Venue: Studio 14 (RTV Slovenija) / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 04.12.2006
Attendance: 0
Ticket price: 0.00 SIT
On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, in a Ljubljana already fully decked out and just waiting for a snowflake or two, a pretty big crowd gathered in Studio 14 at Radio Slovenia, a bit too big for the space, really. The reason might be that the show was free, or that events like this simply draw everyone with some tie to RTV, cynically speaking already part of the furniture, who probably wouldn’t show up under any other circumstances. Much like the same old faces turn up at Cankarjev Dom with their subscription tickets, some of them without the faintest idea what they’ve actually come to see or hear!
Anyway, let’s say everyone came strictly for the band itself, even if more as spectators than as listeners.
A few minutes past eight in the evening, Nataša Bončina Žgavec steps onto the stage, greets us politely and introduces the lineup, who appear on the boards right away, fully primed to carry the night a little closer to the last full moon of the year, which was hiding somewhere behind the clouds high above us just then.
Ibržniki lights a fiery mood that sticks with the band through the whole hour-long set, in which they ran through the entire first (and so far only) album, which goes by the simple title of Čompe. Janez Škof on accordion and vocals, lending his voice, again and again with great success, to the poetry of Dane Zajc, Edvard Kocbek and other masters of modern Slovenian poetry, and to the ravens too, in the vocally outstanding Dva Vrana. Neža Zinaić on violin and backing vocals, Silvo Zupančič on guitar, Marjan Stanič on percussion and scissors, yes, the real scissors that cut hair or paper, which turn out to be an extremely interesting and above all unusual musical instrument, plus Žiga Saksida and Breda Krumpak on alto sax, and when needed everybody pitches in with vocals too. Throughout the show they proved what was clear all along: they’re simply an outstanding band, who took an already well-tested repertoire through just the right amount of improvisation, so the songs lived like creatures of their own, each with its own “backbone” that you can bend, twist and strain as much as you like, yet it stays strong and supple all the way through.
Between songs we also got extra helpings of background, usually historical, on individual tracks, shedding some light on what’s behind a given song or the band’s name itself. So we learned that the roots of the song Francoz reach all the way back to the French Revolution, and that the potato the band is named after found its true love and lifelong companion in a turnip it met by chance, after tumbling down by accident from the high mountains surrounding the Trenta valley.
Čompe played the instrumental Garača as their second-to-last song and closed with the aforementioned Dva Vrana. The band leaves the stage, but given the applause, and above all because of the one song they hadn’t played, which is mandatory material and, especially lately, incredibly timely and true, the unofficial postcard from Slovenia to the world, they quickly come back out.
So next comes, in Škof’s words, the “really last” song, Človeška Ribica. The opening part, the one that works like a postcard, belongs to him alone, while the rest of the band joins in for the central section, which tells the story of an evil goldfish that was turned into a human as punishment. The punishment has to be educational, otherwise it won’t work! And that’s the end: Čompe really do disappear from the stage now, leaving only saxophonist Žiga Saksida, who delivers a “political” recital a few minutes long about the current state of the capital, met with approving applause from the crowd. That Jani from Vič wasn’t among the listeners, of course; if he had been, the audience’s reaction would probably have been, in typically Slovenian fashion, exactly the opposite. Soon after, Žiga vanishes too, leaving behind only a box of the band’s CDs for sale and a hat that had been waiting for all the St. Nicholases of the evening.
Setlist
01. Ibržniki
02. Uvodna
03. Uspavanka Za Dnevno Rabo
04. Rože Noči
05. Himalaya – Predzadnja Pesem
06. Potepuh
07. Francoz
08. Repa
09. Regi (Ti Si Bila…)
10. Garača
11. Dva Vrana
—encore—
12. Človeška Ribica
Photo gallery
