Special for “Politics”
By the time 1984 had already begun, we were all waiting to see if Orwell’s prediction would come true. Nothing. We lived better than ever, we all became famous even though we hadn’t even turned 25. Moca decided to leave “Corba”, who remembers that in the cult “Rockenroller”, a few years ago, he recorded his old thing “Let me go, friend”. Five of them in black suits and, as it were, being detained by the police.
I don’t remember whether it was raining or the sun was shining, Marx and Engels Square was full of people, we all came to see what the first concert of “Bajaga and Instructors of Positive Geography” would be like. The LP was good, positive, cheerful, different from everything he had played before.
And on April 21, 1984, around 8 p.m., the whole band was at the door. They shake hands with the audience, the truth is that a third of us were partners. Žika, an excellent pantomimist and actor of “Teatra levo”, smeared his face with a white mask, pulls out a megaphone, and calls out to the musicians from the darkness of the large hall of the House of Unions. Man, Cornelius on keyboards, where is he from at the concert. And Vlajko, Cvele, Nele, Deša and Bajaga arrive in order, from the keyboards just the introduction to “Let me go, friend”… A concert like no other. Žika uses all his theatrical jokes and introduces each new song. We were delighted. Well done, Moco, congratulations, we never liked that you played with Boro.
Forty years later, I step on the gravel of the excavated Nikola Pašić Square. I want to know why they broke it. It’s pouring with November rain, even though it’s April, it’s cold, and I have a hat. We are smoking a pipe, Goranka Matić (photographer, author of the cover), Moma Rajin, music critic and I, we remember, as penzos already remember, how it was forty years ago. The rain is persistent, more and more of our guys are arriving, Gile, Cane, Firči… Once a rocker, always a rocker.
In the dark, on the square, the return to 1984 begins. “Positive geography”, songs that were never played again, hits that the whole hall sings. Only two of them remained from that line-up, Žika and Bajag. Lockner was in the army that year, now he plays better than ever, the tone, maturity and technology, I’m excited. A new line-up of “Instructors” is slowly coming on stage. Everyone under 50 doesn’t know how lucky they are. At the end, Momčilo Bajagić Bajaga passes through the audience. A teenager with long hair, he always sat on the last bench of the bus on excursions and played the guitar, never sang. We were at graduation, and he was the guitarist of “Riblje chorba”. We didn’t approve of him, but he knew he would be a musician. He also enrolled in university, so as not to go to the army, and made money with “Corba”. Today, he is the biggest pop-rock author in the region, people fall in love with his songs, his songs are played on excursions, in the diaspora… Wherever there are our people, when he sings, his songs are sung. He still remains himself, a shy boy who plays the guitar, is flirted with by his girlfriends, and he pretends to be crazy, he is permanently in love with his friend from the bench, but she has a boyfriend.
The concert this April 21 in the “MTS hall” is impossible to express in words. It was the energy, the communication between them and us, Žika in his element, the announcements were brilliant, they played… so they’ve been playing for forty years, everything flows without a second of pause. In the audience, probably a third of the same people from then, now all “60 plus”. “When you walk, you don’t stop”, his first big hit, and he always sang it better than Bora. It is this emotion of his that is driven by that warm bass, a voice that directly hits the cerebellum – and the end.
The concert was, what today would be called a copy-paste of his first and theirs, because he wouldn’t be what he is if they, his band, didn’t accompany him. From Kornelij Kovač, who pushed him to start a solo career, to these new guys, whose names I haven’t remembered yet. The end was like an excursion, “All you need is love”. Yes mate, you’re right – all we need is love. Thank you for all the wonderful music and words that you so skillfully combine into songs. I am glad that you graduated from Zemunska in the Second Belgrade High School in Zeleni venc and that I had the opportunity to stand with you on stage from the age of 15. You sang, I never did. You’re still on stage, I hung the microphone on a peg, I’m waiting for us to meet at Kališa, or at Zemunski Quay, feed the pigeons and play a game of dominoes. You played thousands of concerts, but the first one and the last one will remain recorded as a mastery of music, song, dance. Way to go, buddy.
