Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Cutty Sark / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 11.06.2009
Attendance: 70
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)
Once again, luck had me wash up exactly where I needed to be. Luckily, a person is always surrounded by people. All kinds of people, but this time it was none other than the father of Slovenian music journalism himself, Dragan Bulič, who steered me to the right place at just the right moment. The occasion: the presentation of the album “Dobro Došlo” by the Ljubljana band Mestni postopači, in the Cutty Sark garden, carefully shielded from the whims of the weather by a white tent canvas that kept at bay the fear of the menacing black clouds, which huddled together, grinning rather unpleasantly, shortly after four in the afternoon.
After some “brainstorming” over snacks and devilishly spicy ribs, handed out politely to everyone present by head postopač Dejan himself, together with “Dobro Došlo” producer Grant Austin, the band stepped onto the “improvised” stage and kicked off the album presentation at around 4:35. That Mestni postopači are a crew of experienced, seasoned musicians hardly needs spelling out. Regular close collaborators of Adi Smolar, they play under the baton of Dejan, who with this new band has more or less picked up, carried over and built on the work from the days of Leteči potepuhi, Blues Brothers… They opened the show with the current single Ne živi za naprej, which may have stuck in someone’s memory, since it was voted Song of the Week on Val 202 in mid-May this year.
The guys entertained the crowd for about an hour, if not less, with an excellent mix of compact little songs, with a clear allegiance to blues, boogie rock and folk, which they of course know how to craft so cunningly that the songs come alive on stage just as effectively. Experience, know-how and talent keep flowing together through the humorous, sometimes stumbling verses of heartfelt lyrics about our everyday lives into the energy of the band’s music, which the day spent with them at Cutty Sark confirmed.
In the second half of the show the band first invited Klemen Tičar, the former vocalist of Leteči potepuhi, onto the stage, reviving two classic hits of that (sadly) prematurely buried band, Pojem blues and Bicikl. After that, a great friend of the band, Adi Smolar, joined in too, and the whole gang tore into Bog ne daj da bi crknu televizor.
Never mind that most of those present kept unwittingly turning their backs on the band, preferring to focus on food, drink and chatter. Never mind that the bulk of the media and the ever-annoying photographer turkeys had bolted, whether to the feast at the Lady magazine event in Volčji Potok and its Arboretum, or just to “quietly” charge their batteries for an evening with the musical masterminds of the human era, Dražen Zečić and Jasmin Stavros, in Ljubljana that same day. The idea of presenting “Dobro Došlo” this way is downright ideal, and a textbook example for other bands who might dream up something similar. You’re out in an open “shop window” of a space in the heart of Ljubljana, a horde of nosy passersby streams past you through the “Knafelj” passage, and any one of them could end up getting to know your music. It was a gorgeously lazy afternoon, one on which Slovenia got richer by one more interesting studio album, and an album about which RockLine will have something interesting to say too.
Setlist
1. Ne živi za naprej
2. Frizer
3. Vikend
4. Le mladost
5. Praznik
6. Kuharice so potrebne
7. Vsi mi govorijo
8. Pojem blues
9. Bicikl
10. Bog
11. Znoru
12. Balada
Photo Gallery
