Venue: AKC Metelkova mesto- klub Gromka / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 19.12.2006
Attendance: 0
Nobody can accuse our temples of concert culture of a shortage of musical events this month. We’ve already checked out the menu at the epicenter of Ljubljana’s alternative refuge, Metelkova Mesto, more than once, but this time a dose of Yugo-rock was on offer. For a while now, our shared old homeland has been sliding into semi-historical oblivion. You can hear plenty about its failings in any pub. But let’s admit one thing: we can’t claim that absolutely everything was substandard, contemptible and fair game for criticism. One piece of the nostalgic eulogies and ramblings, the point where you can simply forget the deep chasms between “us” and “them”, “those guys”, the Balkans, is the universal language of boundless purity- music. This time the Metelkova folks lured the Inner Carniola band Contra Dekorum onto their stages. Honestly, I had no clue what to expect, so I left my expectations at home and headed out totally unburdened for an evening beer and a dose of rhythm-tinted guitar rock. Contra Dekorum are a complete novelty who like to brag that they’re keepers of the musical heritage of the recent yesterday. Plenty of bands love to wade into the waters of eternally replaying tunes and songs we’ve already heard, but I was assured these guys are something new and fresh, with a varied stash of originals too. And they’re supposedly recording a live album as well. Beer-fueled debate made the hours shorter as we waited for the night’s main event to finally kick off.
Around eleven in the evening, rhythmic decorator Siniša Pantar sits down behind the drums. A rumbling roar kicks in, the closest thing to an overture in the manner of, say, Black Sabbath. Sašo Ožbolt delivers a spoken address from backstage, and with the intro the mantra can begin. Guitarist Berni Godeša fires up his guitar and ratchets up the atmosphere with some raw caressing of the strings. Bassist Matej Ravšelj with his orthodox metal look gives no hint at first glance that he plays in some Yugo-rock band, but he holds the texture of the lines together pretty solidly. The singer is still nowhere to be seen. Part of the performance, of course. After a few minutes, and I have to admit a rather drawn-out intro, he finally makes it onto the stage. At last the foursome is complete and they launch into the first original- ‘New Age’. The guitar line gets in your ear fast. The rhythm section is on point, and vocally it turns out his throat is pretty heavily tinted with undertones of someone like Bebek. They spice up the solidly played tune with some stage acting too, something many of our local tough guys love to forget. Contra Dekorum aren’t static. They’ve got humor and dynamics. After ‘Non Barieri’, a song that could be about good-neighborly relations, comes a history lesson, pardon- history minutes- of the historic battles in Lower Carniola. ‘Turjaški grad’ is a splendid pretext for stoking pre-election passions between the lefties and the righties. The lyrics flowed rather nicely and, in singer-songwriter fashion, rounded out the spectral whole of Contra Dekorum’s attempt at provocation. Soon we get the first dose of memory-lane stuff with ‘Miograd’ and ‘Anka’. They fill the gaps between vocals with percussion bits. The covers are played energetically and well. Bijelo dugme sounded pretty confident and true to the originals. Same goes for Dilje jagode, heard later on. Unfortunately, their own offering of musical satisfaction is still slightly half-baked and overly repetitive. The front rows and the vibe at the gig get a lift from the frontman’s humorous bits, who is definitely a prototype of a good performer and is saving the atmosphere at the show. Ljubljana’s gig-going youth is rather static and aloof, after all. The way out of a potential total flop is to bring as many of your friends and acquaintances as you can, which again proved a pretty successful move this time. The problem is that nobody knows the lyrics yet, apart from the few that people have had a chance to hear several times or have on recordings at home. The music is well played and well rehearsed, but, maybe because of the late hour, maybe because of the exertions of December partying, I had trouble concentrating. I was bothered by the schematic predictability and the chronic lack of some extra energy. And not just onstage. Between the lines, I mostly meant the freshness of what was blowing out of the speakers. This presented and rather set recipe doesn’t have the 100% erotic charge that would make me fall into a trance, tap my foot and automatically reach for their record. Still, they bring the gig home at their own pace and wrap up the night with ‘Letom na drugi svijet’, while I somehow couldn’t shake a slightly bitter aftertaste of the contradictions that were so very present in my mind that evening.
It’s hard to criticize local acts. Much harder than foreign musical tourists, who have mostly already done their thing or have the backing of a huge music-machine apparatus. Our youngsters do this for their own enjoyment. For genuine satisfaction. There usually aren’t that many chances to test the reactions firsthand, since gigs are chronically in short supply. Contra Dekorum have been honing their craft on stages for five years now. They’re definitely a band with plenty of hidden aces up their sleeve. They’re good musicians (at least judging by what I heard at the soundcheck before the show, where it turned out the guitarist has even more tricks up his sleeve than I heard at the gig), they don’t lack sparkle (though sadly only Sašo, the band’s dynamo, provides it; the others are a touch too static and so are easy to overlook), they’ve got a stock of their own songs that has grown quite hefty in that time, and they’ve got the right people behind them (they have their own management and a website that’s pretty exemplary; it just needs a bit more info about the band…), and most importantly: they’ve got the desire, the drive, the vision and the will to achieve something. But more than achieving, what’s needed is to go beyond what’s already been heard and find your own path. For me, there’s one thing: the independent path of your own creativity, which is full of obstacles, admittedly. Yes, I know you know it’s more or less walking a tightrope. You win and succeed or you lose everything. No compromises. Walking it takes a good measure of self-confidence, courage and determination. Without that, the desires and expectations on one side and the actual state of what can realistically be achieved on the other can drift apart so far that Contra Dekorum could be renamed Contra Diktorum- they could become the opposite of creativity, and by imitating and slipping into already-worn pairs of shoes, they could end up sounding empty and impersonal, and quickly sink into oblivion.
Setlist
1. Intro (Master Machine)
2. New Age
3. Non Bariera
4. Turjaški grad
5. Rap
6. Miograd
7. Anka
8. Dolari
9. Naš disko
10. Coda M
11. Virtual World
12. The Matrix
13. Ptičja Gripa
14. Nemška
expected encore:
15. Motori
16. Konji
17. Let na drugi svijet
