Sex, Drugs and Punk’n’Roll, This Time With a Glitch (2013)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba

Location: Orto Bar, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Concert date: 08.11.2013
Attendance: 40 – 50
Ticket price: €5

Repeat performances of a good thing are rare. Just because something hits you right the first time doesn’t mean it’ll turn you around just as well the second or third time (the fourth, if you’re lucky), but it’s also true that once something has grown on your heart, it stays there even after the odd miss, with no room for harsh criticism or Spartan practices, nothing that demands somebody be crucified or called to account. That has no place in music, and I’d say it happens to the best of them. Still, a few of those things and a bit of bitterness will creep into this Friday retrospective of what went down on the boards, with the victims being the headliners, the Ribnica crew Golliwog, while Project One and Gužva u bajti (G.U.B.) also took the stage for a spin. I’m not talking about the peak of peaks this time, but about a moment of sobering up, which can turn a gig as tellingly named as Drunk In Public on its head against what’s supposed to be the most essential thing in music – I mean coherence, transparency, heart and everything for which we love music, respect it and hope for its phenomenological presence at a given coordinate of space and time. Let’s leave the philosophizing aside and get to the facts.

In the stale air of November’s suffocating embrace of smog, you could feel nothing but optimism and joy outside Orto, where a hefty crowd of people hungry for good punk had already gathered around nine. Punk has been having a downright rebirth lately, and thanks to the initiative of outstanding visionaries and lovers of the real stuff, the lads and soul brothers of the Dirty Skunks collective, Matej and Črt, you can now see live those faces you may have missed 10, 15 or 20 years ago. With its critical side, in times of recession and crisis, punk is more than a welcome release, a mental valve for all the feelings crammed into your soul, and sometimes it also just feels good to switch your brain off, down a beer or two and, with that suggestive combo of sharpness, speed and primal melody, maybe even throw in a pogo dance that fits the moment.

Before the stars of the evening arrived, taking over the stage of Orto at this autumn drinking-in-public session took a bit more effort and pain. First to be called up were guys with Ljubljana-Ribnica musical roots, members of Not Looking Pretty (N.L.P.), Aktivna porpaganda and Golliwog, going by the name Project One. Expect ultra-fast punk rock, even if you don’t know the band by name; the guys say you haven’t heard anything like it since Simona Weiss, and »Das Hardkoa mit ein bisschen TuliLuli« thoroughly piqued my curiosity, so at their second gig together as Project 1 I was happy to give them my support down in front of the stage. The band is made up of fun blokes who grew up on Cali punk: bassist and lead throat Žiga Eržen, the guitar duo of Vid Trdan and Jakob Ivanetič, and Jernej Premru behind the drums. Running on an ultra-positive, heart-first spirit, they prove there’s no shortage of melody. Punkish, sharp HC on a Californian base combines punchy salvos of just-raw-enough guitars, and after the instrumental intro of Metalac the guys serve up a bit of hoarse singing, which brings a touch more authentic freshness and the smell of the garage where real music gets born. Old punk tomcats with a short time together serve Dark Dildo with no foreplay, deep into the audience’s abdominal region. Guitars and bass sound tight, the drums solid and confident, but Žiga’s vocals, despite the effort and energy, didn’t convince me, with stiff English pronunciation and a hoarse hunt for the right intonation on stage. In the manner of Fat Mike (from the start of his career), Project One sound more like NOFX in the Liberal Animation era than like the guys who’d serve up Punk In Drublic, Ribbed or anything new, but there’s enough fun beneath the surface for the first punk ballerinas to give in to the first release of frustrations in front of the stage. Project One then have a bit of mischief in the form of Caged Dick, and after Time Took comes the moment of dissecting the franchise’s main ace – with Tuliluli they prove that the little bit of HC seed has taken root, roots that bind the band into one compact bundle united by the love of the same things: music (even though the boys claim they got into music for the chicks, drugs and fame, so far it turns out it’s too early for fame, there weren’t too many chicks in front of the stage, and as for intoxication I couldn’t tell you a thing …). Their D.I.Y. logic promises even a first proper recording soon, after which a renaissance of punk blossoms for the old veterans is indeed on the cards again. I think some polishing and reworking of the roughly assembled structures will be needed in the meantime, since they currently lack that little something that would make the songs even more effective, and the band also needs to loosen up a bit on stage and let their demons, their little Lokis, out into the open, so the party gets even better and the smiles on the faces of the rattled, slightly tipsy crowd even bigger. The rest is pointless and unimportant anyway, as are the names of the songs that slid under the skin and hinted at the band’s real musical potential, with the emphasis that the collective also needs to sort out whether they’ll look for another member at the mic or whether Žiga will start using his voice a bit more often. By this mild criticism I mean only the band’s own good, of course.

After a quick flying changeover the stage elementals swap places, and Gužva u Bajt (G.u.B.), with their vision of Ljubljana street punk, offer a smidgen of their decadent nature and an alternative both to fashion-plate pussy punkers and to political activists. The Dead Kennedys’ Biafran doctrine of anarcho-punk disobedience is seen, felt and heard, but there’s of course a bit more of that street-level revolt in the mix, the kind that drives you to the barricades in defense of your own integrity. The foursome at the helm of this old-school, old-fashioned punk ship is made up of the excellent and confident Vladimir on bass and guitar, backed in the background with fucking power and mercilessness by the just-right-fortified Tulio; without Ferenc »Kenjac« and Kosma on guitars, G.u.B. would be a destroyer without the much-needed explosives. I hadn’t managed to consume G.u.B. until now, but it’s a fact that the guys are anything but a clichéd fashion accessory of the Slovenian underground scene. They’re closer to the idea that punk was always a raised middle finger against all norms, squareness and conventions, and with hard-hitting songs like Narkoman, the mixed-up counting rhyme 1243, Debelolična gospodična, and also Ismeta je punk, I can only admit they’re the real deal, the kind that don’t stroke your cheeks with kid gloves but tear into you with no regard for a tomorrow that maybe one day won’t come. It’s fucking true that we’re Prokleti brez sreče and that it’s time for revolt and revolution, but White Riot, which smelled more of Ljubljana than of The Clash, suggests the crowd would hold off on the uprising a while longer, even though the feeling in front of the stage was in tune with the name of the gig …

The best always comes last, and I admit I headed for Orto precisely because of the Ribnica strike force of justice, veganism and non-violence toward a world we take as ours without any signed charter entitling us to such deeds. I’ve heard and felt Golliwog three times this year already, and every time they’ve shaken me up in a good way, filled me with optimism and happiness and a hunger for additions and upgrades. Melodic HC from the undernourished and deprived corner of Slovenia, Ribnica, has balls and substance, especially after their latest record Plague Allegiance, which went even beyond the meridian designs of the albums More Than Meets D.I.Y. and (I’ll have to take their word on that one, because you simply can’t get the record anywhere anymore) Gandhi Fans Against Gun Defence. The new world order is on the table, and fuck all the isms, injustices and dividing humanity into us and them is all the more on point. Besides the music, Golliwog have started the revolution on the plates too, and I respect the vegan initiative all the more because you really can change the world on that patch of porcelain where you satisfy your appetites. This time I got myself to Orto to support Saša, Matej, Vid and Boogie because I value intellect, good people and above all good music, which Golliwog have been serving up in their hard-hitting way for a long 15 years. That evening there was something special in the air. With a slightly shuffled set compared to March this year, Golliwog open with My Philosophy from the previous record. The striking power of a D.I.Y. stampede of heavy guitars is here, with Vid and Saša, Matej, and the ultra-fast Boogie behind the drums (at moments so fast that he sped up songs that are already quick in the originals) plowing full tilt into virgin soil, but the melodic hit of Cali-punk sharpness is a bit smudged this time because Saša can’t hear himself well in the monitor, which doesn’t stop the phalanxes of Golliwog rhythm fans. Time to move on with Places You Have Never Seen, but technical gremlins keep acting up ahead too. Golliwog defend their norms of quality by retuning the guitars again and rebalancing the monitor sound again, and on stage I sense a slight tension, an unease, something I’d never felt from the foursome before. Because of that, the standards of pleasure Mask Of Sanity and Antiheroes, the outstanding Solitary Confinement, and Xanax and Optimus Prime become less shiny and gleaming than before, and in my heart I feel this wasn’t in the plan or the repertoire of a band that was giving its all, but lifting off to that well-known plateau of pleasure and personal sonic nirvana somehow couldn’t happen, because of factors that no longer matter. The crowd at Orto still got good, solid music, but the relaxation was somehow disturbed by communication noise on stage, that half a tone of difference between the left and right speaker, those few self-critical glances among band members who weren’t happy with the set they were serving from the first moment. Toward the end morale dropped so low that Vid, visibly upset and revolted by the chipped sound, left the stage early, and when the crowd called for an encore he didn’t come back, so Matej, Saša and Rok scraped out an approximate version of Sixpack on their own, and Ljubljana didn’t get to hear Linoleum and Cause this time. The stage empties, the men and the lady go backstage, and from what I saw and heard they wrongly start to stand themselves up in front of the firing-squad wall.

More reproaches about quality could be heard among the band members themselves, which, if you’re sworn to guarding quality, is necessary, but the crowd was satisfied and fulfilled by the shock of drunkenness and punk sharpness. The gig didn’t deliver optimal sound, that’s true, but it would be senseless to call it quits after 15 years over one lost battle, disband and give in to despondency. Golliwog are and will be a band that puts honesty toward themselves and the crowd in front of the stage first, so I’m fully aware that one slip-up isn’t a factor in calculating the odds of a similar repeat in the future. One lost battle, my dears, doesn’t mean a lost war. Despite a slightly tense game of nerves, mishaps and tiredness, and an inner compass lost for a short while, I can say, to console you all, that nobody blamed you for the moment of weakness and nobody will, since part of loving someone (and loving their work) is forgiveness, accepting that not everything is always as perfect as it should be in the dream scenario. After every rain the sun shines, and I believe this gig will be replaced by a better feeling at the next one, washing the bitterness away into the abyss of oblivion forever. Still, it’s right that we learn from small mistakes, and learn that thing because of which the Hegelian recipe, whereby something happens first as tragedy and the second time as farce, is something we will never, ever connect with Golliwog in the same sentence.