Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: February 22, 2013
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: €6.00
Polecat business at the turn of the millennium
When the two merrily filthy polecats started pushing the Slovenian (more or less) melodic punk rock scene, it was a colorful, varied place in its sub-genre, scattered all over the country.
With bands that, in the “golden days” of the scene, could have filled a three-day music festival, the two of them co-created, through their drunk-punk nights, a sprawling, unified homegrown (sub)scene at the turn of the millennium. In the end it mirrored a post-transition, post-punk-rock generation that has since vanished, off to a (to our taste, rather more) “stuffy” career, properly accredited… Just seriousness and a grown-up world with no time for the kind of nonsense like…
Reviving the drunk-punk habits of a decade ago …
… is, of course, a tough, thankless, Sisyphean business these days, but it’s badly needed to reintroduce new bands and mark their place in time within the sub-genre corner of the heavier-sounding music world.
The polecats got help with the dirty work from the ska-punkers CarryAll from Udine, whom they’d already hosted years ago, and who lived up to the role of the night’s main act, which was no easy task.
Besides the “Mad Caddies-style” party septet, we also got to see the hardcore-hearted quartet Radiostorm from Šentjur and the melodic punk trio White Stain from Ljubljana.
At nine o’clock sharp in the evening (kudos to the organizers for keeping to the schedule), the boys from St. George opened this new-generation drunk-punk event with a cover of Blitzkrieg Bop by the New York “hey-ho-let’s-go” crew Ramones. Right from the start, though, the event was running on fumes when it came to crowd size. What can you do with a measly thirty people?
Is the missing audience just the price of sticking to that schedule, or something else, namely: heavy snow, mandatory entry fee and coat check, overpriced beer, relatively unknown bands…?
We expect the answer by the end of this week, when the Drunk In Public event features (better-known) Golliwog from Ribnica, Backstage from Ljubljana, and the new homegrown face of melodic, heartfelt sawing, Hand In Mine from Prekmurje.
The punk-rock breeze of St. George
Despite everything, the quartet from Šentjur is a solid, fresh punk-rock breeze from the east. They’re socially critical, conscious young guys who don’t hide their (idols’) beliefs and ideology. Given their mileage (2007 on), though, their repertoire would be better served by a few more original songs and a dose or two fewer covers (if you must, the best one they played was I Hate To Say I Told U So by Sweden’s The Hives…), and if I may be a little snarky, a bit more rehearsal, especially from the rhythm section, the drummer and bassist, wouldn’t hurt.
The new guitarist Jaša has his own style but is still not quite locked in on his instrument, and he’ll definitely help the overall sound come together. The group vocals are easy on the punk ear too, and the singer is tonally solid and capable up front if it’s really needed. But what I’d single out most about the local lads in Radiostorm is this: these guys aren’t joking around. Proof is how they successfully stood up to the long-haired polecat, who was only doing his job on a moral level, making sure the “timing was running” and flagging the end of their set. But they, all defiant (the only right way, if you’re a punk, you’re a punk!), played their last song anyway, another cover and an unfortunate attempt at a well-known tune by American idols Bad Religion.
For our listening pleasure they offer a new, Slovenian, original, hard-hitting (D.I.Y.?) album, The Chaos Station, released under the wing of Subkulturni Azil Maribor. I wish them a safe and successful musical road (they’re supposed to be touring the British Isles next month too).
The swamp punk-makeup crew can do it!
If the Ljubljana trio White Stain is “pigeonholed” as a bit softer, pop-punk, their tightness and stage energy give a completely opposite impression. They sound strong, and with their ball-bearing musical delivery they prove you don’t need to overcomplicate the songwriting for the final musical substance to sound perfect.
They flirt with musical elements outside their home turf, with inventive instrumental touches in the playing itself and a sense of melody. Both the guitarist and the bassist have good vocal tones, balanced between sung melodies and punk-growled addresses to you, dear listener!
So, much like the trio formula of transoceanic Propagandhi and Blink 182, I get the feeling the guys are picking up that much-needed momentum a band needs at the start to somehow shake off the label of newcomer-debutant. I couldn’t say, though, how much an album helps with all that these days, in the basic “do-it-yourself” (D. I. Y.) spirit of independent (self-)publishing?
Naturally, as idol punks, they do care about the individual and the shackles he’s put in by today’s “system,” operating under the merciless guillotine of time. Money rules its own capitalist reign, living off organized crime, and We Are All Its Victim!
At moments in the singing, and in what I could roughly make out of the lyrics, you could also feel some personal, confessional lyricism as the main songwriting tool, that is, love songs. Luckily, or sadly for some, not too artsy-fartsy with sappy, “hit-style” musical backing.
With that loaded, attractive energy, toward the end of a dynamic yet steady and never boring set, somewhere around ten in the evening, they summoned at least their loyal followers, parents, brothers, sisters, girlfriends and friends included.
With over a hundred gigs played, they know how to serve things up. So they literally set the stage for the night’s main act, the guests from Udine, and a fitting finale to the event.
The Dalton brothers from Udine kept you entertained
Shortly after eleven, the guests took the stage at Orto. Just from the lineup, a sax player and two brass players on top of the classic rock-quartet setup, it was clear we were in for a more ska-flavored, party-style set, and we weren’t wrong.
The guys go historically right into that end/beginning of the millennium, when they were high schoolers who soon recorded their first EP Pet Friends, which after live shows sold on cassette in a whole 500 copies. They’ve got two full albums, EMOTIVHATE (Wynona/Sin/Rockhit rec.) and Drink it yourself (Ammonia rec.), and over three hundred gigs across more or less all of Central Europe, and you can see and hear it, with full ear and eye.
In the musical manner of American ska-punkers Mad Caddies, they don’t leave the listener indifferent, and that’s quite a compliment these days. The obligatory breaks between songs are reserved for the singer and frontman and his natural, typically Italian way of communicating/bonding.
When thanking the organizer and fellow acts, the local phrases “Hvala!” and “Na zdravje!” give them the most (pronunciation) trouble (well, I’ll be darned!), but the seven from Udine (four of the seven, thanks to glasses and height, lined up from smallest to tallest, look like the Dalton brothers) can’t be thrown off by anything.
It all starts with a good musical foundation in the rhythm section. The wind/brass trio builds on top of it strongly, with just one racing punk guitar. In the ska songs especially, there’s no shortage of hardcore-hearted, one-minute song bombs either, where I let myself get carried off into the front, more “dance-and-push” part of the crowd.
In style, they thank Ljubljana with a cover at just the right spot in the set, Rock around the clock by Bill Haley from way back in 1956, and right at midnight, orderly and disciplined, they wrap up the “revived” drunk-punk event.
Thanks to Umazani Dihurji, we drunk-punk regulars have risen from the dead again, truly, thank you!, at least for that moment that makes a person happy. And since the next event of this kind is coming up soon, this weekend, from now on we’ll be rising from the dead weekly, zombie-style.
Photo gallery
