I'm trying to avoid updating this blog only when someone I like dies, but a lot of cool people are dying recently. Like everyone I was sad to hear that John Stabb passed away recently, especially as all the tributes in the wake of his death made him seem like a truly great guy.
Anyway, here's a live recording of Government Issue from when they played Ljubljana in 1988. This was released as an unofficial/bootleg tape by FV Založba and as you can see from the tape sleeve, they released similar tapes for UK Subs, Poison Girls, Nick Cave, Swans, Misty in Roots and a lot more, including Amebix (which I have posted here before), Rollins Band, Social Unrest, Sonic Youth, Nomeansno, Pere Ubu, Diamanda Galas... pretty much anyone that played in Ljubljana in the late 80s.
Here's the flyer for a Government Issue show in Ljubljana...
Courtesy of Irena Povše, Buba Booking/Hardcore Collective
I realised the other day that I haven't posted any music downloads on this blog for over a year. So to rectify this, here's some darkwave I've been listening to over the past few days. Recorded in Belgrade in 1988, this cassette, titled 'Album Mentalnih Fotograpfija' (which translates roughly to 'Mental Pictures'), was the only release from Psihokratija. I don't know much about the band beyond the above and that it was essentially the project of Goran Krstić (synth, lyrics, arrangements), accompanied by Zoran Petrović (vocals) and later Weselly Karel (keyboards).
The tape starts with 'Who Is Alive, Who Is Dead', the only song in English. The rest is in Serbo-Croat, and these unique sounding vocals/language helps Psihokratija stand apart from a lot of more familiar stuff from elsewhere. I was recommended this tape as another example of gloomy Yugoslav music by a friend of mine, Mihael who is from Zagreb and one half of Doomtown Records, after I bought the recent Dobri Isak reissue from the label. More on that band another time.
If you know more about this band/tape feel free to get in touch, and I can share it on here.
I've just seen that PMK Records, based in Serbia, have released a CD and download of the bands full discography between 1988 and 1991, featuring the above cassette, some extra tracks and an unreleased second album 'U Teatru Misterije' which was recorded in 1990-91 in Belgrade by Goran and some other musicians. I've not given all the other songs a listen yet but what I've heard sounds like the soundtrack to a horror film set in a circus. It also seems as though the project is once again active, having been stopped by the outbreak of war in former Yugoslavia. You can listen and buy the compilation from their bandcamp- https://pmkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/diskografija-1988-1991
Like a lot of people I woke up this weekend to the news that Vi Subversa has died aged 80. In the course of finding some of my favourite Poison Girls songs to share on facebook, as part of what now seems to be 'the done thing' when musicians we like pass away, I found this video of Poison Girls performing in Ljubljana in 1988, with a short interview with Vi too so I'm sharing it here rather than attempt a pale imitation of the many tributes that have been popping up over the past few days. As an aside, I really love the Škuc graphics at the start.
RIP
Monday, 8 February 2016
I've been reading about punk in other socialist states in the 1980's and beyond, including a recently published overview of Punk In Russia, which focuses mainly on contemporary scenes in St. Petersburg, Vorkuta and Krasnodar.
I came across this image from the front cover of a 'zine from the mid 1990's entitled 'Avtonom' and it amused me as I can't think of another time where I've seen Marx as a punk.
I also ended up listening to some songs by a band from Siberia called Orgazm Nostradamusa, including the video below. I've absolutely no idea how this song is 5 minutes long.
I was able to scan a copy of the 8th issue of 'Dvadeset 4 Časa' today, courtesy of Paco from the consistently excellent La Vida Es Un Mus, here's the front cover.
I've not had a chance to have a proper read through so far, but from what I can tell it was a relatively regular hardcore fanzine which continued at least into the 90s (the latest I've found so far is Issue 14), and I'll be trying to track down everyone involved. The address given is for Belgrade, under the name 'Fallout Productions' although it appears David from the Hardcore Collective in Ljubljana was an active contributor at this point. It featured local scene news alongside their own interviews and scene reports sent in from the UK, Scotland, Finland, the US and more... some of this in English, with the remainder in Serbo-Croat. If you have any more details on this or other copies, please get in touch as this could potentially be so important to my thesis.
I'm in Ljubljana at the moment, trying to meet up with as many people as possible to do some more interviews. I spent this afternoon chatting to David, who was part of the Hardcore Collective and mostly involved in booking shows. He also played in the band KPJ (which in English stood for Communist Party of Yugoslavia). One of the things we ended up talking about was how a lot of the hardcore punks in Ljubljana ended up having to be creative with regards to their clothes, as it was difficult and expensive to get hold of certain items, like bullet belts and leather jackets, which by this time had become pretty much standard fare across most of European and worldwide hardcore scenes.
The expense and difficult associated with buying DM boots led them to have to improvise, usually replacing Dr Martens with Yugoslav army boots for example, whilst others travelled to places like Trieste to buy the clothes and records they could afford. David said he actually ended up ordering bullet belts, studs etc from the UK and distributed them in Ljubljana, in the same sort of way he distributed Maximum RocknRoll.
This all led me on to say how I always thought that Boris, the bass player in Odpadki Civilizacije had one of the coolest looks in the hardcore scene, based on the photos and videos I have seen.
You can see it on show in the video below as well, which incidentally is probably my favourite hardcore song to come out of the Ljubljana scene. I've no idea how he managed to play anything at all with those gloves on.
These are just some thoughts off the top of my head based on today's conversation, but it's something I'm gonna think more about, ask some more people about, and maybe include in my thesis.
