Location: Ljubljana / Nebotičnik / Slovenia
Interview date: September 14, 2012
Parni Valjak, the legendary Zagreb rock band that broke new ground back in the days of former Yugoslavia in 1975, took a four-year break in 2005 after an enviable career. Since coming back in 2009 they’re still one of the hottest live tickets around, regularly filling the biggest halls, and not just in Slovenia but across the rest of the former Yugoslavia too. The Balkans are theirs. They were, and they still are. At the end of last year the band released a new album, »Stvarno nestvarno«, and have already been presenting it successfully on stages this year. For this late summer and early fall, they decided to put together a special acoustic tour, which has brought them back to Ljubljana and to the announced show at Križanke on September 22, 2012.
To go with the event, the band also held a press conference, where they laid out a bunch of the most important news from their camp. The press conference got pushed back by a day at the last minute. Parni Valjak had to do this because of the unexpected death of one of guitarist Marijan Brkić – Brko’s closest family members. The band attended the funeral service and so showed their full support for their grieving bandmate, and the day after, a foursome made it to Ljubljana’s Nebotičnik: Husein Hasanefendić – Hus, Aki Rahimovski, Zorislav Preksavec – Preksi and Berislav Blažević – Bero.
The guys each took their own seat at the long tables lined up in a row. Behind them stood a huge backdrop with a giant Parni Valjak.net on it, and below that an even bigger band logo…..
“How will you put together the setlist for the show announced for September 22, 2012 at Križanke?”
Hus: This time it’s an acoustic show, and the setlist is tailored to that. Some of you probably still remember when we did an acoustic tour before, the one that gave us the album »Bez struje – Live in ZeKaEm«, which was a big hit in Slovenia. If my memory serves, it went gold over there. Since then, we’ve written a lot of songs that are made in a way that an acoustic performance suits them best. Of course, that live album is the starting point for this acoustic tour, but the setlist will definitely be different this time. And you really feel that, now that we’re taking on the material acoustically, everything sounds even more mature than it used to. More intense too, if you like. I’m talking about the audience’s reactions and how they respond during the shows, which are special and intense. We feel that same sense of a more mature stage interpretation ourselves when we play the songs from the setlist acoustically these days.
“How do you approach creative challenges today?”
Hus: Well, in this time we’ve kind of stepped into a parallel world, the one we call the internet. Besides playing live regularly, we made an album in virtual form. The album is called »Stvarno nestvarno«. We already presented it in Ljubljana on the previous tour. On top of that, we offered people a free download of the album. So every concert ticket had a code on it, and with it you could get the album as a download from the internet. But we figured out that maybe we got ahead of our time. That the time just isn’t ripe for moves like that yet. Maybe people themselves weren’t ready for something like that, or ready to accept this offer from us, as much as we first expected. Anyway, an enviable chunk of our audience did “grab” the album from the internet, while the rest of our audience stayed undefined about it and didn’t say anything. So, they didn’t speak up about this move of ours, which is why we don’t know whether that part of our audience likes it or not. That’s why we decided to release the album »Stvarno nestvarno« again, before the end of this year. For that purpose we’re preparing extra new material, which we’ll add to the existing one, the one currently on our official website as an internet download. So this new version of the album will be expanded, with a nice little pile of newly added songs on it. New songs.
“So you’re always keeping track of how your audience reacts?“
Hus: Yes. Absolutely. What’s essential for us is to keep up with the times. We know people are used to our classics, but we still have to offer the audience new stuff too, so we have to record new albums, play new songs, develop. We can’t allow ourselves to get stuck in time, in the past. Even though we’ve been on the scene for so many years, we have a freshly redesigned official website, and we’re also very active on social networks like Facebook, where we’ve already got around 180,000 fans.
“Parni Valjak are a big name in Croatia, in Slovenia and also further south in the Balkans. How far does your drive to spread your name geographically go? Where else in Europe would you like to break through, if that drive exists?”
Hus: As far as the former Yugoslavia goes, we in Parni Valjak have had exceptional success. Not long ago we sold out the Beogradska Arena twice in a row, filled Sava Centar to the last corner five times in a row, and that’s only counting the acoustic shows. Then Zetra in Sarajevo was packed, and there was the show in Pula,…
Aki:… Novi Sad…
Hus:… right now things are going even better for us in these regions than ever before. Our wish, actually, given the current situation even our obligation, which we’re striving to make happen, is to break through these barriers and try to expand the market. It turned out that Western Europe reacts very well to what we offer, too. Maybe joining the European Union is an opportunity. In short, we have goals and ambitions in this area, that’s for sure.
“What do you attribute the popularity you’re enjoying in Slovenia these days to?”
Hus: Well, let’s say the first factor is Aki. Aki is a guy who has fantastic emotion when he sings. That’s the universal moment. Sometimes it isn’t even important to make out the lyrics, or to understand every single word, and you still feel the emotion and the energy, because they come across so intensely. And we surely break down the barriers to the audience through our attitude to the music itself, because we enjoy what we do, even if that sounds like a worn-out cliché. The energy the band gives off definitely spills over to the audience, and in my opinion that’s the key.
>>>>A funny incident follows, set off by one of the questioning press conference attendees temporarily losing their bearings<<<<
The first such question from that attendee:
»Will the audience at the show also hear your biggest hits, not just the newer material?«
Hus: Absolutely. We often have big headaches when putting a setlist together. To satisfy every single fan of our music, we’d have to build a setlist that would run longer on stage than the average Bruce Springsteen concert. Our shows are long, sure, but we still can’t play everything. We have to play Jesen u meni, Dodji, Sve još miriše na nju, Lutka za bal,… it’s a compromise between what we have to play and what we want to play. And if we played the exact same setlist all the time, we’d start going around in circles, and people would get sick of it.
The second question from the same attendee (apparently he didn’t get a satisfying answer about the biggest hits):
»Like Suada or Od rodjendana, do rodjendana and so on…«
A few seconds of silence in the room follow, and the band members exchange glances.
Hus: Not quite, you can hear those at a Plavi Orkestar concert… I did produce Suada myself, but that’s Plavi Orkestar.
The third question from the same attendee:
»I guess it was Saša Lošić, who lives in Ljubljana now, who invited you to this show?«
Hus: I don’t know. All I know is that he lives in Ljubljana now, but I have no idea what he’s up to these days. We lost touch a long time ago. I was the producer of Plavi Orkestar’s debut, but I honestly don’t know what’s going on with them today, because at some point we lost contact.
The fourth question from the same attendee:
»Is it hard to get the lineup together for a tour if the band’s frontman is based in another country?«
This time the silence in the room goes on for quite a while, until the official PR staff of the concert and press conference organizer finally speak up:
»I think you’ve mixed up two bands?«
The expected reaction follows from the attendee who had asked the band those last four questions:
»W-w-did I say something wrong? Is something wrong with Saša Lošić?«
The official PR staff of the concert and conference organizer ask him soothingly:
»This isn’t the band Plavi Orkestar. This is the band Parni Valjak.«
>>>>After quite a few reactions from those present, noticeably dosed with laughter, things finally calm down and the press conference goes on as normal.<<<<
“What kinds of topics do the lyrics on the new album touch on?”
Hus: These days music has become a consumer good. Lots of artists try their luck at hitting the right formula for what would please the masses. We don’t follow that at all. On our new album you’ll find lyrics that come from our life experiences. They come from our contentment, as well as our discontent with the state we’re in these days. We’re living our dreams today too, just like we always have. And then it goes like this: reality often departs from those dreams. Or the dreams do come true. That’s where we draw inspiration from. The album title »Stvarno nestvarno« comes from the fact that we build our lives in dreams, because politics doesn’t let us and doesn’t allow us to materialize those dreams in this real world. This album is special because it isn’t calculated. It’s an album made with heart and soul, and with the risk that, in these times of extremely fast living, the audience might not understand its content. We have to be honest with ourselves, we have to follow what we’re convinced is right.
“Can we expect a new live album from you, given how much you’ve been playing live lately?”
Hus: I’m a guitarist myself and I’m totally deaf.
Everyone laughs
Hus: The release we’re planning before the end of the year is, as mentioned, a re-release of the album »Stvarno nestvarno«, which will include some newly added songs, and as a bonus most likely a DVD too, with inserts from our electric and acoustic shows. So that along with the new album people actually get a feel for who we are, what we are and what Parni Valjak have been doing over the last three years.
“Is there any plan to re-release your older studio albums, the ones from the eighties and the seventies too?”
Hus: You know, all of that is in the hands of the record labels. Given the crisis in Europe, it’s unlikely that anything like that will happen soon. Every now and then there have been reprints of albums in smaller runs, but those reissues sold out pretty quickly. All of our classic vinyl albums have come out on CD too, but the stock vanishes and then you can’t get them anywhere anymore. Most of the rights to our music are with Croatia Records, and they deal with these things sporadically. But all of this is surely connected, not only with the crisis of our time, but also with the decline of music publishing. Labels are falling, and what’s happening today reflects the labels’ inability to react in time to the challenges. The labels burned a lot of energy because, in the new era, music sales have moved almost entirely to the internet.
“What can we expect from your show at Križanke on September 22, 2012?”
Hus: We’re looking forward to this show. We haven’t played Križanke in a long time. I should also say that for this tour we aimed exclusively at venues that hold up to 3,000 or 4,000 people. No more. What happened at the Beogradska Arena was terrifyingly exhausting. And then five more shows in a row at Sava Centar. Aki really held up heroically. He was the one we feared for most, that his voice wouldn’t handle all the strain and wouldn’t last to the end. We really wouldn’t want to repeat that in the future.
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