Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Kranj / Pungart / Slovenia
Concert date: 20.08.2015
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry!)
In November 2014, the news hit like a bolt from the blue: after forty years of silence, the great veterans of Slovenian culture and the arts, the titans of the early days of Slovenian pop music, the one-of-a-kind Mladi levi, were getting back together. »Silver-plated with age,« they conjured up a truly unique musical spectacle and one of the unforgettable moments of late last year, and, in the glow of incorrigible charmers and romantics, brought back a time that many of us know only from the written word or from the stories of those who actually lived it.
Nobody would have guessed that Mladi levi would stick around and keep playing after a few reunion shows in November 2014. Now it’s already late summer, and after their set at this year’s Kamfest, the guys also hit the stage at Pungert in Kranj, where a colorful crowd of the more seasoned variety had gathered, namely folks who spent their teenage years in the second half of the sixties and the early seventies. That was the heyday of Mladi levi, and the Kranj concert was made up mostly of people who, one way or another, were friends with the band and sympathized with them. And luckily, they still do.
This time around, Dušan Velkaverh wasn’t on stage to link the songs together, Tomaž Habe was missing too, and so was Janez Bončina Benč. So Mladi levi played with just Jernej Jung, who helped shape the band’s character forty years ago, while this time Matevž Šalehar »Hamo« had to cover Benč’s songs vocally.
Besides the aforementioned Jung and Hamo, who traded lead vocals through the repertoire, the lineup on stage also included Vasko Repinc (keyboards), Aleš Strajnar (guitar), Matjaž Deu (drums), Dušan Kajzer (bass) and the horn section of Jernej Podboj (saxophone), Marko Misjak (trumpet), Igor Matkovič (trumpet, flugelhorn) and Boris Gložančev (trombone).
This new concert get-together with Mladi levi was full of fresh moments of intense feeling, packed with nostalgia and a trip back to youth. It didn’t quite reach the festive moment and pomp of the November 2014 shows, and the performance of the material wasn’t as tight and convincing as at our first reunion with the band at SiTi Teater. The sound was also a bit shaky, especially the guitar level and a significantly too loud bass (the speakers crackled a few times during the show).
The gentlemen of soul, co-shapers of the Slovenian popevka and wholesome mid-wave music from the days when rock ‘n’ roll was still young, innocent and in immaculate expansion, included the most prominent moments of their career in the set. Jernej Jung, who as expected performed Mila Mala, Zaznamovan and Poljubi me in pojdi, was also in charge of Oda Ireni in Tomaž Habe’s absence. Hamo jumped on stage for the first time for an energetic spin on Mala terasa, nailed Mirno desno si podala, and also handled Deček in motor, Oluja and Ta vlak. The set also featured the instrumental Ljubimo soul, a cover of the Bar-Kays original called Soulfinger, then Knock on Wood (originally by Eddie Floyd), Pick Up the Pieces (originally by Average White Band) and, of course, a tribute to Blood, Swaet & Tears with Spinning Wheel.
Hamo kept the mood light with assorted quips between songs, and from the crowd he was thunderously corrected on the hazy historical details by a big Mladi levi fan, the ever-vigilant Tomaž Domicelj. The in-good-spirits »orchestra« delivered another utterly endearing event, the kind that old age will, let’s hope, direct many more of.
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