Venue: Studio 14 of Radio Slovenija, Ljubljana
Concert date: 05.06.2009
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: free entry
Don Mentony’s invasion of the public radio’s Studio 14 had been a long time in the making, even if it was hardly a well-kept secret. Word about the planned stitching together of recordings, which would sometime in the near future fly the flag for the long-awaited live Don Mentony album, had been going around music circles for a while. Janez first laid out the plans in public in an interview for RockLine (more about that here), and since then plenty of dates set aside for recording have mysteriously vanished into thin air, which, given Žan’s rather unique sense of time, is perfectly understandable. The serial appearance of dates shrouded in mystery on the band’s official website, where for months on end, instead of numbers in a date or any other time format, we got to watch a dance of question marks, politely left plenty of room for doubt that the project would ever happen. Friday night was therefore a turning point: the Don Mentony Band’s cogs finally got some momentum again, and if all goes well, they’ll be grinding at full throttle once more from the autumn on!
Janez Zmazek drilled his crew thoroughly for this radio-wave adventure and disciplined them down to the last man, which meant the evening lost a smidge of the spontaneity we’ve always come to expect from Don Mentony’s live excesses. Some of that, let’s call it predictability, certainly came from the fact that Don Mentony were raising hell live, over the airwaves, knowing they had barely an hour and a half to cram in a quick showcase of a hefty haul of heavy iron. The flyover of Mentony’s discographic blooms was thus served up in obvious haste, but with enough beef in the delivery to make sure Žan’s hands dished out first-class kicks of primal rock & roll.
The latest incarnation of the Mentony club, despite an interesting sonic makeover that shows up in the presence of harmonica player Boštjan Dorič, naturally stays loyal to the cold-blooded drill of venomous blues rock. And that, as expected, was not missing on Friday night. In his own style, Zmazek spun a colorful, dynamically bold and nicely rounded flyover of morally dubious discographic highlights, which, next to the neutered creature that is modern rock, look more and more like creations from another planet. Well-known numbers like A štekaš, Hopla konopla and of course Dobra mrha spoke to you directly, self-ironically and without any frills, just the way rock & roll should.
With his deliberate rejuvenation of the lineup, Zmazek has gained an extremely vital musical collective, one that showed, a bit shyly, plenty of youthful enthusiasm for discovering the magic of basic rock all night, while Žan’s mentoring touch of course made sure each player’s qualities slotted professionally into a free-spirited, bohemian-flavored musical machine. Besides the aforementioned Boštjan Dorič, whose fiery harmonica outpourings gave a breath of freshness to some seriously rusty blues phrases, and the superbly well-oiled rhythm engine of bassist Klemen Teran and drummer Žiga Kožar, there was still plenty of room for a sentimental trip down memory lane. We’re talking, of course, about the one and only “white snowflake,” known to the majority, who aren’t used to Žan’s typical sarcasm, mostly as Tomo Jurak. His main job was delivering backing vocals, which sadly could only be heard here and there on Friday night. The fundamental element of expression that earned Don Mentony eternal glory, though, is still the sound of the guitar. It’s surely no coincidence that Zmazek entrusted a good share of the guitar-solo burden to a young man by the name of Luka Vehar. Over the course of the evening, the two traded a heap of thrilling melodic dialogues that kept any hint of monotony in the guitar playing away. You could tell that Vehar and Zmazek reached for different solutions when building their solo excursions, both in substance and in character. Vehar’s approach was built on a much more subtle, understanding take, while Janez stayed old-school, faithful to the meatiness and bite of rural blues rock. This variety enriched the melodic and stylistic wealth of the sound and pumped fresh life into the confidently stripped-down Ko noč zamenja dan and Rekla je ne, and the inventive rendition of Sedem let, seasoned with slide playing of tangible melancholic shades, will surely stay in the memory for a long time.
Friday night in the company of Don Mentony predictably whetted the appetite for reviving the glory and power of rock’s basic principles, and at the same time helped, with a nice dose of nastiness, to diagnose the ever-worsening blood count of modern rock in Slovenia! Even though he calmly peeks out from the background and coolly keeps his distance from any media circus, Janez Zmazek remains one of the undisputed champions of the domestic rock scene in 2009 too, whether or not these words please the intellectually degenerate addicts of pop culture’s frigidity! Simply put, they haven’t made them like Žan in years!
Photos: Mojca Perdih
Setlist
1. Ko noč zamenja dan 2. Dost mam 3. Ko spustiš se z neba 4. Rad bi bil baraba 5. To je moj živlene 6. A štekaš 7. Marjetka 8. Na drugi strani 9. Ko se dela dan 10. Sedem let 11. Lahko nardim še bolš 12. Nekam bom šel 13. Mikica 14. Hopla konopla 15. Lenoba 16. Z občutkom 17. Nkol si nam odpustu 18. Rekla je ne 19. Na oblali 20. Dobra mrha 21. Zdej sm pa miško
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