MARS Festival Round Two, Headlined by Skunk Anansie! (2010)

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Venue: Gospodarsko razstavišče / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: May 26, 2010
Attendance: 2000
Ticket price: €29.00 (presale) / €36.00 (day of show)

This year’s MARS festival, an event watched over by the hawk eye of the Dallas record label, got a repeat of last year’s premiere. That’s how it’s turning into a regular fixture of Slovenia’s concert calendar, and that’s a good thing. Last year only local and Croatian acts took the stage, but this time the festival moved up a whole level. The organizer invited a bigger name on the rock map, one whose body of work stands tall around the world. Skunk Anansie, comeback kids of the global rock scene who closed ranks after eight years of hibernation and hit the road to earn their bread, were an excellent choice. The band recently put out a greatest hits collection, with the songs re-recorded in the studio. A comeback tour followed. The band already played its first leg across Europe last November, and this time they squeezed in a few May dates ahead of a string of festival gigs running through this summer.

But the time between eight in the evening and one in the morning(!) went to showcasing acts tightly tied to Dallas in one way or another. First onstage were four girls. They’re called Mlade kuzle and they’re the heirs to the legacy of Idrija punk rockers Kuzle. The latter surprised absolutely everyone when, after releasing the album “Še pomnite tovariši?” (2010), they decided they’d never play live again. But they handed out every permission to use and perform their original material to four young ladies, who started warming up the sparse crowd, which had more or less just “wandered” into the hall, in broad daylight. The set was a recap of “Še pomnite tovariši?”, and the girls rolled out song after song starting with Moja generacija. Dolled-up teenagers who summed up the off-the-rack look of today’s alternative bands, they smelled more of baking powder than of the cocky, boozy breath of punk debauchery. But that’s today’s generation. Better they play rock than we listen to rapid-fire recitals over a backing track. You can tell the girls are new on the scene and don’t yet fully own big stages. They’re very static and pretty dull as a stage presence. Still, the girls showed plenty of guts in stepping into the originals’ shoes, and with their courage they confidently cruised through the classic catalog of the legends of Idrija punk.

As for the sound, no need to stress that the hall at the Gospodarsko razstavišče is the last place in Ljubljana where a concertgoer would want to hear a gig. The sound is always bad, thanks to the dreadful acoustics of the space. You can only choose between bad, worse, and worst. Even the huge black curtain at the back of the stage failed to save the day. And the quieter the act is tuned in this hall, the harder it is for a proper sound picture to carry from the stage to listeners deeper in the room. When Kuzle played, only the front row and a few lost photographer souls could hear them properly, and those had their brain centers focused on anything but listening to music. Well, that was enough too. Like I said, most of the audience was paying attention to other “priorities” during this stretch.

Around nine o’clock the newly discovered, cheerful alt rock stalwarts Eskobars bounded onstage. Cheerful. That’s how it is these days. Toss in a little salsa, funk the whole thing up, and send the horses galloping. The guys turn their idea of rock ‘n’ roll completely into a joke, and that’s actually what saves them, because the whole point of rock is fun! Musically they bring nothing new or special, nothing that would pique the curiosity of anyone looking for more demanding arrangements. This is music for the young generation, for everyone who wakes up for the first time in their life around two in the afternoon with a monster hangover. They embody the hedonism and debauchery of our society. Eskobars are built for direct fire, with no detours into complication. Their approach is clear. Pep, energy and fun! The guys are nuts about girls of Germanic descent, which the cheeky Girls From Klagenfurt doesn’t hide, but their hats weren’t inherited from Beatsteaks. Nor from the Colombian mafia, for that matter.

The jump to a higher level of the festival came with Damir Urban and his backing band. The name Urban & 4 is understandable almost anywhere, but for those of us from the former Yugoslavia the story behind it says more. Damir Urban is today’s thoroughly upgraded incarnation of everything this excellent musician laid out with the unforgettable and, sadly, long-buried Rijeka alternative band Laufer. That the festival climbed a few notches in quality from here on is confirmed not only by the great qualities of the performer who took the stage, but by the fact that Urban & 4 were the first act to fill the area in front of the stage. The performance confirmed that there are plenty of followers of this band in the audience. They loudly sang along with the singer’s verses and gave the band back its energy with real devotion. Urban & 4 released the excellent new studio record “Hello!” last year, which deepened the artistry of Damir Urban’s one-of-a-kind creative spirit even further. His low-to-mid-range, penetrating, suggestive, warm, velvety vocal is today dressed in the prestigious garb of refined arrangements, dictated by Damir Urban’s perfectionism. The art rock that defines his music certainly hides a strong whiff of the post-punk era of the second half of the eighties, which Urban & 4 have tamed and tailored into a quality jigsaw of their own original uniqueness. The dulled yet hypnotically tinted mood of the guitar, writhing through the wound-up sustain of single-note, howling melodies in the manner of the likes of Simple Minds, leaves enough open space for the dynamically pulsing bass guitar to bite into with its melodic shape. The rhythms are simple and set up to get you moving immediately. A special moment of the set was of course the Laufer classic Moja voda, which had the whole hall losing its mind. It was done in a half-cabaret staging with Damir (naturally) front and center and a piano accompaniment, which we were finally able to hear, in otherwise extremely poor sound. Dio mene also drew more pulsing energy back from the audience, and the “black charismatic phantom” and his crew wrapped up a substantial concert, full of atmosphere, with the classic Astronaut from the 1996 debut “Otrovna kiša”.

Dan D need no special introduction. They’re a firmly rooted quintet of the Slovenian mainstream. Dan D are among those who managed to take an alternative approach and bring it, through their take on rock, so close to Slovenes that there’s hardly a hero left who doesn’t breathe Dan D. The masses flock to their shows and Dan D are reaping success after success. They trimmed the set list to an hour and a quarter of stage time and arranged the songs as a kind of “best of”. The interesting realization, though, was that they didn’t get the kind of madness out of the crowd that Urban & 4 did. That shows that a loyal base of Urban fans made it to the MARS festival in Ljubljana too, and they kind of went quiet during Dan D. Hand on heart, Dan D were justified at MARS only as a magnet of general popularity, there to help sell as many tickets as possible. With their musical approach they simply don’t belong in front of Skunk Anansie. But let’s get back to their performance. The guys play a ton and are phenomenally tight stage performers. Tokac, with the recognizable voice that was laid in his cradle, doesn’t even need much chatter between songs to stay noticeable onstage. The tousle-haired, fair-haired guy with the melancholy gaze once again did his job with confidence. Dan D also delivered the best concert sound up to that point. We could even hear the keyboards from the stage. In Dan D’s hands, though, it would have been far more exciting to hear covers of some other Slovenian acts, rather than Niet of all things. Say, the godfathers of Slovenian metal, Lenih kosti! The band’s very static stage presence could have used a bit more concert adrenaline fever, and then some.

We waited for Skunk Anansie until ten past one in the morning. But the hour didn’t matter. Almost the whole crowd finally rolled into the hall. Some 2000 heads. In the front rows especially, the “girls” screamed deliriously and uncontrollably. Up front it was properly wild. But alternative rockers would be nowhere without singer Skin. She’s a one-of-a-kind singer who inherited the best thing a voice dropped into rock music can inherit. If Whitney Houston were a punk, she’d be listening to Skunk Anansie. And on top of that Skin is a completely wild stage beast who can barely stand still. She’s being torn to pieces across the stage. The woman snarls furiously, roars, and with her elastic facial expressions sometimes looks like a real little vampire who’s come to drink blood. Steely stares with the whites of her eyes aimed straight ahead, lurking with a snarling set of teeth. Nibbling on the ears of her bandmates. All of it is a well-rehearsed, carefully studied part of the stage act with which Skunk Anansie get the crowd eating out of their hand, no strings attached, in an instant.

The quartet rolled from song to song without talking to the crowd, and at times you had the feeling that, thanks to the singer’s extraordinary charisma and her authoritative, dominant singing, the band ought to be renamed from Skunk Anansie to “Skin & 3”. Explosiveness. That’s the permanent address of singer Skin, aka Deborah Dyer!

The audience proved it hadn’t forgotten Skunk Anansie in the years the band was resting. Especially in the area below the stage and about 10 meters deep, it fanatically backed the band with screaming and by belting out the verses at full volume. The band, which should soon release a new studio album, put three entirely new songs on “Smashes And Thrashes”, the release that gave the tour called “The Gratest Hits Tour” its reason to exist. Of those, in the greatest hits selection at the Ljubljana show we got to hear Because Of You early on and (a little unexpectedly, in the encore) Squander.

Skunk Anansie’s extraordinary stage presence, whose persuasiveness was deepened further by an outstanding lighting show and the play of the spotlights, was countered by the band’s less successful attempt to hide that they’d come only to collect the money. The regular set ended after just an hour onstage. Later Skin managed a few sentences, which smelled of nothing but a callous buying of the crowd’s affection. “We really like your city” and similar platitudes sound truly chewed over. Especially given the very likely fact that by tomorrow Skunk Anansie no longer knew what Slovenia is, where it even lies, or what its capital is. The band did finish the show in a hugely impulsive way. They pulled it off easily, since with the form, power and charm of Skin’s voice, nobody needs to worry about failing to win the crowd over through the ears. In the heartfelt, devoted Secretly, Skin rounded off a spectacular vocal performance with vehemence, and despite the short and routine set,  it could hardly leave anyone in the hall indifferent. An hour and twenty minutes, and the revelry with Skunk Anansie was over.

And so ended the first day of the two-day MARS festival 2010 tour. The next day a recap of the event followed in Croatia (Zagreb). The event was a success. A few criticisms fly only at the acoustics of the venue. But Križanke, which would be ideal for something like this, was taken by the impregnated “heroin look” hero of the yuppies, Maksim Mrvica. Well, Križanke for MARS again next year. We’ll be patient. Let’s hope the festival’s lineup grows another notch by next year.

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Setlist

DAN D: 1. Čakamo 2 Rožice 3. Počasi 4. Barve 5. Roke 6. Love Song 7. Sun Sun 8. Lep dan za smrt 9. Sirenia 10. Jutranja 11. Voda 12. Plešeš 13. Moj problem 14. Čas SKUNK ANANSIE: 1. Intro (Yes, It’s F*cking Political) 2. Selling Jesus 3. Charlie Big Potato 4. Because of You 5. Charity 6. 100 Ways to Be a Good Girl 7. I Can Dream 8. I Don’t Want To Kill You 9. Weak 10. Brazen (Weep) 11. Twisted (Everyday Hurts) 12. Cheap Honesty 13. On My Hotel TV 14. Tear The Place Up 15. The Skank Heads —encore I.— 16. Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good) 17. Squander 18. Little Baby Swastikkka —encore II.— 19. Secretly

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