Petar Janjatović, Dallas Records’ Main Man for Serbia: Every Story Is, in Principle, in

RockLine: What’s the general music situation in Serbia like? We know the record industry is in crisis, records get copied off the internet, sales are dropping …
Petar: I think the story is playing out pretty much like everywhere else in the world. Print runs are falling, of course, kids buy iPods or pull music off the internet. On the other hand, it feels like there have never been so many groups, so many bands. There’s a ton of new names, and sadly most of them sink like a comet. They show up, make a record or two and vanish … Probably the influences they work under lead them to lose their energy, their drive. On the other hand, I still sit on juries at young band competitions and the like. It’s incredible how tight almost all the bands are. That’s a step forward. The step back is that songwriting has become terribly weak and the bands are so shallow that, when you listen to them, you immediately know which groups they listen to, what’s influencing them. It happens that you watch a band play five or six songs, and apart from the fact that it was well played, nothing sticks. So there’s a huge crisis of songwriting, of the song itself. As Vasko from Eva Braun says: “Her Majesty, the Song”. The song is really the key problem. And when you sum it up, say which songs marked 2006, it’s two or three titles and that’s it. And then again, on the other hand … A few days ago a compilation came out in Belgrade called Mlada srbska scena (or something like that) – Jutro bo spremenilo vse. It’s full of bands that are still unknown, unestablished, and most haven’t released a single record. But there are about four or five songs on it that are songs in the true, original sense of the word. Pionir 10 from Subotica, who made one of the best tracks on the compilation, have a song called “Da da da”, and in the chorus they sing “the morning will change everything”. What’s really interesting is that Indexi had a hit with “Jutro bo spremenilo vse” many years ago. And when you’re aiming at Indexi, that’s already heavy. The song is really nice, simple. Built the way songs used to be made. A good chorus, a pleasant atmosphere, very simple. And it spread with incredible speed.

RockLine: How do Serbian politics and culture react to encyclopedias like this, and to people who want to collect information for the historical record? Is there any help to be had?
Petar: I never asked the authorities for anything. I asked them for just one thing: don’t get in my way. When I self-published the “Yu rock enciklopedija” in 2001, Đinđić’s people were running the Ministry of Culture, and back then they passed some rule that each publisher should adopt a resolution saying books are exempt from tax. I did that … Then my people came to power and said that none of it counted, and so on. I wrote that 3,000 copies had been printed, which was true. Normally in Serbia you print 500 at a time. They wanted tax on that… (laughs)
Then, when the media picked up the story, the answer was something like: “Where does Janjatović get the right to publish a book he calls an encyclopedia … We all know what encyclopedias are. That’s about some branch of learning, not popular culture.” The person who registered these publications said that if her books were taxed, it would mean she’s rich … So if I’d written that 500 copies were printed, nobody would even have noticed. So I said no, I haven’t demanded anything from you, haven’t asked for anything, just don’t get in my way. In the current situation, since I never wanted anything from the state, it doesn’t get in my way now either. But when we talk about the cultural policy of this state, and that of the old one … Take the case where the so-called “folk government” (read: populist) – Koštunica, Ilić and the like – organized a free concert for the people for the so-called Serbian New Year, with Riblja čorba and Ceca on the bill. If the state stands behind Svetlana Ražnjatović, then I don’t need to explain any more.

RockLine: Has anyone tried to write, say, a Yu Jazz or Yu pop encyclopedia?
Petar: Not that I know of. My friend Zoran Marjanović, who’s been a fanatical record collector for about 40 years and who worked as a flight steward for a while, so he had the chance to bring back records from all over the world … He has one of the best, most detailed record collections, both foreign and Yugoslav. He’s been working for a long time on something you could call a catalog. The record sleeve, all the important details of every record that was ever released in Yugoslavia. I don’t know when he’ll finish, because it’s a pretty thankless job …
As for jazz – a few books have come out that are more essay-style, but there’s no standard, alphabetically organized encyclopedia.

RockLine: What’s the deal with the updated “Enciklopedija Yu rock glasbe”? Will it only be possible online in the future?
Petar: An updated edition came out about 15 days ago. But I don’t think there’s really any need anymore for it to appear in book form every five years, when the electronic, internet format has come so far. So I think at some point, once the print run is gone, I’ll keep it “up-to-date” online. And there’s one small problem there, because in Serbia there’s no way yet to actually make a living from that.

RockLine: How do you get records from the other former Yugoslav republics?
Petar: Well, first, I’m in a really good position as the representative of Dallas Records for Serbia; second, I’ve got a ton of friends and colleagues who collect and send me material; and third, I travel a lot around the territory of former Yugoslavia. I collect myself too, and I have no problems with it. There’s also something – I just saw at Fox’s place (the head of Dallas; editor’s note) that Front Rock put out Pankrti live recordings on vinyl last year. And how did I not know that!?

RockLine: Will you write another book?
Petar: I don’t know. I’m too caught up in everything, in day-to-day obligations, to think about it. I’ve announced it a few times already, and I have no idea when I’ll actually do it. I’d like to finish a book of short stories I used to write, and sometimes I go back to it, and then a whole year goes by without me writing a thing … I want it to come out for nostalgic reasons. The idea is for the book to be called “Potucanja”. Every story is, in principle, tied to a trip and to some erotica: so, Po-tucanja. When we were kids, students, we roamed around Europe a lot. And all sorts of things happened to me and my crew. I’ve got a huge number of these little stories in my head. So I’d like to put them together, because I think people of my generation would like to read something like that. I think it would mean something to today’s youth too. Kind of a survey of the late 70s and early 80s of the last century.

RockLine: Musically speaking, what grabs you most when you hear something new, a song or a record? I know it’s a tough question …
Petar: It is. Musically, you say? I pay an incredible amount of attention to lyrics. Lyrics are extremely important to me in popular music, if I can put it that way. In the whole spectrum of today’s scene. I studied literature, I’m a journalist by trade. So the written word matters to me. It’s really important to me to listen to the lyrics. I’ve said many times that I learned Russian in school, but I learned English listening to rock ‘n’ roll, because I wanted to know what these people were singing about. A dictionary and listening to records. Grammatically I don’t speak very well, because I’m self-taught, but I have a stock of words that surprises even the English, that I know some words that aren’t exactly in heavy use – precisely because someone used them in some verse. They just stuck in my memory.
You’re asking about music. I’m telling you about lyrics. The mix of lyrics and music matters a lot to me too. It still has to blend the way it should. If you’re asking what’s most important to me, what I put first … That’s hard to say. Because I somehow can’t pin music down. I keep coming back to “Her Majesty, the Song”. If something touches me emotionally, that’s the real thing. But those are truly elusive things. You know, creating isn’t an exact science where you’d know the formula and so on.
The older I get, the more I like calmer, softer music. When Norah Jones came along I loved it, and I still do. I was absolutely thrilled when I found out she’d sold 40 million records worldwide. That’s when I realized there are plenty of ears like mine out there. Those are things that really suit me.

RockLine: Some big acts from abroad are coming to Serbia, Toto last year for example. Are people eagerly waiting for them? After so many years when nothing happened?
Petar: Basically, all these big names, and definitely the names that have been around for ages, get a great response from the crowd. Precisely because they haven’t played in Serbia for a very long time, or ever. Now we’ve got Iron Maiden coming, Red Hot Chili Peppers in the summer, and the by-now traditional Exit. When you see 30 to 40 thousand people listening to The Cult or Pet Shop Boys …
When we talk about the crisis in the record business and so on, it’s just a question of changing technology. The audience is still there, and I’d even say it’s growing. There are still people in their 50s going to concerts, plus newer and newer generations of young people. The rock ‘n’ roll community is alive and well. And of course there’s one more thing – you can’t “pirate” a concert. You go or you don’t. (laughs)
Of course I’m proud of these concerts, because we’d already had more than enough of driving abroad to gigs, to Budapest for example. That all-night ordeal. And when you don’t feel like doing anything anymore, you go to a concert and you’re already wiped out from everything … It’s really nice when concerts happen close to home. On the other hand, it’s also really good because young people come from the whole region. From Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia. Somewhere in there they find out what the truth is, not what the media has been feeding them for years and years. In terms of civilization, that means a lot for today’s youth.

RockLine: Awesome! Thanks for the interview. We’ll publish it soon and let you know.

Authors (text + photos): Jernej Vene & Tanyisha