Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Pankrti
Label: Strela Records
Release: 2016
Running time: 76:09
Rating: 4/5
Who in the Balkans doesn’t know Pankrti, and who (the heck) are these people? The band that changed the face of Slovenian rock’n’roll forever and left its mark across the wider space of the former Yugoslavia was, between 1977 and 1987, the spark behind a proper new wave hurricane. With their mocking punk rock gallows humor, they handed out soul absolutions to the working class of the day, which (bowing to the elites) only rarely saw anything other than a grayness squashed into shape by the old self-management system.
Let’s skip ahead twenty years! Whether Slovenia has really become free in the meantime is a story for another time, but the memories of 2007 are still very much alive, because that’s when Pankrti announced their reunion and played an unforgettable 30th anniversary show at a sold-out Hala Tivoli. Shortly before that, the freshly released live record »Svoboda ’82« (recorded on November 5, 1982, at Dom Svobode in Šentvid) had stirred up quite a bit of dust in the Slovenian music scene, a genuine imprint of the band’s live essence in their early days.
Another ten years are about to turn over, and it will be 40 years since the band was formed. In the last nine years they’ve played a handful of sporadic shows, but the guys haven’t gotten around to recording any new original material. Still, with the fortieth birthday approaching, the band announced a big concert at Arena Stožice for October 20, 2017! And to make sure the promo push really sticks, Pankrti put out another live document almost a year before the Stožice »gala« show, this one coming from their performance on August 7, 2010, in Serbia, at Belgrade’s Kalemegdan (Belef). It’s meant to tease the music public effectively for nearly a year in advance and prepare the ground so that the show at Stožice Arena sells out and fills up to the last corner.
The Kalemegdan concert is basically a cross-section of the band’s biggest hits, and with the iconic Pero Lovšin up front, they don’t hold back on their mockingly homegrown roaring, droning and generally poetic vulgarisms of pure Slovenian stock as they chew through the most prominent works of their career. It’s a bit annoying that the pauses between songs are cut, and you can also sense that this recording doesn’t carry the entire concert onto the audio format. It’s pretty suspicious that the record is missing, for example, Osmi dan, Gospodar and Umazane Igre, which belong to the mandatory iron repertoire of every Pankrti show.
And yet. The album »Totalna revolucija« is a must for all fans of the legendary punk rock outfit and everything that smells of alternative rock squashed into the Slovenian space, and across the geographic area of the former common country too. Why? Because the band added two songs to the tail end of the live recording that never appeared on any studio album or compilation. Those are Slovan and Adijo Ljubljana, which date back to 1986 and were released that year (on seven-inch vinyl) by the label Jugoton. Later reissues, all the way up to the album »Totalna revolucija«, never included them. Rumor has it that most copies of this little vinyl record were destroyed after release, and that at most forty, maybe fifty copies were saved. I can’t tell you the real reason, but there was apparently some disagreement over copyright usage.
If we circle back to the album »Totalna revolucija« to wrap up these lines, judging by the substance of the live recording it’s easy to conclude that Pankrti show absolutely no signs of dulling their ravenous punk rock teeth. Even in their later years! The older, the crazier! The saying holds true, at least when it comes to stage execution. Even though, hand on heart, we’re talking about well-off gentlemen sprawled out in safe conformity today, and the words provocation and revolution sound distant, foreign and even bizarre.
One more thing. Pankrti are reportedly recording a new original song, and the album »Totalna revolucija« will get a vinyl reissue next year. All other words are redundant, see you at the announced October revolution at Stožice next year!
Pankrti – Slovan (A-side of the little vinyl record and single “Slovan”, 1986)
Lineup
PANKRTI – “Kalemegdan Live 2010”:
Pero Lovšin – vocals, harmonica
Bogo Pretnar – guitar
Bojan Babič – guitar
Boris Kramberger – bass
Slavko Colnarič – drums
PANKRTI – “Himna Slovana” 1986:
Pero Lovšin – vocals, harmonica
Bogo Pretnar – guitar
Marc Kavaš – guitar
Boris Kramberger – bass
Slavko Colnarič – drums
Production
Sad
Tracklist
1. Zekapank
2. Lepi in prazni
3. Jest sem na liniji
4. Sedemnajst
5. Kdo so ti ljudje
6. Anarhist
7. Metka
8. Živ spomenik neumnosti
9. Greva drugam
10. Punca ne še umret
11. Zastave v prvem planu
12. Za železno zaveso
13. Vodja
14. Totalna revolucija
15. Lublana je bulana
16. Zvečer v mestu
17. Zadnja ljubezenska pesem
18. Bandiera Rossa
19. Slovan*
20. Adijo Ljubljana*
*…. little vinyl record released as a single in 1986
