Vladimír Mertlík

producer

“Rejdijóu Laxnberg” represented a contact with the world “over there”...

Born on March 2nd, 1945, I am rather a member of the second generation of Laxík´s auditors. The information came from older friends who already rode on the wave. I used to listen to Laxik at home in the early evenings, till the radio was occupied by my parents, especially my father who listened to the RFE and Voice of America. We were not even making the link between Laxík and a concrete country, it was simply Laxík, a voice from the West. “Rejdijóu Laxnberg” represented a link with the world “over there”, across the line. Many of us didn’t even know why especially this station was playing so stunningly.

We had a Tesla radio, nothing big, a magic eye, a long illuminated scale and names with a taste of distance on it… Hilversum, Belgrade, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg. For my parents, the music from Laxík was too randy but if it was not too loud, they were not against it. Even the terminus Laxík became a measure of music value. It was common to say to others that somewhere “they played like Laxik”. It defined clearly the quality and the style of the music also for those who were not present on the described production.

For me and my generation, Laxík will remain a clear notion about which you don´t need to think even for a second. It´s my waking adolescence, the music which made me independent from my parents and a dream about a world which I wanted to belong to.