czechoslovakia during the socialist era .

history

The original name until 1974 was MAHAGON (i) , before the socialist state apparatus banned the group. They "officially" moved from Plzeň to Prague and were successful under the name Katapult. The reason why they were allowed to perform, according to their own statements, is that the authorities were not able to exchange information from district to district, so nobody knew about the efforts of the Pilsen comrades to ban the band.

It wasn't until a year later that the authorities in Plzeň realized that the former banned band was hiding under the catapult and issued an immediate ban, but the band had disappeared in the well-structured rock underground of Prague and had already sold 50,000 records.

They had already made a name for themselves in the scene, but now and then there were bans on performances, but concerts in what is now Slovakia were also in great demand. The single Vlaky v hlavě / Nalaď si život remained, with one 14-day exception, in the top 20 of the hit parade for two years, which has rarely been achieved until today. At the beginning of the 1980s they even performed in the GDR (with the band Stern-Combo Meißen ) and Poland .

With the political loosening, the ban on performing in their actual homeland ended, and Katapult also recorded an English-language best-of album (with Robbie Hurley from Winter's Reign). After the fall of the iron curtain, things remained quiet for the first time around the band, which repeatedly had personnel changes on the drums .

In 1998 Katapult played a concert in Prague with the bands Deep Purple and Status Quo . In mid-2000 the band performed at charity events, among others; she made up to 75 gigs a year. 2008 and 2009 were negative years for the band. Officially, the band went on a farewell tour. Bassist Jiří "Dědek" Šindelář and Karel Káša Jahn (drums) died within a short time. It remained the front man Oldřich Říha, who, however, continues to make music with other musicians.

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