Location: Vinoteka (under the Gospodarsko razstavišče) / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 17.01.2007
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: 0,00€
What beats a Friday invite to a party? One that goes till the wee hours. Benč’s Sagittarius and Capricorn bash, now in its twentieth year running! Venet’s Jernej practically led me down to Vinoteka by the hand! At the door, the hostess stopped us right away with an aperitif. ” No thanks, I’m driving.” Jernej replied politely, and with that line he immediately kicked off his standard run of jokes. At the entrance we practically collided with Janez Bončina – Benč, dressed to the nines, with a cute young lady on his arm! As befits a rocker in the prime of life.
The clock had struck well past half nine in the evening, and Vinoteka under the Gospodarsko razstavišče – that’s the place where the drunken walls practically buckle under the weight of the red wine – was getting warmed up by Sausages, with the returning original singer Goran Breščanski. Their set was split in two: one chunk at the start and one at the end of the session. The guys fired up their chainsaws nicely, the drums were crashing, and the returnee strode up to the mic with total confidence, he hasn’t forgotten how to sing! A compact quintet of debauched rock n’ roll! Nothing better for raising the temperature in your veins. Of course, those of us present first went off to fix our blood count with drinks from various sources, which lowered the boiling point in our veins even further, so we were quickly in shape.
The underground of the exhibition grounds was packed with familiar faces from the media. Mostly legendary musicians and legendary journalists alike. Once again, I was one of those who wreck the statistic of the average age limit by dragging it down, since most people there belonged to Benč’s generation. The generation that carried the rock n’ roll legacy, sparked by Presley and his ilk, over to Slovenia (or the dearly departed Yugoslavia, if you prefer). Once upon a time, long ago… And it’s nice that the crew remembers this every year, even if only in the “underground”.
Even though Sausages brought onto the stage a sheet of paper packed from top to bottom with the repertoire they planned to play, after three quarters of an hour the guys handed the stage over to the legends.
And who else should step up but Benč himself, along with “doctor Gibson” Primož Grašič, former member of Kameleoni, Faraoni, September, Srce and Karamela, Marjan Malikovič with a black Ernie Ball Luke model electric guitar (Steve Lukather, Toto), “Siddharta boy” Jani Hace on bass, and “that guy from Jan Plestenjak’s band down from the coast” aka “Dennis Chambers Morgan”, as Janez Bončina himself promoted the drummer to a higher rank (b.t.w. Niacin, with the lineup of Dennis Chambers, Dave Novello and Billy Sheehan, play on 11.05.2007 at the Bluesiana club in Velden near Villach in Austria. Mr. Bončina’s classic repertoire, wrapped in swing jazz blues and meandering more mellowly, thanks mostly to Grašič’s “jazz mood”, drew a much bigger crowd of curious former classmates and so on in front of the little stage… who swayed and cheered along. Among other things, we heard the evergreens Zlata Obala, Ta noč je moja, Maja z biseri and Kadar ognji dogorijo.
Next came a short set from Stratocaster legend Zoran Crknovič, accompanied by Hace on bass and the crowned “Denis Chambers” on drums. Hace did play with Crnkovič more than ten years ago in the trio Deja vu, where Crknovič’s old comrade-in-arms, the recently departed drummer Pavle Ristič, sat behind the kit. In the short set we also heard the classics Driftin’ and New York city blues. A voice probably ideal for the blues, which the man shakes out from under his fingers, was masterfully seasoned with a cover of The Doors’ Riders On The Storm, without keyboards! This time Zoran Crnkovič played without his “notorious” cream-colored Fender Stratocaster, and instead Malikovič lent him his black Ernie Ball for the occasion. Zoran took the stage after many years, and I hope it was a nice boost for him to keep showing the youngsters what he can do in the future.
After Zoran’s set, guitarist and singer Marjan Malikovič appeared on stage again, accompanied by bassist Jadran Ogrin, with whom he shared his student years in Kameleoni, and who shocked with his precision, speed, smoothness and ice-cold composure, since he didn’t so much as bat an eye during the whole show. In the middle of their jam, Benč also stepped back onto the stage, and together the guys played a rocker-heated version of Vsak dan ob istem šanku, a real dedication to the crowd present that evening. The blues classic Talk to your daughter (by J. B. Lenoir, famously covered by guitarist Robben Ford, among others) was lovely too.
Alcohol molecules were slamming ever more mercilessly into our wild heads, and the girls of various age dimensions and expiration dates were swinging their hips and heels ever more eagerly. Nothing unusual for Vinoteka, of course, it’s actually a phenomenon that’s a required part of the repertoire at parties like this. God knows how many Sagittarians and goats down there drained a Laško goat this time? Hardly any! They preferred wine! Not so Sausages, who upon returning to the stage staged a proper advertising intermezzo for Union and Laško!
Wobbly, wobbly. How on earth will they get the machines going? The point of any bash is of course that time stops, that it isn’t there, that it doesn’t exist, that you straight-up “waste” as much of it as you possibly can! That’s how Benč set Goran straight when, at the mic, Goran announced that Sausages would presumably play until six in the morning: “Until six in the afternoon!”
The covers in particular, like Allright Now (Free), Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones) and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s evergreens Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird – the latter came at the finale – were the boiling point. There were quite a few tightrope walkers out there, artistically chasing their balance.
The would-be dance acrobat, crowned with a drop of alcoholic topping, also got their five minutes of fame, spending most of the closing stretch of the party on the Vinoteka floor in the throes of their dance frenzy. Well, let’s hope that with all that drive they at least earned themselves a drumstick, a pick or a sweatband from The Sausages. Good thing their dance partner kept catching them fairly successfully, otherwise the falls could have led to some injuries.
I have no idea what happened next, nor do I have any idea how and when I wandered home! By the way, I lost my innocence, since I crossed the threshold of Vinoteka for the first time in my life! Thanks to Benč for an excellent and unforgettable evening. Packed with partying, laughter and, above all, good music. More of these please!
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