After the brief thrill of this century's early years' democratic upswing, things only got worse in old mother Serbia. Nis is probably one of the sheerest examples of a heavy fallback into 90's; overtaken by fierce mob of politicians without any idea of civic pride (mostly due to their own rural roots) or social justice, the former city turned to be the town without pity for everyone that ever wanted a life outside of this horrid and constricted script of circular abuse of humane values. The idea of fun got reduced to a mere chemical overdrive and/or money burning, and serious creative endaveour of any kind is commonly described as an effort against common sense.
In this austere atmosphere, first few sessions of what will later become Paganska ljubav were done. It all took place at Ivan's room, where we played long, improvised pieces based on just-a-bits of our previous ideas wrapped in droning soundscapes. We played it with no real ambition towars public performance. Or, in other words: no hope whatsoever that we could play it in Nis. So it went on, on most irregular basis, just for two of us to indulge ourselves.
Ivan already made some electronically produced, unpublished music under his DeepArtMent alias, not to mention his long career as a guitar slinger for hard core, alt-rock and noise bands of Nis, such as T-Error, Kitsch Ensemble or Nahty. I did not have any staging experience at all, and I was already through with my first ill-fated attempt of forming a band, which I wanted to name Future Zen Terror, sort of a hommage to Alan Watts.
The U-turn towards live acts came when Bokerini expressed a wish to try reading his poems to our music, as sort of an slam-poetry act; we were already fans of his poetry, and he and Ica shared a long term friendship, so we decided to give it a try. As a poet, Bokerini already had a name that was recognised at least by the urban crowd in Nis, and some people who had a party for this dress; after a while, the date our first gig was set (the very first Trash Festival, sort of a four-day fanzine related multimedia event), and we were ready to play.
First show introduced a surprising coherency between our tunes, that were originally meant to be everything but songs, and Bokerini's uncompromisingly male poetry of angst and strain, alienation and psychobabble. Both streams were informed by the very same emotional charge, and it was there for everyone to feel. Not much tuning up really needed.
Eventually, Bokerini talked Rige into joining his multi-instrumentalist, jazz & blues & reggae-loving-left-wing-intellectual's virtues with our collective. His arrival introduced unexpectedly strong aura of humane warmth to our noise & melancholy-ridden soundscaping, rhyming perfectly with Bokerini's urban blues. We did another show at the same venue, just to see if our new outfit works well onstage... The FEEDBACK 27/05/07 show turned out to be a real starting point for the band. We owe a big one to Ceka and Toni there. This entire show was recorded, and that was the very first document of our perfomance. We were completely oblivious towards our previous live acts. This recording made a change. It cosolidated our belief that it was all worthy listening to; so we started sending it away. After a a while, our friend Pt from Goribor gave it to mr Zdenko Franjic of Listen Loudest! Records, a man described by Croatian press as unyielding enthusiast, restless publisher of new indie artists, and also a man who brought up an entire alternative scene in Croatia in mid-80's, which gave us such acts as legendary Satan Panonski/Satan Panonnian, Messerschmitt or Zdenko's very own Losi Decki/The Bad Boys. Goribor were already well-known as his latest Serbian band, and our friends Nahty already had a song on 12th sequel of his famous series of compilations named "Bombardiranje New Yorka" (Bombing of New York). [Interesting detail here is that first Bombing was published in 1987., way before 11 09 attacks on America.] After only a few weeks, Pt brought us good news: Wanderin' DJ Zdena decided to publish our music![to be continued...]
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