Nove konzerve: Masters of Serving Up Rock & Roll With No Color, No Flavor… and No Balls! (2009)

Location: Orto Bar, Ljubljana
Concert date: June 12, 2009
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €5

Last Friday RockLine kept up its series of visits to gigs organized to promote the freshly baked albums of mostly younger bands. This time, at the initiative of people of good will and pure thoughts, our quest to uncover the faces of the future stars of the Slovenian rock scene took us exactly where you’d expect: Orto Bar, where the members of Pojoča travica and Nove konzerve were breathing in the fever of the long-awaited moment of self-affirmation. The hopes for a primal rock party, though, proved unfounded pretty fast. The legions of teenagers camped out in front of Orto, whose innocent faces suggested their ID numbers were rooted somewhere in the first half of the ’90s of the last century, honestly didn’t inspire much optimism for an unforgettable rock adventure.  

POJOČA TRAVICA

In skeptical anticipation of an unforgettable night, the funny musical collective Pojoča travica started warming us up a few minutes before ten. A typical guitar band, drawing on the imagination of four hormone-burdened colts and the routine plodding of a gentleman of decidedly mature years. The latter dutifully supplied the scattered sound picture of the evening’s “openers” with a lively, often wryly restrained bass foundation, on which the band’s uncut gem, an excellent lead guitarist whose name I sadly failed to jot down, grazed eagerly. Pojoča travica are nothing spectacular, but the guys did have a few moments. Songs like Črna princeska, Divji ples or Nočni ptič sound convincing live, like raw derivatives of primal rock & roll, served up with the zeal and self-importance of an impatient teenager, yet still confident enough to meet the enviable standards of hard-rock racket. The problem with our greenish friends lies mostly in their spoiled attitude, which Blues prekrokanih noči put on full, self-important display, and most of all in the tasteless closing caricature of a healthy musical composition called Pomlad.

At first glance Pojoča travica come across as rather confused, as if they still don’t quite know which direction would be worth turning in the future. The uncles’ stage image is upright and full of tremendous self-confidence, which can always be a double-edged sword. Their little legs are rooted firmly enough in the soil of rock & roll, but then there’s that baffling enthusiasm for goofing around, with which the band has voluntarily shouldered the burden of amateurism, clearly crippling the further growth of its potential, if not the whole crew’s, then certainly that of its individual members. By denying this, it seems Pojoča travica are missing a unique chance to raise the band’s quality standards, which badly need raising.

NOVE KONZERVE

That leaves us a quick jump to the stars of the evening, the self-important youngsters going by the name Nove konzerve. The formula these guys sweat over is a tried-and-tested recipe of empty-headed rampaging against everything that moves, or whatever looks incredibly “cool” at a given moment to the drunken eyes of a spoiled teenager. Such a moronic interpretation (as frontman Uroš taught us dummies several times over the evening) of the one true rock & roll naturally goes no further than instant gratification for the band’s most loyal followers, whose lips are ruled by the memorized lyrics of every canned “delicacy.” Nove konzerve weren’t bothered by such trifles. After the premiere screening of the video for the song Rokamo, the guys nonchalantly seasoned the evening with a generic repertoire that strongly reminded me of one of those elementary-school dance night programs. With the boredom and predictability of their overwound original material, which, besides open enthusiasm over the newly discovered phenomenon of hard erections, also showed itself in the bashful concealment of the foursome’s premature ejaculation, those of us who left puberty behind before the Punic Wars just couldn’t help much. Sadly, Totalna revolucija didn’t get away with it this time either without extra preservatives, Bandiera rosa fared even worse, and the peak of the evening’s pathos was staged by the “bold” recruitment of I Got You Babe by the long-ago couple Sonny and Cher.

In the end, everything we saw lined up nicely with the cruel reality of the Slovenian music scene, especially its character-castrated young blood, robbed of any sense or imagination for tending the inherited rock legacy properly. That the internet generation lost touch long ago with the innovative, and above all heartfelt, shaping and steering of musical-creative currents is probably not its own fault, but that’s still no excuse to dodge responsibility for the depraved, alienated and arrogant face it has put on. That face is finally mirrored nicely in the stage clowning of bands like Nove konzerve, who surely wouldn’t be harmed by a good educational round of beatings.  

Photos: Mojca Perdih  

Setlist

Pojoča travica: 1. Nočni ptič 2. Črna princeska 3. Divji ples 4. Blues prekrokanih noči 5. Žur do jutranjih ur 6. Pomlad Nove konzerve: 1. Mlad in zadet 2. Sonce 3. Totalna revolucija 4. Punčka 5. Dej mi koko 6. Šubidubi 7. I Got You Babe 8. Dej poglej me 9. Bandiera rosa 10. Mrtu rock & roll 11. Boljše življenje 12. Čas za zabavo 13. Ne mi tega delat 14. Fa, fa, fa 15. Mladost je norost 16. Tamara 17. Ska (spomn se) 18. Divji jaz 19. Mama mi ne da 20. Vroča punca 21. Ta stara hoče še 22. Katarina 23. Pot v nebesa 24. Rokamo

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