13-XII-2010.
An evening at the museum. The opening of the exhibition "From Tihuana to Tetka Ana". Tihuana 6 (or 7, I'm bad with names) was a combo band that I once saw, as a kid, back in the kantina, while Tetka Ana (auntie Ana) is what later became of Omege, the band which regularly played at least two evenings a week at Dom since about forever until it was closed in 1974. Then they reshuffled a few times and eventually became Tetka Ana (named after the famous Ana Vukotić, a special lady of our town).
So they showed all the old radios, amps, guitars, newspaper clips. Got a catalog, and sure enough, one of the photos of the Pa šta onda (And so what) I shot in 1972 was in it. Met a lot of old pals - Adža, Sleš, Aćim, Bajlo (the museum custos is his niece), Grne, V. the lead guitar from „Pa šta onda“. Saw a few celebrities - Peca Popović, whose Yu Rock Enciklopedija I have two of (got them as presents when in US, but then this was perhaps Petar Janjatović... or I got them mixed up), Branko Kockica (who is from here; the story says he took the money to go to Belgrade and buy the gear for his band, squandered the cash and dared not return, so made a carreer there)...
And I got a chance to shake hands with Nikola Nešković, the guy whose emisijas I religiously listened to, whenever I could grab a chance, in 1967-1971. I flatly refused to introduce myself, as „that would be contrary to the nature of radio, which is one-way, I'm just an old listener“. Then he got rerouted to wednesdays 18:20, when the reception is bad.
I'm the guy with a hat, in the door.
At some point some reporter girl from some Novi radio raised her mike to Adža and me, to consider something for the air. He immediately switched into some referat-radio voice and text, exactly the style in which all the rockers and folk musicians were drilled, how to speak for the state microphone, the fifties to sixties school. Ow fuckit I didn't expect you to be faithful to that drill, specially forty years later. So I countered, first just dropping a few contrary words over his speech, then the girl turned the mike my way, and I spurted some more ad lib in the same mocking style. I hope that I undermined it enough that she found the recording completely unusable.
Afterwards the whole show moved next door to the theatre club, zelenozvono (green bell), where Zaka and another guy sang a set of oldies and everybody generally had a great time.
Too bad that Ana Vukotić, the auntie Ana from the title of the exhibition, came not that evening, but some other day, so I didn't see her.
Mentions: Dom omladine, emisija, Grne, Kantina, Mika Zelenić (Sleš), Milan Šebrcan (Aćim), Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Novi Sad, Radoslav Kajganić (Zaka), Stanimir Hadžić (Adža), zelenoZvono, in serbian