F.P.B.

FPB, short for Fourth Price Band, is an influential Czech punk rock band formed in 1980 in Teplice, a Czech town bordering Germany, by bassist, singer and poet Miroslav Wanek and his friend, Petr Růžička, who was considered the band's manager. These two were soon joined by drummer Milan Nový and, later, guitarist Romek Hanzlík. The group moved through several different lineups before splitting in 1987. In 2008 Wanek and Hanzlík let Uz jsme doma play 21 songs from FPB repertoire on occasional concerts. The act of playing punk rock in the early '80s in a Communist nation drew much attention to the band, but the group was also notable for integrating musical complexity and poetry into the traditional punk fold. Cited influences include The Damned and The Clash. Wanek had also soon discovered Pere Ubu and The Residents, his favorites, through illegal tape trading in Czechoslovakia; these influences became more noticeable when, in 1986, Wanek joined Nový's group Už Jsme Doma, a highly influential and still-existing avant garde punk rock band that has featured nearly every other member of FPB for a time. A 'fourth price group' was a term used in Socialist Czechoslovakia for the fourth (lowest) of four pub levels. Wanek tried to display his feeling, where his new band belongs, where it feels natural. Not in such a fancy places in "First or second price level", but in culture on the bottom - or underground. Actually the band used to use several different names due to police "supervising" - to confuse them. They used names such as FPB, Fourth Price Band, Ctvrta cenova skupina, Ctverecjed etc. Romek Hanzlík died in 2019.