Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Cvetličarna Ljubljana
Concert date: 26.03.2016
Ticket price: €20
Bajaga and his band Instruktori are regulars at Slovenian venues. Which we don’t count as a bad thing, just so we’re clear. We have nothing against established rockers. On Saturday, March 26, 2016, he took the stage at Cvetličarna once again.
The long queue outside the doors of Cvetličarna, at a time when security should have already been letting people in for a while, immediately made it clear that the show would be packed. The announced start time was 8:00 PM, but security only opened the doors at 8:15. In the sad, one-by-one fashion, the crowd slowly trickled into the hall under the standard »first come, first served« system. It made things tough for the photographers, since the crush in the front rows made it impossible to shoot. There was more luck to be had from the balcony.
For a long hour and a half, until the actual start of the concert at 9:45 PM, the hall was »entertained« by a house DJ playing hits from the former Yugo music scene. But songs like Vino na usnama (Vlado Kalamber), Ja sam za ples (Novi fosili), Rock me baby (Riva) and the like, despite the DJ’s over-the-top efforts to get the crowd going, really don’t belong in the warm-up for the Belgrade native and his backing band. Over the course of that hour or so, we also managed to hear the entire promo for the upcoming April concerts at Cvetličarna at least 7 times. You’ve got to tell a rock concert apart from a Balkan party.
At 9:45 PM Bajaga i Instruktori finally stepped onto the stage and took over the job of working the crowd. What can you say? Momčilo Bajagić – Bajaga clearly still keeps up his usual pace and posture. No signs of slowing down, despite the visible years. He »launched« his latest record, Ako treba da je kraj, back in 2012, and a new one is already something we miss, since everyone in the lineup was very easy on the ear. Bajaga won the crowd over right from the start by declaring Cvetličarna the best rock club in Slovenia, which the audience greeted with a loud cheer.
The current Instruktori lineup features bassist Miroslav Cvetković-Cvele, guitarist Žika Milenković, keyboardist Aleksandar Saša Lokner, drummer Čeda Macura and guitarist Marko Nježić-Kića. The band kept the crowd well entertained for a good two hours, with Bajaga and his regular lineup obliged to serve up the well-known hits. For a chunk of the audience, with ages ranging from 15 to 60, some of the songs were clearly unfamiliar, sadly, but that only made them come alive even more when the hits kicked in. The concert was well executed, including a few gestures from the guitarist in particular, who before one song even staged a ski jump in the style of our champion Peter Prevc, giving the crowd confirmation that our athletes’ successes reach all the way to the middle of nowhere. In general, the mileage of the whole lineup is more than obvious. No faking it here, but sadly no improvisation either. We missed that now and then. Sometimes a song would have gone down well on the ears even on different tracks.
The sound in the hall was relatively solid at the show. It could maybe have been turned down a notch, since at moments the sound was muddy due to excessive loudness, regardless of Bajaga’s clear vocals.
Bajaga will surely remain a formula for success when it comes to filling Slovenian concert halls, since our audience knows him well, though we just wish he wouldn’t stick to the sadly all-too-common formula of replaying age-old hits.
text: Jani Dolenc
photos: Miha Dolenc
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