B.org: Welcome to Bolesławiec. This will be your next performance in our city. How do you find performing here?
Dżej Dżej: We have always enjoyed performing here. This is our third visit. We previously played here in 1990 and 1996. Like all of Poland, Bolesławiec has changed a great deal. We are staying in a very nice hotel in Bolesławiec’s Chinese district, which is a great surprise to us.
Skiba: I’ll go further: it is shocking to us. But we understand that Bolesławiec is modeling itself on New York and, just as New York has developed its own Chinatown, we can only be delighted.
How do you intend to surprise the audience during the concert?
Skiba: Above all, with our personalities and simply with ourselves. I think viewers will be surprised that five young, slim and handsome men come onto the stage and sing familiar songs enjoyed from Gdańsk to Zakopane. It promises to be a dynamic show, based on close contact with the audience.
You are known as provocateurs. Your songs, music videos and concerts often contain shocking content. Some time ago, there was a great deal of publicity surrounding the scandal caused by showing your buttocks in the direction of a former prime minister.
Skiba: Those are allegations; it is not true. You are giving in to the rumors of the tabloid press. It is true that once the prime minister saw that part where the back loses its noble name. But it seems to me that he deserved it. Besides, after that event Jerzy Buzek’s government fell and has not risen to this day, so it must have had quite an effect. But seriously, we simply play rock ’n’ roll. Sometimes the lyrics are cheerful, sometimes controversial. We try to make the audience laugh and mock certain paranoias and absurdities, of which there is probably no shortage in our everyday lives.
Besides Big Cyc, you can also be seen in the band Czarno Czarni, while Skiba once began a solo career.
Skiba: We also take part in side projects. Big Cyc is the parent band, but we are creatively active people with various ideas, hence projects such as Czarno Czarni and my solo albums.
Dżej Dżej: Czarno Czarni is, of course, a project we created together with Jarek Janiszewski, a friend whom we often meet at parties, banquets, post-concert gatherings, wakes, weddings and christenings. We decided that we really missed the untainted, pure rock ’n’ roll of the 1950s and 1960s. The band is therefore an answer to the so-called social demand to play lively, good old popular music.
Plans for the future?
Skiba: A new Big Cyc album is slowly taking shape, planned for October or November. We already have a title: the album will be called Moherowe Berety, referring to Radio Maryja’s female fans. We decided that they are the last people in our country who have ideals. In a country where hardly anyone has views anymore and the divisions between the left and the right are merely conventional. In reality, all that matters is getting into the Sejm under some banner and making money. We have noticed that only 70-year-old grandmothers have views of their own—and, what is more, they are ideologically committed. The distinctive symbol of this subculture is the mohair beret. Big Cyc will also crochet such berets for themselves and wear them during concerts.
Will you return to Bolesławiec?
Dżej Dżej: Of course we will return to Bolesławiec, because we are going to the GDR to buy jeans, so we will be passing through here. And surely, when we drive through the city on the roundabout, we will wave to you. With this optimistic note, we would like to say goodbye to all the residents of Bolesławiec. We would like to greet all the women who wear mohair berets and give them a moral message: we are with you, we admire you and you are wonderful. You inspire us. Grandmothers! Keep it up!