Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.04.2015
Attendance: 60
As part of this year’s traditional edition of Ortofest, Zoran Čalić stepped onto the Orto bar stage, the former guitarist of the Croatian band Majke and the well-known guitar player of Big Foot Mama. He recently formed his own band and started writing original material. Definitely worth checking out, then.
At ten in the evening the scene looked pretty sad. A dozen people were huddled in a cluster by the bar, and otherwise the place was absolutely empty. By ten forty a few more people had trickled in, so let’s say the room was 40% full, in a venue that holds 200 people at most.
Zoran Čalić, who took on lead vocals on top of guitar, strode onto the stage with a youthful swagger, backed by a crew led by the excellent guitarist Andraž Mazi (guitar, steel pedal), drummer Ivo Rimc and bassist Jernej Kržič. The band hit us with a bundle of original material, which was heavily represented in the set, with more than half of the songs played. Čalić’s souped-up, “crunchy,” raw rock’n’ roll guitar tone drowned out Mazi’s Firebird in volume for most of the show, so the two guitars were nowhere near equal in the mix, which was a shame. Mazi filled many of the rhythm lines with extra chords and little flourishes, which left Zoran freer to focus more on the vocals. The band showed great chemistry with the classic vintage stage gear (guitars, bass, amps), and built a truly greasy rock’n’ roll sound, which sadly wasn’t fully optimized in the sound mix. The group is young, but made up of experienced musicians who know their way around a stage. You could feel it in the remarkable confidence with which they played the set.
The original material is loaded with real rock’n’ roll mojo, and the garage-style, raw sound combined with the vocals adds a noticeable punk veil to the whole story. Čalić also draws plenty of his phrases from blues roots. Thoroughly raunchy rock’n’ roll erotica that hits you straight on and right off the bat, “square in the forehead, goofy style.” Already in the first half of the show there was a feeling in the air that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It wasn’t hard to link the band’s original repertoire to the work of the famous Majke. So the band went on to play a bundle of songs by those rock’n’ roll usurpers from Vinkovci (in the order Dolazi noč, Sam, Želim da te vidim), which surely delighted the heap of fans of that band’s character and work who gathered at Orto bar that evening. Čalić and the crew then surprised us with covers of two interesting artists who left an indelible mark with their output on the music scene of the former Yugoslavia. The first is the legendary Croatian musician Drago Mlinarec, who started his career in the early sixties of the last century. Čalić dedicated a performance of the song Pjesme s planina to him. The second cover was a take on the original of the song Kao stranac by the extravagant Josipa Lisac. The band played both songs in the glow of a hard rock mantra, in harmony with the group’s basic musical direction, and closed the show with two originals.
Despite a few slip-ups during the show that crept into Čalić’s choice of chords, especially while singing the verses, and despite the sound not being at its best, the band presented its musical vision very convincingly and stirred up a lot of curiosity about what the upcoming studio debut will bring. The steel pedal definitely drew special attention on stage, with which Andraž Mazi embellished individual motifs in the songs. Between songs, Čalić also entertained the crowd with short stories about how individual songs came about, adding a pinch of innate black humor. In short, yet another hugely fun and honest rock’n’ roll night at Orto bar!
Setlist
1. Samo ljubav
2. Sjaj u noči
3. Kako ostat čovjek
4. Sjene / Preduga ljubav
5. Put
6. Ruku mi daj
7. U moru i plamenu
8. Dolazi noč
8. Sam
10. Želim da te vidim
11. Pjesme s planine
12. Kao stranac
13. Iz daljine
14. Bilo je davno
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