Venue: Ch. 0, Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Concert date: February 16, 2007
Attendance: 80
Ticket price: 10 euros, 8 euros if you came in costume
To kick things off, The Real Things warmed up the carnival Saturday, and in a solid three quarters of an hour they burned, pounded and brought to life an evening that was already well and truly fired up. As real rockers should, they mostly stuck to fast, punchy songs. No mercy. Tight and polished the whole way through. They clearly hit all the right notes, because the crowd didn’t want to let them leave the stage once they were done, but there was no other way. The time had come for the main players of the night.
A few minutes past 11 p.m., The Bambi Molesters step onto the stage. It had been quite a while since they last played around here. And it was more than obvious that they’d been missed. They wasted no time and no words, and just went straight for the sweet spot with everything they had. “Wanganui”, “Point Break”, “Bombora” and other songs stuck like they were evergreens. Direct and relentless. The energy spread like a tsunami. No chance of escape. The saying “go with the flow” fits perfectly here! In “Restless”, one of the rare vocal songs in the Bambis’ discography, Dalibor Pavičić treated everyone to some singing. And pretty well too. They could easily put more vocal songs on their albums, in case Chris Eckman or some other member of their elite circle of musical collaborators happens to be busy.
The show rolled in waves, as befits this kind of music. It stretched superbly between faster, sharper songs and slower, more hypnotic ones. And all of it was tied together by the constant sound of reverb, which at times really made it feel like we were all trapped together under the roar of the waves for almost two hours. The crowd seemed to be just as fired up by the speed and unstoppable drive of the music as by its tenderness and calm. Whether it was the speed contest in string-picking between Dalibor and Dinko (Tomljanović), along with Hrvoje Zaborac’s drumming, which recalled the intensity of a machine gun, or the occasional slow, gruffly rumbling bass parts that brought the ever-fatal Lada Furlan Zaborac to the front. One of the costumed partygoers just couldn’t resist her: a cat visited her on stage twice and, as if in slow motion, grinned and fawned over the thoroughly good-humored bassist.
Toward the end of the official part of the show, Dalibor stepped up to the mic a few more times to stretch his vocal cords, on the more rock and less surf songs (“Little Beach Bunny”, “Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck”). The first finale came with “Malaguenia”, but it was nowhere near a real ending, since they soon came back and launched into an extremely energetic extension. They also played “Cecilia Ann”, originally performed by The Surftones and masterfully covered by the Pixies, among others! They also played “The Wedge”, “Chaotica”, “Latinia” and “Rumble”, which count as classics of Surf Rock. Over the years, everyone from Dick Dale and his Del-Tones to The Centurions, The Lively Ones, The Ventures and other masters of the genre has covered them.
Right at the end, when the band fell into a kind of sonic trance that surely dragged on for over ten minutes and really felt like the last song, somewhere near the peak something rubbed Dinko the wrong way, and he abruptly pulled off his guitar and handed it to the crowd. With a wave of his hand that seemed to say “here, get this thing out of my sight”, he vanished from the stage. That caused some bewilderment, both in the crowd and in the band itself, but soon after Dinko came back with water in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and a look of unease and worry on his face. Something was off with the amp, but a smile soon crept across his face, just like everyone else’s in the hall, when it turned out that the (un)lucky guitar had landed in the hands of a young, eager guitarist, who immediately started soloing, right alongside the other three musicians. Something like that probably doesn’t happen every day, so it was only natural to pull the young star up on stage and finish the show together. Well, almost finish, because the crowd didn’t think that was a fitting end to the night. The band comes back and Dalibor remarks that they’ll now play one that “we” don’t know. They play “Baia”, and right after that they truly wrap up the show with “Ovo je pesma z onoga filma. Ovu zaista nikada ne igramo!”. “Miserlou”, a true surf anthem for a proper end to the concert and the night.
Maybe it was still 2:1 for Belgrade at the end of the show, as Dalibor said at one point during the concert, “juče smo igrali u Beogradu. Oni vode 2:0. Jebat ga, tako je! Bilo jih je 400”. Well, about 80 of us gathered at Metelkova, but the battle was fierce…It could have been 2:2, too…
Absolutely incredible, and one more reason for The Bambi Molesters to go back into the studio and record a follow-up to their latest studio release, Sonic Bullets: 13 From The Hip, which came out a full six years ago! It’s clear that The Bambi Molesters make for a great high tide, it’s just that the low tides in between are a bit too long!
Setlist
THE REAL THINGS
01.Welcome
02.Dead Man
03.I’m Not Kidding Around
04.I Feel Good
05.Take Me Higher
06.Let’s Go Out
07.(Novi Aligator)
08.Endless, Nameless
09.Twisting Out Of shape
10.Day Dreamer
11.(Brez Naslova)
12.Broken Bottle
13.I Wanna Be With You
14.Mess Around
THE BAMBI MOLESTERS
01.Wanganui
02.Point Break
03.Bombora
04.Corason de Loco Jorge
05.Last Ride
06.Restless
07.High Wall
08.Invasion Of The Reverb Snatchers
09.The Wedge
10.Theme From Slaying Beauty
11.Margaya
12.La Bruta
13.Mr. Rebel
14.Bubble Bath
15.Chaotica
16.Intensity!
17.Little Beach Bunny
18.Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck
19.California Sun
20.Malaguenia
——encore
21.Pearl Divin’
22.Cecilia Ann
23.Beach Murder Mystery
24.Good times
25.Latinia
——-encore
26.Rumble
27.Baia
28.Miserlou
