New year without a doček. Each plan failed, so eventually I went nowhere. My folks went, of course, to Zmaj, dad was still a member of the school board. They'll be invited repeatedly long after he no longer was. I sat with granma and watched teevee.
The programme underwent a major revolution that evening - the color equipment went online then, which I kept seeing in black and white for years, except in shop windows. There was a good one on Žitni, but it would be mostly sports when I'd walk by, yeah it was an olympic year. But the image quality suddenly improved, there were nice white patches now, the image was much sharper horizontally, contrast was better. Amazing, what the old Ei Niš from 1965 could show - so it wasn't the set's fault, it was the broadcasting gear.
And the second programme started too. They took care to call it a programme and not a channel, because it was a separate editorial staff, with a different concept, they experimented a lot, the whole prague film school marched through it, there was the „Neobavezno“* documentary series, directed quite differently from anything we saw before. At springtime a „Series which isn't there“, hosted by Nikola Nešković, was launched, and it had the whole accoustic scene of the time - Porodična manufaktura crnog hleba Maje de Rado, Drago Mlinarec, Ibrica Jusić, Vlada i Bajka, S vremena na vreme, and Tomaž Domicelj. Anyone who was someone on the scene showed up.
As for doček... of course, watched the second programme, granma would doze off anyway, and in the rocker's bloc a wham: Dado Topić with his new band, Tajm (okay, he spelled it Time). They played, for the first time, the new number „Istina mašina“ (truth machine). That fresh version of it, what with up-in-the-sky hammond backing, I never heard again. When the album came out in the summer, the hammond was gone, it was redone to put a dry bass up front, and the line played on the hammond was now simplified to one chord on a guitar, also dry and completely flat. Anything goes, just as long as it sounds as different from Korni grupa as possible. Wish I had this version to play now...
And yes, of course I becunted like an earthworm** for getting into this dead end, to miss a doček, have no chick, and actually no gang at all. The becunting will last a few months.
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* obaveza - obligation; obavezno - mandatory, must do; neobavezno was a new word, possibly even invented for this, meaning all of „no obligation“, „informal“, „no strings attached“, „in passing“. Sign of relaxed times.
** „pizdeo kao glista“, expression strong enough to describe it