Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Koper / Figa Rock Bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 19.04.2014
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 4,00€
What goes down well after one round of Šinobusi? Another round of Šinobusi. The quintet had left a stellar impression the night before at Ljubljana’s Zlati zob club – RockLine report HERE – and the devil gave me no peace until I went to catch one more of the five confirmed shows on the mini Slovenian tour of these wonderful, out-of-nowhere blues rock heroes from Novi Sad, Serbia.
This time the target was a new gig in Vanganel near Koper, more precisely at the club Figa Rock Bar. The clock had struck well past half nine in the evening when I stumbled through the tent canvas into the heart of the club. Local veterans Frišni Burek were happily raising hell there, treating the crowd to a whole pleiad of covers from a wide-ranging genre palette (from Motörhead to Depeche Mode – and everything in between).
Around 100 heads gathered in total (outside the club and inside). Šinobusi stepped onto a far smaller stage than the one at Ljubljana’s Zlati zob, but that was nowhere near enough to give them any trouble. Bassist Predrag, for instance, found his solution by using the side railing as a seat, which gave Milan, Nenad and Gile an extra square meter of space at the front of the stage. The energy and feelings this show left, compared to the Ljubljana one the day before, made for a different experience. Above all, you instantly felt that Šinobusi are first and foremost a club band. This time they relaxed completely, stretched out to the max, and needed only a pinch of warm-up to cast their spell on a crowd that soon started eating out of their hands. If the audience at Ljubljana’s Zlati zob the day before was made up of mellow visitors looking to spice up their evening romance, mostly nicely »coupled up,« this time at Figa Rock Bar Šinobusi were greeted by a guard of proper rockers. The band knows Figa Rock Bar very well. They have fond memories of past gigs at the venue, and they certainly couldn’t forget it thanks to the great selection of excellent beers, which they kept singing real hymns of praise to between songs during the show.
Given the type of venue, Šinobusi tweaked the setlist a bit. In the first part they shuffled the order of older songs from the repertoire of their first three studio records and slipped in a few more covers to heat up the rocker souls in the club! They trimmed down the part of the setlist that presents the new album »Nebo od skaja« (2013), and surprised above all with some covers you’d never expect. Right at the start, an excellent rework of the Big Sugar hit Diggin’ A Hole got everyone on their feet, followed by Taxman by The Beatles, with Nenad taking over lead vocals, and a »progressively« branching Miss You by The Rolling Stones. In the first part Šinobusi played a nice bundle of songs from the album »Nekad Jurimo Kroz Polja, A Nekad Stojimo U Stanicama« (2005), including the instrumental In the Bottle, which they didn’t play in Ljubljana the day before. From the album »U Pravcu Jablanova« (2007) they played the opening Moje ruke sada su ptice, Bluz je đavo and Čamac na Tisi, plus the excellent instrumental Prašina in the closing stretch, while from the album »Vagon za provetravanje tunela« (2010) came Super Bejbe (played twice, once more in the final part of the show), Ravnodušna pesma, Ja moram da te vidim što pre and Mirna Bačka.
The band once again confirmed their exceptional cohesion and top-notch tightness. The sound of both guitars, and especially Nenad’s solos, takes your breath away. Milan is excellent too on his »Chris Rea« Stratocaster, and then there’s Predrag, the incredibly »elastic« bassist when it comes to laying down melodies, the cannon-like drummer Đorđe, and of course 21-year-old »wunderkind« Gile with his harmonica work. The group is held together by extraordinary heart and devotion to the music they create and perform. Everything revolves around a hugely expressive figure embodied in Milan Korač’s poetry. The soulful, fully invested singer, with his charismatic presence and gorgeous vocal timbre, is a chapter of his own, but this kind of interpretation only gets its true value once it’s embraced by the unique musical format of Šinobusi.
During a short break the guys set up the keyboards, which Nenad later sat behind, and the next stretch of the show was all about the newest material from the album »Nebo od skaja« – RockLine review HERE, considered the band’s most mature work to date. The high point of the evening came with the closing run of superb renditions of some rock evergreens, which thrilled one after another. The band played, for instance, Whipping Post by The Allman Brothers Band, The Cent Pistol by Black Keys, then Sympathy For The Devil (The Rolling Stones), the blues standards Going Down (Dan Nix) and Got My Mojo Working (Muddy Waters), and added one more brilliant cover right at the tail end of the show, Children Of Sanchez (orig. Chuck Mangione). And of course they didn’t forget the band’s great friend Slaven Kalebić, a splendid master of blues guitar from Mojo Hand, a band we all know well (in which Nenad from Šinobusi now plays too). With Slaven on stage again, just like the day before in Ljubljana, Šinobusi played a rustic blues train number and of course loosened it up thoroughly with solo escapades.
Another outstanding show from a fantastic band, who still had the grand finale in Izola waiting for them the next day, which the guys hinted would be the peak of the tour. Apparently it really was. After the show we hung out backstage with the band for a while, where Slaven entertained the small crowd on a folk guitar, and Nenad used the occasion to hint that Šinobusi could someday play the whole album »Argus« (1972) by Wishbone Ash without any trouble – RockLine review HERE! If time disappeared, Šinobusi would just play and play and play. A band that never runs out of big heart and positive energy. A quintet of exceptionally upbeat top-class musicians, always up for a laugh, who we hope come back to Slovenia as soon as possible and delight us with another concert spectacle like this one. For a handful of euros you get a one-of-a-kind concert adventure, a solid two and a half hours long, after which you’re left speechless and know just one thing. Even if the show had lasted five hours, it would still have been too short. Šinobusi are so »shockingly« convincing in everything they take on onstage that you simply can’t get tired of them.
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