SÜPERNØRMÅL's
Origin
Süpernørmål originate in 1957 in Czechoslovakia on the farm of Dr. František Goçár near Nová Vçelnice -- Dr. Goçár was controversial figure, a psychiatrist and proponent Exposure Emersion Therapy where patients are encouraged to change destructive or unwanted behaviors by exposing them to periods of terror. Goçár believed that music was a key component in this therapy. To that end, he assembled the Orchestr Zatracených (Orchestra of the Damned) from a group of local musicians, paying them with the grain alcohol distilled by the permanent residents of the farm (many of whom were transferred there from a nearby hospital for the criminally insane). Some of the musicians' friends and family speculated that the orchestra was being held captive on the farm. In fact they had deluded themselves into staying. Several months of exposure to their own music and side effects from the toxic elixir caused the musicians to believe they had ended up in a level of purgatory with the job of preparing the damned for an eternity in Hell by subjecting them to aural torture.
In keeping with the Dr's mantra that his patents were "fully normal" in spite of outward appearances, the musicians (who thought themselves the moral superiors of the patients) referred to themselves as the Ubernormålní (super normal)
Dr. Goçár died in 1959, leaving his estate to the Orchestra who had outlasted population of patients and inmates, and who were themselves incapable of reintegrating into society. GoçárAs believed the musicians would need a sense of purpose to avoid slipping further into psychosis. As a condition of staying on the estate, his will required the musicians play an annual spring concert for the people of Nová Vçelnice. The ever agreeable, if dissociative musician played one concert in the Spring of 1960 which lasted for three days without a break between compositions. When they were finally persuaded to stop, the town elders resolved to never host such a concert again. To insure that the orchestra continue to have a safe and secluded place to live out the rest of their lives on the Goçár farm, the town decided to enlist area musicians to play the spring concert as a proxy for the Orchestr Ubernormålní. The requirement be that the concert "last longer than is considered polite" and the music be "convincingly discordant but not to the extent that the town's people become ill.
In the intervening years members of the original Ubernormålní remained alive while the proxy orchestra would eventually tire of their annual responsibilities. Musicians from outside of the Czech Republic have been recruited over the years. The most recent incarnation is a hextet that formed after answering an add on Craigslist in 2017. "We're paid in grain alcohol which is barely drinkable, and it usually rains during our performances, but it's better than all the other Craigslist bands we've been in".