Korni grupa
(Band, Yugoslavia)
As late as, here, 2025, it finally dawned on me that I should have a category with bands. If I've lived most of my lifa so that I was considered a rocker (some wouldn't believe that I never played guitar nor was in a band, the closest I got was to be a rock photographer at times), then at least mentioning the bands which meant something to me is due.
And that's, above all, Korni grupa. Assembled in 1968 by Bata Kovač (Kornell Kovács, previously in Indeksi) with three guys who played until then in prominent belgrade bands, he kept having trouble with singers. First there was Seka Kojadinović from auntie Mira's theater* (no recording of her found). Then there was Dušan Prelević... luckily the word boem (bohemian) already was in the language, or else he'd have been called somewhat more alcoholic. As unruly he couldn't keep up, but at least had that one single made. Then he had some kind of solo career, even an album, though I don't believe the earning ever covered his drinks... Then the whole 1969 there was Dalibor Brun, a genius per se, who was capable of singing whatever Bata asked [him to], but then for his own reasons went back to the coast and dived into a solo carreer (which wasn't bad at all, he's good). Then the seventieth and seventyfirst the singer was Dado Topić, and following his steps also Jozo Boček came from the same Dinamiti from Osijek, and that was their best lineup ever. Then into the seventysecond year Dado dived with his own band, Time, and as late as summer Korni grupa had a new singer, Zlatko Pejaković, also from Osijek (in the meantime, one Zdravko from Ambasadori was being there), and stayed until the end, even longer, as his solo album from 1975 was the band again, just under his name.
Their record label being the PGP of RTB, which didn't have a stereo recording studio yet (until the end of 1972), they became the unsung world curiosity, the band whose third album was their first. Their first album, if I may have a say, would have been in 1970 with those two long songs, and the second would be the „1941“ poem, which was published as late as 1975 (still mono).
I think I missed their gig only once, in Zadar in 1972. Between 1969 and 1974 I attended at least five of their concerts, took pictures of one, made a little movie of another, and sold some prints to Boček. And had a piece of Furda's drum skin (plastic) somewhere as a trophy.
I don't know how much of it was a projection of my own ideas and how much of it was real, but Bata Kovač was to me, around [my] seventh grade, a kind of goal, what would I want to be like as an adult - an old mocker who is so big in his trade that nobody can touch him, can have fun and do whatever he wants and get away with, because he's indispensable. Nowadays I'm not quite sure whether he was such a guy, i.e. how much fun did he really have, comes across as more of a serious and responsible guy who above all minded his business, where he had several incredible blunders, as he stayed focused on immediate goals and lost the larger picture. Neither the first nor the last genius with such a fault.
His blunders weren't just of the business kind (e.g. him betting the farm against himself that he'll win Eurovision in 1974, and when that failed, disbanded the band), but for giving up on what he was doing best, because the stuff allegedly didn't pass too well on the market. The new stuff still didn't sell enormously, but he pissed off his faithful audience. Not one performance of „One woman“ after that of 20:45 wasn't even to the knees of that one, he destroyed the song. Luckily, „Trip to the east“ he didn't disturb much, though after 01-I-1971. he pretended that that first version never existed, said it's not the same song. Then it appeared on the first album, differently arranged, though I preferred the early, hammond hog only with which he achieved more, IMO; this time he had an electric piano and didn't have a synth yet. The last version, from 1974. is something else, there he drives „moogus, žmoogus and electric barbecues“, and the keyboard solo is much better there, actually I think it's his best one in the whole career. After he disbanded them, he made a couple of instrumental version, raw shit, just like the similar version Saša Lokner made, which all sounds like wannabe Jean Michel Jarre than Bata. Actually, by then Bata didn't sound like Bata anymore.
And he never wrote a symphony. Too bad.
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* Atelje 212, where they played „Hair“ musical at the time, and she was in the tribe; Mira Trailović was the principal of the theatre.
Mentions: 02-VI-1968., october 1968., 03-IV-1969., 17-VIII-1969., and most of the next week, 28-I-1970., 20-III-1970., 12-IV-1970., 07-VI-1970., 08-VIII-1970., 18-XI-1970., 01-I-1971., 20-VI-1971., 10-VIII-1971., 17-VIII-1971., 01-IX-1971., 16-I-1972., 08-III-1972., 01-V-1972., , 07-V-1972., 09-V-1972., 26-VI-1972., 18-VII-1972., Finally, 24-VII-1972., 02-VIII-1972., 01-IX-1972., 12-IX-1972., 29-I-1973., 20-V-1973., 01-X-1973., 01-XI-1973., 29-XI-1973., 13-I-1974., Korni grupa only tonight, 06-II-1974., 19-II-1974., 10-III-1974., 26-III-1974., Baptism by booze, 01-IV-1974., 23-V-1974., 17-VI-1974., Olympics high, 25-XI-1974., april 1975., 23-VIII-1975., 24-VIII-1981., 30-XI-1981., 15-I-1988., 19-I-1999., Mrzing, 23-VIII-1999., 06-VIII-2003., 18-II-2019., 11-IX-2021., The annual party, 14-IX-2022., 05-I-2025., mrz pladžer, Zadar, in serbian
2-I-2025 - 15-IV-2026