DALMATINOVA ULICA

I'm back in Ljubljana for possibly the last time whilst I'm working on my thesis, although I hope it's not the last time in general. I've been pretty busy so far meeting with various people, including Aldo from FV/Borghesia, Suzana, who was involved in the punk, lesbian and feminist movements (all  of which essentially existed within the umbrella of the countercultural alternative scene of Ljubljana in the 1980s), Dario Cortese, who wrote several Yugoslav scene reports for MRR and Marsa of Tožibabe, with this last meeting ending with us dancing in Metelkova to ska covers of Cock Sparrer. I have a lot of work ahead of me in terms of continuing to write everything up, but right now I'm feeling very lucky that I've been able to spend the last few years of my life immersed in this truly subversive culture and moment in history, and had so many great people share their memories and lives with me. The trust and warmth I've been shown has made me especially determined to represent these great people and this very cool scene as genuinely as possible.

I spent yesterday afternoon with Irena (Povśe) of Buba Booking, who (as i think i've mentioned here already) was originally part of the Hardcore Collective that booked shows in the mid to late 1980s. She has a load of albums filled with photos from Ljubljana and let me scan pretty much half of them. I'll be sharing them all later, but for now here's one of some punks on the street that I'm staying on right now, and where I lived for 3/4 months the first time I came out here. The building behind them on the right hand side is now an 'England Pub', run by a Slovene Manchester United fan who loves English football and culture for some reason.

When I last in Ljubljana I met with Gigi from UBR for a second time and he gave me a handful of old photos he had found in his apartment. I've scanned them in and tried to restore them a bit. I'm not sure who actually took these or where and when they were taken, but I've tried to identify a few of the subjects. If you can help me out with that please get in touch.

Gigi/UBR

Not sure with the rest of these...

Gigi also gave me an original hand drawn advert for the UBR 'Corpus Delicti' 7" on Attack Punk Records, which is now obviously one of the coolest things I own and is framed on my wall. I scanned that in too for the purposes of this blog, and also so I could send it to Iffi from Static Shock Musik in Berlin (highly reccommended record shop). It's on his wall now too.

GOVERNMENT ISSUE

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

MENTALNIH FOTOGRAFIJA

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.

Download

UPDATE-

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

State Control and Rock and Roll are run by clever men...

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

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.