31-VIII-2018.: Bajaga i Čorba

(... 2 words...)

We went to the concert of Bajaga and then Riblja Čorba* on the city square. Took a walk, I needed it. The weather was muggy again, what with that little rain in the morning. Took the path by the cemetery, so she can take a look at what the stonemasons did. Looks great.

Went for a dinner first to that not quite new place a couple of blocks from Lesnina to the city (domaćin). Nice, very nice, good beer (dark kozel) and an excellent cook, nothing was below the level. I finally ate gravče na tavče (little bean on a little pan), a macedonian specialty which I ate only once before, back in december 1976. when Borko made it.

Went on downtown, saw Bajaga draw the oohs and aahs from his fans but not really playing it at full strength, he's gotten kind of old and loose, probably bored of repeating all the crazy little tricks from his youth. I swear I could hear him mocking his old self in a few places, overemphasizing his then verbal/voice tricks while playing the rest of it rather loosely. His keyboardist may decide to allow him, on a good day, to clean his sneakers - he's so much better than the rest of the band now. Žika was back in the band too, not showing much of himself, seems he's spent his lunacy.

Nice moment was how the audience reacted, though - when they played "Zažmuri" ("Close your eyes"), there was a massive display of what passes for cigarette lighters nowadays - lights from a few hundred cell phones, waving wherever you look.

The bad moment was when he mentioned the current festival, on whose programme he was billed, as „Beer fest“. Wrong all the way, this is „Days of beer“, the Beer fest was invented twenty years later and pushed the original to be a week later, because it was in Belgrade, Belgrade always comes first even when it comes as late second. And the line „musicians who drink never knew in which city they were“ is from a Čorba's song, not his.

So after a couple of songs we decided to have a beer. Went to The Library (the only remaining cafe in gimnazija street with benches and tables on the pavement and decent music, but they were full. So we just walked back, and around, and back to the square. Just before getting there, I recognized Dragana from behind - with her specific combination of haircut, size and below-50kg-line, I couldn't miss. She was with her sister and her husband, who both seem to know us, though I coudln't say I've ever met them or that I'd recognize them if we met again. We couldn't talk, the PA was about 20dB above needed. So we just shouted a "LATER!" to each other and parted.

At around 23:20 (only 20 minutes behind schedule... even local rock has gone to hell... 30 minutes was the minimum once upon a time) Čorba started playing. Much better, Bora wasn't sparing his voice and the whole band was playing like they were on a stadium in Belgrade. Though he made three mentions of the attempts to change the name of the city (not again, and not to Petrovgrad, fuck you), to which I showed him the finger each time and once shouted "eat shit", he was good and did all the right things.

The sound was even louder now, so we went all the way back to vodotoranj and sat on the ledge next to the ATM. Made a video recording of our song, with nothing much in terms of image, all the way across the square, with just backs heads and lights, but the sound is great. Actually, when I downloaded the pics from the camera, and listened to it, the sound was about as good as possible, much better than what we heard there. And the ten seconds of two thousand voices singing the chorus in the end, echoing among those buildings and the stone floor was just great. Geesebumping.

We had a beer along the way (zaječarsko, dark) and left just when they were playing their main song (which they say is their best, what do they know)... perhaps ten minutes before the actual end. By the time we got to our side of the other square, there were others who got the same idea so we couldn't catch a cab. Actually, we heard later that during the Days of beer (the festival) they could easily do with 200 vehicles more, but then the city can't support so many cabbies the rest of the year. So we walked back too. The last four or six good shots happened when we took a cigarette break behind the busodrome, about two thirds of the way to home.

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* yup, fish čorba is the literal meaning, but considering that „riba“ here means a chick, when she has a čorba (which is usually red, from paprika and/or tomatoes), it means she's menstruating. Bora Čorba has confirmed this.

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Mentions: december 1976., 12-VIII-2020., čorba, domaćin, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), gimnazija, Lesnina, Mališa Borkovski (Borko), vodotoranj, in serbian