Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Lože pri Vipavi / Slovenia
Concert date: 07.06.2013
Attendance: 250
Ticket price: €5
The average music gourmand living in central Slovenia doesn’t exactly swing by the Vipava Valley every day. The capital alone offers (at least as far as the Slovenian gig scene goes) a varied enough spread of events to satisfy the appetites of the regulars on the home scene. But every now and then, an exception is of course allowed. Especially when we’re talking about a lovely Friday afternoon, with the Primorska air freshened by a downpour that then made way for the sunbeams, which over the last few days had slowly started hinting at the summer days ahead. Of course, the kind weather wasn’t the only reason to head to Lože pri Vipavi. Pelhan and Zmelkoow were also calling us into the shadow of the Nanos plateau, the former a brand-new act, the latter already seasoned companions of our everyday rock life.
Sadly, every gig east of the Postojna Gate clings to the bad habit of starting only late in the evening. That may sell a few more beers, but it’s clearly at the expense of the patience of that handful of people who actually came for the music. The scene in Lože was also decidedly festive: hanging out was front and center, and the music as such came in only somewhere in the background. The smell of burgers drifted through the air, beer flowed in rivers, and the clock ticked mercilessly into the long night…
PELHAN took the stage only a few minutes before half past eleven, by which time the lights in the houses of this charming Primorska village had long since gone out. This is the project of Aleš Pelhan, who released his debut »V neznano« in March, the fruit of years of work, and presented it to the Slovenian public with a show at Orto bar. This Lože gig was their second, and their first on home Primorska turf, so I expected their friends to rule the space in front of the stage, but I was wrong. Despite the distance between the stage and the audience at the far end of the tent, Pelhan successfully rose to the tough task and rattled off original compositions one after another, slipping in covers of Wings, Europe and Bon Jovi. Most eyes were glued to Aleš Pelhan, a frontman with a distinctive body language, with which he pantomimes the sung verses into the live performance. Aleš, also the guitarist of Skalp, has exceptional vocal energy, so Nov človek and Okrog najine osi, with their vocals front and center, suit him like a glove! In the melodic rock Pelhan play, perfectionistically assembled building blocks of the sonic puzzle are one of the basic conditions for a good show. Although Peter Smrdel’s keyboards were at times pushed to the back of the mix, especially on the ballads and half-ballads (Pesem zate, Prekleti raj) Pelhan managed to conjure up the magical feeling of listening to the songs in their studio versions. Aleš steered deftly through the set, which Pelhan closed with a more complex number, Blizu je zadnji izdih. After a good hour of playing, they had finally managed to coax a few dance steps out of the crowd, which made the choice of last song a bit unfortunate. Granted – Pelhan had planned to close the night with another run at the punchy single V neznano, but because of the late start they were forced to cut the program short before the planned finish. Still, all in all a successful show that justified the trip from Ljubljana in every way! We’ll definitely see each other again!
Then it was time for the tongue-in-cheek version of rock’n’roll called ZMELKOOW! The coastal rock band, with more than twenty years on the scene, has a strong base of supporters especially in Primorska, so the tent filled up nicely the moment their opening song Primavera kicked in. Zmelkoow played Lože as part of the themed tour »Bek tu d ruc«, which replaced the PSY-hadelic concerts that weren’t exactly popular among the band’s followers, where the songs (mostly from the newer batch) were dressed up in marathon jamming over psychedelic notes. This time Zmelkoow came with a selection of older, already half-cult material, and even the rarely played Mogoče me ni, Nagradno potovanje and Ko bom prišel spet nazaj weren’t missing. The always upbeat frontman Goga fed the crowd between songs with the philosophically inspired humor typical of the Zmelkoow school. Besides the standard trio (the aforementioned Goga, Žare on bass, Koščak on drums), the lineup was rounded out on keyboards by Anuša, a longtime companion and, with her female backing vocals, the main operator of the dynamic spice in their shows. The Primorska merrymakers cooked up a real minestrone of mood swings from the set, from bouncy numbers like Bit and Čao Sonček to the mellower Zavese plešejo and Franko Frkič. For the Zmelkoow, who are a bit spacey at heart anyway, the late hour and the party energy that comes with it fit like a glove, so they kept the crowd on its feet for a full two hours as if it were nothing, and what’s even more impressive, bassist Žare kept up the pace too! For years his presence (and a beer or two too many) made him the band’s true mascot, but in the last year or two he’s hung back more and left the baton entirely to Goga.
If the Vipava Valley usually battles violent gusts of the bora wind, this time it was shaken by the sound of Zmelkoow and Pelhan. Each band successfully delivered its own definition of rock’n’roll, so the event’s basic mission, giving the crowd its musical fix, was definitely accomplished.
Setlist
1. V neznano
2. Če jutri umrem
3. Nov človek
4. Live and Let Die
5. Gregor
6. Okrog najine osi
7. Mrtvo mesto
8. Pesem zate
9. V zavest
10. Prekleti raj
11. Moč domišlije
12. Supersticious
13. Pravi obraz
14. Living on a Prayer
15. Blizu je zadnji izdih
Photo Gallery
