SLO-PUNK 1977-1987: MAXIMUM IMPACT - Revision history

Diogooutra at 10:43, 19 June 2020

2020-06-19T10:43:58Z

Diogooutra at 15:43, 18 June 2020

2020-06-18T15:43:25Z

Diogooutra at 15:42, 18 June 2020

2020-06-18T15:42:54Z

Diogooutra at 15:41, 18 June 2020

2020-06-18T15:41:45Z

Diogo at 13:00, 4 November 2019

2019-11-04T13:00:20Z

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Diogo at 12:54, 4 November 2019

2019-11-04T12:54:37Z

Diogo at 15:20, 24 October 2019

2019-10-24T15:20:02Z

Diogo at 15:16, 24 October 2019

2019-10-24T15:16:04Z

Diogo at 15:09, 24 October 2019

2019-10-24T15:09:14Z

Diogo at 15:05, 24 October 2019

2019-10-24T15:05:38Z

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 IV: One can find nearly all their names in the line-ups of the first Novi Rock festivals from '81 to '84, which were basically punk fests. The bands were from all parts of Slovenia, like [[Indust-bag]] from a small southern border town - very young but well rehearsed with lucid industrial angst and punk redemption lyrics like “Throwaway Youth”, “Head Against Concrete”, “City Shadow” or their RŠ alter-hit “100dB”: “Metal curtain around the flesh/human organs grinded in a machine/automatic plastic lips …100dBs strangle me and put me up again…”.
-Then there were [[Gnile duše]] (Rotten Souls) from the rural region that were hilariously Ramonoid, as were [[Kuzle]] (Bitches), while [[Šun]]d (Pulp Fiction) were more ska-punk. Both were very young and from the same old mining town, with sharp socially critical and individualist lyrics, while [[CZD]] (Centre for Dehumanisation) from Maribor were a quasi-satirical proto-punk band with minimalist social-absurdist lyrics.
+Then there were [[Gnile duše]] (Rotten Souls) from the rural region that were hilariously Ramonoid, as were [[Kuzle]] (Bitches), while [[Šund]] (Pulp Fiction) were more ska-punk. Both were very young and from the same old mining town, with sharp socially critical and individualist lyrics, while [[CZD]] (Centre for Dehumanisation) from Maribor were a quasi-satirical proto-punk band with minimalist social-absurdist lyrics.
 [[File:Cia picke.jpg|thumb|Čao pičke album "Sonce V Očeh" cover, NE! Records, 2014]]

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 But the same goes also for many other bands at the time, so the army draft was really the scourge of Slovenian and Yugo punk - and a quite deliberate measure of the regime to harass and curb the punk movement when it realised, luckily too late, that it couldn't control it in the usual repressive ways. Because by then in early 80s it had become quite massive and very visible on Slovenian streets and on the graffited walls, with one of the pinnacles when punks “occupied” a small central Ljubljana square and re-named it “Johnny Rotten Square” - not with ordinary graffiti, but with enormous nearly unerasable grease-paint letters.
-The trigger of this explosion and boldness was firstly the success of the aforementioned Pankrti album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom) and the sold-out first Novi Rock festival in 8: the first wave were Kuzle, Šund, Indust-bag and [[Buldogi]] and then came [[Otroci socializma]], O!kult and [[Kuga]] in '82 - and then Grupa 92, [[Via Ofenziva]], [[Berlinski zid]] (Berlin wall), Gnile duše, Čao Pičke, [[CZA|Center za dehumanizacijo]] and other first post-Pankrtian-wave bands.
+The trigger of this explosion and boldness was firstly the success of the aforementioned Pankrti album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom) and the sold-out first Novi Rock festival in 8: the first wave were Kuzle, Šund, Indust-bag and [[Buldogi]] and then came [[Otroci socializma]], O!kult and [[Kuga]] in '82 - and then Grupa 92, [[Via Ofenziva]], [[Berlinski zid]] (Berlin wall), Gnile duše, Čao Pičke, [[CZD|Center za dehumanizacijo]] and other first post-Pankrtian-wave bands.
 '''Q: How come many of popular punk bands did not release anything at all?'''

@@ Line 74: / Line 74: @@
 But the same goes also for many other bands at the time, so the army draft was really the scourge of Slovenian and Yugo punk - and a quite deliberate measure of the regime to harass and curb the punk movement when it realised, luckily too late, that it couldn't control it in the usual repressive ways. Because by then in early 80s it had become quite massive and very visible on Slovenian streets and on the graffited walls, with one of the pinnacles when punks “occupied” a small central Ljubljana square and re-named it “Johnny Rotten Square” - not with ordinary graffiti, but with enormous nearly unerasable grease-paint letters.
-The trigger of this explosion and boldness was firstly the success of the aforementioned Pankrti album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom) and the sold-out first Novi Rock festival in 8: the first wave were Kuzle, Šund, Indust-bag and [[Buldogi]] and then came [[Otroci socializma]], O!kult and [[Kuga]] in '82 - and then Grupa 92, [[Via Ofenziva]], [[Berlinski zid]] (Berlin wall), Gnile duše, Čao Pičke, [[Center za dehumanizacijo]] and other first post-Pankrtian-wave bands.
+The trigger of this explosion and boldness was firstly the success of the aforementioned Pankrti album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom) and the sold-out first Novi Rock festival in 8: the first wave were Kuzle, Šund, Indust-bag and [[Buldogi]] and then came [[Otroci socializma]], O!kult and [[Kuga]] in '82 - and then Grupa 92, [[Via Ofenziva]], [[Berlinski zid]] (Berlin wall), Gnile duše, Čao Pičke, [[CZA|Center za dehumanizacijo]] and other first post-Pankrtian-wave bands.
 '''Q: How come many of popular punk bands did not release anything at all?'''

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 [[File:Paraf pankrti.jpg|thumb|Pankrti/Paraf split LP "Omladinac Postaje Čovjek..." - '77-'79 • Live Menza ŠN Ljubljana 1978 " cover, Rest in Punk, 2014]]There might have been punk bands in other communist countries (although not so early on), but we can safely say that none had such a large social and political impact - both immediate and long-term as Yugo/Slovenian punk. Yes, the impact was “just” local, but the indie-socialist Yugo was globally important as the first alternative to Soviet-type communism, although ultimately unsuccessful.
-Just one band wouldn't make much difference of course, but a wave of bands and a movement of street punks appeared soon after the '79-80 release of [[Pankrti]]’s first single “Lublana je bolana” (Ljubljana is Sick) by ŠKUC-Ropot Records - (reviewed at the time in Maximum Rock'n'roll and purchased by post by Jello Biafra) and the album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom). This was an autonomous D.I.Y. nation-wide movement outside the official “youth culture” or commercial pop. It literally “occupied” pubs and squares in major Slovenian towns, especially in the capital Ljubljana, where Radio Študent operated since 1969 as an independent radio - unique not only in the “communist world” but Europe-wide.
+Just one band wouldn't make much difference of course, but a wave of bands and a movement of street punks appeared soon after the '79-80 release of [[Pankrti]]’s first single “Lublana je bolana” (Ljubljana is Sick) by ŠKUC-Ropot Records - (reviewed at the time in Maximum Rock'n'roll and purchased by post by Jello Biafra) and the album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom). This was an autonomous D.I.Y. nation-wide movement outside the official “youth culture” or commercial pop. It literally “occupied” pubs and squares in major Slovenian towns, especially in the capital Ljubljana, where [[Radio Študent]] operated since 1969 as an independent radio - unique not only in the “communist world” but Europe-wide.
 As our interlocutor was a political journalist at RŠ from '70 till '74 and then from '78 onwards a punk/political show host, DJ and RŠ's punk recordings producer, the first question had to be about Radio Študent.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[File:Pankriti, LP Dolgcajt, 1980.jpg|thumb|Pankrti's "Dolgcajt" (1980) LP cover]]
+[[File:Pankriti, LP Dolgcajt, 1980.jpg|thumb|Pankrti's debut album "Dolgcajt" cover, ZKP RTV Ljubljana, ŠKUC, 1980]]
 ''The following is an excerpt of a July 2014 interview by I. Darko with [[Igor Vidmar]] entitled "SLO-PUNK 1977-1987: MAXIMUM IMPACT", originally published on MAXIMUM ROCK'N'ROLL #374.''
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-[[File:Pankrti back.jpg|thumb|Album cover for Pankrti's split LP with Paraf (Back)]]'''Q: How important was RŠ for the Slovenian punk explosion from '77 onwards?'''
+[[File:Pankrti back.jpg|thumb|Pankrti/Paraf split LP "Omladinac Postaje Čovjek..." - '77-'79 • Live Menza ŠN Ljubljana 1978 " cover, Rest in Punk, 2014]]'''Q: How important was RŠ for the Slovenian punk explosion from '77 onwards?'''
 I.V.:  Pankrti and the whole punk thing would probably come into being even without Radio Študent, as it also happened elsewhere in Yugo; but it could have remained a marginal underground phenomenon. It was precisely RŠ that made the first (but not only) difference - there was nothing like it in other parts of Yugoslavia, not to mention the Soviet block; as a matter of fact, I'm not sure if there was anything like that in continental Europe, pirate radios notwithstanding.
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 So instead of remaining at the margins, in the underground, Slovenian punk became a massively popular youth movement. The role of RŠ was in fact later recognised by Pankrti themselves. The autonomy, D.I.Y. and wider influence of punk was made possible by the real autonomy of the student radio- itself a “strange”, improbable phenomenon: it came into being when a group of electronics students connected to the '68 student movement took a demagogic remark by a top communist who tried to defuse the student revolt by suggesting that it was just a matter of students being mis-informed literally, and thus proposed a student radio.
-Of course, the regime uncertainty and bigger worries after Marshal Tito's death in '80 also contributed to the fact that at its appearance Slovenian punk went unchallenged and was spreading nearly undisturbed until late '81/early 82 – while in other Republics of Yugoslavia punk quickly mutated into new wave, ska etc. under commercial and politcal media pressure. There, in a pop market much larger than the Slovenian one, it was lured in very quickly by a music industry commercialism not so different from the one in the West.
+Of course, the regime uncertainty and bigger worries after Marshal Tito's death in '80 also contributed to the fact that at its appearance Slovenian punk went unchallenged and was spreading nearly undisturbed until late '81/early 82 – while in other Republics of Yugoslavia punk quickly mutated into new wave, ska etc. under commercial and political media pressure. There, in a pop market much larger than the Slovenian one, it was lured in very quickly by a music industry commercialism not so different from the one in the West.
 Here it might help to mention that the country that split acrimoniously from Stalinist orthodoxy in early '50s already had by the 70s a partly-free and partly functional market economy including a pop industry, tabloids etc - not unlike China today. This needs to be mentioned although “screw history” and “sod off old farts” was the attitude Slovenian punks shared with their Western brethren.

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	[[In The Name Of Idea: The Birth Of Action From The Spirit Of Music (Igor Vidmar)]]		[[In The Name Of Idea: The Birth Of Action From The Spirit Of Music (Igor Vidmar)]]

−	[[Category: Slovenian Content]][[Category: Yugoslavian Content]]	+	[[Category: Slovenian Content]][[Category: Yugoslavian Content]] [[Category: Interviews]]

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 I.V.: Their messages and social outlook was different not only from the ideology of the regime and its Socialist Youth division, but also from the nihilistic dadaistic fun and “destroy-all” ethics or “white riot” sloganeering of the earliest Brit-punk. Some were somewhat similar to the second, “proletarian punk” British wave of Angelic Upstarts and Sham 69, but with a massive contextual difference: this was the “socialist people's Republic” with the one and only ruling Party.
-But this can again trigger an automatic association to “communist lager” or the ideological stereotyping “behind iron courtain” etc, so it should be qualified again: Yugoslavia was by then some 30 years outside the Soviet block - no Soviet troops or American troops in Yugo, thank you very much. We had quite a lot of freedom of movement: everybody had a passport since the early 60s and there was a strange but working “socialist market” economy with (small) private property, little unemployment, at least in the federal Republic of Slovenia, free schooling, health care etc. The system was still undemocratic, quite hierarchical (aren't they all?!) and authoritarian, but not “totalitarian” in the Soviet sense of the word.
+But this can again trigger an automatic association to “communist lager” or the ideological stereotyping “behind iron curtain” etc, so it should be qualified again: Yugoslavia was by then some 30 years outside the Soviet block - no Soviet troops or American troops in Yugo, thank you very much. We had quite a lot of freedom of movement: everybody had a passport since the early 60s and there was a strange but working “socialist market” economy with (small) private property, little unemployment, at least in the federal Republic of Slovenia, free schooling, health care etc. The system was still undemocratic, quite hierarchical (aren't they all?!) and authoritarian, but not “totalitarian” in the Soviet sense of the word.
 '''Q: So what were punks protesting against?'''

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 ''The following is an excerpt of a July 2014 interview by I. Darko with [[Igor Vidmar]] entitled "SLO-PUNK 1977-1987: MAXIMUM IMPACT", originally published on MAXIMUM ROCK'N'ROLL #374.''
-This coming October (2014), 37 years ago, the first punk band in the federative socialist Yugoslavia, precisely in Slovenia, now a member of EU – made its first public appearance. It happened ten days before the release of the Sex Pistols first album “Never Mind The Bollocks” in 1977.
+This coming October (2014), 37 years ago, the first punk band in the federative socialist [[:Category:Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], precisely in [[:Category:Slovenia|Slovenia]], now a member of EU – made its first public appearance. It happened ten days before the release of the Sex Pistols first album “Never Mind The Bollocks” in 1977.
 Ok fine - but “so f….ing what?”, to quote the dubiously great Anti-Nowhere League - why should that matter at all in the ultra-tech, futuristic and post-historical 21st century? In Fox News parlance: “think Pussy Riot, only 37 years earlier, when communism was very much alive and still kicking hard!”.
@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 [[File:Paraf pankrti.jpg|thumb|Album cover for Pankrti's split LP with Paraf (Front)]]There might have been punk bands in other communist countries (although not so early on), but we can safely say that none had such a large social and political impact - both immediate and long-term as Yugo/Slovenian punk. Yes, the impact was “just” local, but the indie-socialist Yugo was globally important as the first alternative to Soviet-type communism, although ultimately unsuccessful.
-Just one band wouldn't make much difference of course, but a wave of bands and a movement of street punks appeared soon after the '79-80 release of Pankrti’s first single “Lublana je bolana” (Ljubljana is Sick) by ŠKUC-Ropot Records - (reviewed at the time in Maximum Rock'n'roll and purchased by post by Jello Biafra) and the album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom). This was an autonomous D.I.Y. nation-wide movement outside the official “youth culture” or commercial pop. It literally “occupied” pubs and squares in major Slovenian towns, especially in the capital Ljubljana, where Radio Študent operated since 1969 as an independent radio - unique not only in the “communist world” but Europe-wide.
+Just one band wouldn't make much difference of course, but a wave of bands and a movement of street punks appeared soon after the '79-80 release of [[Pankrti]]’s first single “Lublana je bolana” (Ljubljana is Sick) by ŠKUC-Ropot Records - (reviewed at the time in Maximum Rock'n'roll and purchased by post by Jello Biafra) and the album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom). This was an autonomous D.I.Y. nation-wide movement outside the official “youth culture” or commercial pop. It literally “occupied” pubs and squares in major Slovenian towns, especially in the capital Ljubljana, where Radio Študent operated since 1969 as an independent radio - unique not only in the “communist world” but Europe-wide.
 As our interlocutor was a political journalist at RŠ from '70 till '74 and then from '78 onwards a punk/political show host, DJ and RŠ's punk recordings producer, the first question had to be about Radio Študent.
@@ Line 28: / Line 28: @@
 [[File:Grupa 92.jpg|thumb|Grupa 92's "Cenzura" album cover]]'''Q: Which were the most important post- Pankrti bands in Slovenia?'''
-IV: One can find nearly all their names in the line-ups of the first Novi Rock festivals from '81 to '84, which were basically punk fests. The bands were from all parts of Slovenia, like Indust-bag from a small southern border town - very young but well rehearsed with lucid industrial angst and punk redemption lyrics like “Throwaway Youth”, “Head Against Concrete”, “City Shadow” or their RŠ alter-hit “100dB”: “Metal curtain around the flesh/human organs grinded in a machine/automatic plastic lips …100dBs strangle me and put me up again…”.
+IV: One can find nearly all their names in the line-ups of the first Novi Rock festivals from '81 to '84, which were basically punk fests. The bands were from all parts of Slovenia, like [[Indust-bag]] from a small southern border town - very young but well rehearsed with lucid industrial angst and punk redemption lyrics like “Throwaway Youth”, “Head Against Concrete”, “City Shadow” or their RŠ alter-hit “100dB”: “Metal curtain around the flesh/human organs grinded in a machine/automatic plastic lips …100dBs strangle me and put me up again…”.
-Then there were Gnile duše (Rotten Souls) from the rural region that were hilariously Ramonoid, as were Kuzle (Bitches), while Šund (Pulp Fiction) were more ska-punk. Both were very young and from the same old mining town, with sharp socially critical and individualist lyrics, while CZD (Centre for Dehumanisation) from Maribor were a quasi-satirical proto-punk band with minimalist social-absurdist lyrics.
+Then there were [[Gnile duše]] (Rotten Souls) from the rural region that were hilariously Ramonoid, as were [[Kuzle]] (Bitches), while [[Šun]]d (Pulp Fiction) were more ska-punk. Both were very young and from the same old mining town, with sharp socially critical and individualist lyrics, while [[CZD]] (Centre for Dehumanisation) from Maribor were a quasi-satirical proto-punk band with minimalist social-absurdist lyrics.
 [[File:Cia picke.jpg|thumb|Čao pičke samizdat album cover]]
-There were also Čao pičke (Hi Cunts), a kind of dadaist punk/no-wave close to Otroci socializma (Children of Socialism), both with great existentialist and absurdist lyrics and a rough minimal sound.
+There were also [[Čao pičke]] (Hi Cunts), a kind of dadaist punk/no-wave close to [[Otroci socializma]] (Children of Socialism), both with great existentialist and absurdist lyrics and a rough minimal sound.
-Then there were Ljubljana bands in the wake of Pankrti explosion: Lublanski psi (Ljubljana dogs), a Clash/Sham69 kind of raunchy punk with sarcastic lyrics like “I still have hope but I shit on it” that fled in the face of official optimism. Grupa 92, although not quite working class and musically softer, have written one of the first “working staff” lyrics on their first - and then only - single “Od šestih do dveh” (From Six to Two O'clock) - then the industrial working hours. It's staccato ska-punk with electric organ riff was effectively conveying the drabness of working on a Fordian production line (“pushing buttons/becoming automatons” …).
+Then there were Ljubljana bands in the wake of Pankrti explosion: [[Lublanski psi]] (Ljubljana dogs), a Clash/Sham69 kind of raunchy punk with sarcastic lyrics like “I still have hope but I shit on it” that fled in the face of official optimism. [[Grupa 92]], although not quite working class and musically softer, have written one of the first “working staff” lyrics on their first - and then only - single “Od šestih do dveh” (From Six to Two O'clock) - then the industrial working hours. It's staccato ska-punk with electric organ riff was effectively conveying the drabness of working on a Fordian production line (“pushing buttons/becoming automatons” …).
@@ Line 42: / Line 42: @@
 All of these bands have appeared on three punk/new wave compilations in early 80s produced by RŠ and Student Cultural Centre - SKUC (another offshoot of the student movement a decade ago), but again distributed by the same major as Pankrti, which was proof of punk’s wider, near-mainstream popularity. There was little censorship of lyrics but as with “Dolgcajt”; the only way of curbing the popularity of punk was not to re-print these albums after the first prints had been regularly sold-out.
-But NE! Records of Sweden has released first-ever albums by some of the above: O!kult, Grupa 92, Čao Pičke, and also Indust-Bag who did get to “samizdat” (self-publish) a couple CDs. These albums are a great “collateral” to these meagre words.
+But NE! Records of Sweden has released first-ever albums by some of the above: [[O!kult]], Grupa 92, Čao Pičke, and also Indust-Bag who did get to “samizdat” (self-publish) a couple CDs. These albums are a great “collateral” to these meagre words.
@@ Line 74: / Line 74: @@
 But the same goes also for many other bands at the time, so the army draft was really the scourge of Slovenian and Yugo punk - and a quite deliberate measure of the regime to harass and curb the punk movement when it realised, luckily too late, that it couldn't control it in the usual repressive ways. Because by then in early 80s it had become quite massive and very visible on Slovenian streets and on the graffited walls, with one of the pinnacles when punks “occupied” a small central Ljubljana square and re-named it “Johnny Rotten Square” - not with ordinary graffiti, but with enormous nearly unerasable grease-paint letters.
-The trigger of this explosion and boldness was firstly the success of the aforementioned Pankrti album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom) and the sold-out first Novi Rock festival in 8: the first wave were Kuzle, Šund, Indust-bag and Buldogi and then came Otroci socializma, O!kult and Kuga in '82 - and then Grupa 92, Via Ofenziva, Berlinski zid (Berlin wall), Gnile duše, Čao Pičke, Center za dehumanizacijo and other first post-Pankrtian-wave bands.
+The trigger of this explosion and boldness was firstly the success of the aforementioned Pankrti album “Dolgcajt” (Boredom) and the sold-out first Novi Rock festival in 8: the first wave were Kuzle, Šund, Indust-bag and [[Buldogi]] and then came [[Otroci socializma]], O!kult and [[Kuga]] in '82 - and then Grupa 92, [[Via Ofenziva]], [[Berlinski zid]] (Berlin wall), Gnile duše, Čao Pičke, [[Center za dehumanizacijo]] and other first post-Pankrtian-wave bands.
 '''Q: How come many of popular punk bands did not release anything at all?'''
@@ Line 85: / Line 85: @@
 We at Radio Študent were at first taken by surprise as there were no nazi punk bands that we knew of, only maybe a few chauvinistic blockhead fans, but we soon got wind of what was really going on and RŠ and some sympathetic intellectuals and marginal media went on the counter-information offensive.We managed to limit the damage, no-one else was arrested at first, but the three guys remaied in prison for months, and though all were in the end exonerated for lack of evidence, the damage was done, record companies shied off, national radioplay was reduced, punks were pushed off the streets and the whole movement kind of went deeper underground.
-But Novi Rock remained, and one of its “stars” of '82 were Laibach, who a few years later masterminded great poetic-justice and fiercely art-political “revenge” that shook the whole of Yugoslavia. But that is another story.
+But Novi Rock remained, and one of its “stars” of '82 were [[Laibach]], who a few years later masterminded great poetic-justice and fiercely art-political “revenge” that shook the whole of Yugoslavia. But that is another story.
 '''Q: Punk was marginalised, Pankrti disbanded in'87 - where was the socio-political impact you mentioned at the beginning?  '''

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 [[File:Pankriti, LP Dolgcajt, 1980.jpg|thumb|Pankrti's "Dolgcajt" (1980) LP cover]]
-''The following is an excerpt of a July 2014 interview by I. Darko with Igor Vidmar entitled "SLO-PUNK 1977-1987: MAXIMUM IMPACT", originally published on MAXIMUM ROCK'N'ROLL #374.''
+''The following is an excerpt of a July 2014 interview by I. Darko with [[Igor Vidmar]] entitled "SLO-PUNK 1977-1987: MAXIMUM IMPACT", originally published on MAXIMUM ROCK'N'ROLL #374.''
 This coming October (2014), 37 years ago, the first punk band in the federative socialist Yugoslavia, precisely in Slovenia, now a member of EU – made its first public appearance. It happened ten days before the release of the Sex Pistols first album “Never Mind The Bollocks” in 1977.
@@ Line 124: / Line 124: @@
 [[File:Pankrti front.jpg|thumb|Pankrti's "Lepi in Prazni" cover]]
 ''Questions by I.Darko / MAXIMUM ROCK'N'ROLL #374, July 2014''
 [[Category: Slovenian Content]][[Category: Yugoslavian Content]]