I wondered what will the Kornians do after splitting the band. Bata Kovač in particular, he had such a creative potential, that I fully expected that he'll start working some miracles now, perhaps write a symphony, specially after Mike Oldfield published „Tubular bells“ some time last year. The more expecting that from him, as Oldfield is not really any grandiose scale composer, he writes his stuff more as a heap of pretty themes in off-kilter arrangements which he then maestrally fits together, but that still doesn't make a mountain, this is just hills. Bata could write something huge, and after them „Bells“ would, I guess, be compelled to accept the challenge to try to play most of stuff himself. He already started beating that path last year, though the „Biography of a hungarian family“ he published as two instrumental things, without the middle movement, on the italian album of Korni grupa. That little bit already has it all, all those rhythm changes, swinging moods... I wait.
And then Chick Correa comes along. Just like when any other important name of which I never heard comes along, they played him on the radio a lot, in the week ahead of the concert.
Well fuckya what is this. I even borrowed the album from someone (Eči? right now or next year?) and listened to it, well there's none of what I was looking for. Jazz like, but bro it's one and the same rhythm from beginning to end, there's no dynamic, the thing could last two and a half minutes or fifteen minutes and it wouldn't matter. It looks all the same to me.
So the concert arrived to pass, and there goes Bata Kovač saying that he really liked it and there he goes with his first solo single the same year. Yes, it's far better than Chick Correa, it has a recognizable melody and creates some space around itself, furthermore the bee side, „Ocean“ is an unforgettable one, which I even today (2023) keep always on my playlist. But it has one rhythm from beginning to end.
So one era ended.
This winter and spring we dived into culture somewhat. Apart from regular movie evenings, we also attended to various programmes organized by the Tribune of the young, in that small building in the far corner of the catholic porta [i.e. the backyard pedestrian plaza]. They put up interesting theatrical performances - some team from Zagreb, students I guess, held „Greetings“ of Eugene Ionesco (Ionescu), which was made up from all the possible replies to „good evening, how are you“. They had good ones in there, and of three actors at least two had prominent careers later. The music for the show was by Drago Mlinarec, of which not much could be heard during the performance, but then when it was over Dragec himself came up on the stage and played for an hour or two. He was our common pet mascot anyway, so we kept attending anytime he played, guess one more solo and then the „four for peace“ in Studio em, when he performed and also did Tomaž Domicelj (with the legendary rendition of „I'm fed up with blues“ of en minutes, what with a break of a string and „but since I'm a Paganini on guitar, we continue like this“, which seems to be missing on the recording), and two nobodies*.
The other memorable show was „Play Strindberg“ by Fridrih Direnmat (Friedrich Dürenmat), performed by Ujvideki sinhaz (Ujvidéki színház), aka Novi theatre in hungarian. Amazingly, the headphone jacks were working and I could hear the simultaneous translation quite well. Which was quite an experience, hearing two voices, watching the actors speaking hungarian, what with diction and dramatic tools, and hearing the voice of the reader, with a certain offset, it wasn't synchronous to the second. Worked me better than alcohol. And I guess I learned a few words of hungarian (for instance, „Kurt, az élet egy nagy szarás“ - Kurt, life is a big shit).
There were various lectures we attended as well. One was about the painting genre called photo-realism, and when you look at it it's a why not, if you know how to do it just go ahead, it just didn't make sense to me to invest so much skill, effort and time to redo with brush an enlargement of a bad photography. Because all, literally all that we saw, was an ostentatious display of skill, see me how I know how to make it look like a photo, but all the photos they took as templates were ordinary amateur snapshots, vacation or backyard, not one would pass even the club's selection.
The other one I remember was about conceptualism, where they laid the concept of concept in plain and clear terms, that difference between a picture which represents and picture which simply is. That when an act of art is not the production of something, but the act of choice of what to make. This somehow fit in with the harangue against Danilo Kiš over „Tomb for Boris Davidovich“, where it's the least important how much did he intervene in the texts he put in, the act of art is done by mere selection, out of million texts out there, why this one.
I had a hunch that this opens qute a sizable space for bullshit, but the idea by itself wasn't bad at all, it felt like a smooth continuation of, say, Bitef and various performances, lots of various things could be done in that direction. There was of foolery, e.g. the whole story about trope l'oeils, where they'd draw a huge polygon over part of the floor, adjacent walls and maybe some of the ceiling, seemingly quite random but, when seen from a certain point, looking like exact square, which was supposed to give the spectator a start. Of course it would, it was a projection of a square from that point, so what. But no, the spectator was supposed to make some sense out of it, to glean an idea... What do I know, all I see there is a mere projection.
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* Specifically, one was Ivica Percl, a pretend poet from Sarajevo, of whom I knew just two songs - the one which made him famous, and the one he played on Boom festival in 1972. Many years later I found a whole album, tried to listen, gave up. The other was Srđan Marjanović, a belgrader spineless blonde with even more spineless attitude in verse. Someone kept pushing him, probably Bata Kovač, who was already in the „helping young talent“ mode, i.e. trying to keep a paddock full of singers who'd bring him royalties by singing his songs. The kid even wrote as song titled „Korni grupa“ and no, of his works I have only one more, his one good song. The rest, if any of it came packaged with something else, was euthanized on the spot.
30-X-2023 - 9-X-2025