Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Kamnik / Mali Grad / Slovenia
Concert date: 12.08.2015
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: €0.00 (free admission)
Antonije Pušić, or the »notorious« Rambo Amadeus, whichever you prefer, finally wandered into a small Slovenian town with one of the most beautiful old town centers still standing (if not the most beautiful), as part of this year’s Kamfest. Kamnik, that is. The incorrigible prankster with a brilliantly sharp mind and a huge spark presented his latest release, »Six Pack«, which collects his first five albums. Why five, if the title says six? »Because one is free«, says Rambo.
Over the years the man has developed his own musical approach to a unique genre fusion, which we can most simply label avant-garde jazz-rock fusion. It’s a seriously tough bone to gnaw on (unless you’re a »music gourmet«), and lately it pushes Rambo Amadeus’s famous poetic preaching even into the background.
Over the years Rambo has won strong support from Slovenian audiences, and this time too his show drew a great turnout: a good two hundred heads crammed onto the slope between the stage and the walls of Mali Grad. The crowd skewed a bit older, with even some families with small kids.
Rambo built the show up gradually in his trademark rambling style. The note of lucidity in his poetry grew by the minute, and among other things Rambo went looking for Sisyphus in Kamnik. Musically, he served up a dizzying jazz-rock fusion with an eclectic pedigree, in an avant-garde experimental excess. In the set, the instrumental side of the musical vision took the lead over the poetic one, so the band delivered a show that must have been tailor-made for every fan of bold, challenging musical oddness. The thunderously rumbling Rambo kept his eyes everywhere during the gig. On one side he had to keep entertaining the crowd nonstop, on the other he had to watch what his three buddies were doing on their instruments (keyboards, bass guitar, drums). There was no breather, and the unique mix of Balkan folk-ethno melos, blended into an avant-garde, provocative funk-rock jazz dossier, made it clear just how polished the individual players are and how tightly the quartet is locked in.
Of course, that heavy musical bone was supercharged with Rambo’s juicily seasoned, hard-hitting quips and a pile of dry jokes from the unique proving ground of famous Balkan mockery and singular black humor. In this thoroughly wacky show the band played, among others, the songs: Ljubičica, Fela Kuti, Druže stari, Guru Sizif, Prijatelju, Amerika i Engleska, Koliko je jedan?, Karakter, Sokolov greben, Šakom u glavu, FAP mašina, Jedno te isto and Čobane vrati se.
If you woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day, all you had to do was stroll up to Kamnik’s Mali Grad, where this extraordinary Montenegrin satirist and musical visionary and his crew were ready to put you in a good mood. Laugh after laugh, laugh on top of laugh. Non-stop!
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