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Live Review
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Muzikfan, Live Review >>
The big thrill of the summer was seeing Boban Markovic Orkestar live at Ashkenaz. I thought it would be a quiet sunday-night affair but how wrong I was. There was a line along the block of 200 people who didn't have tickets and the place was packed when I arrived at showtime. The Serbs in attendance outnumbered the folk-dance types who had seen the Kostunica movie featuring the band, and a smattering of out-of-synch deadheads and a well-known World Beat Weenie, still trying to recapture the glow of his former glory as a radio personality! I started out front and center as the band blasted into "Otpisani," the opening cut on their LIVE IN BELGRADE album on Piranha. Within a couple of numbers the Duchess and I had retreated to the side where we weren't quite in the line of fire, but tucked behind the four drummers who were flagellating their skins. They clearly needed a parade to lead, but the room was too crowded to move. They also could score a Fellini music video with some of their break-neck tempo changes, from full tilt to a goofy loping gait and back again. It was really joyous. Each song was a medley of several tunes and Boban gave the spotlight to his son, Marko, on second flugelhorn, and enjoyed feeding off the energy of the crowd and conducting the twelve-piece pand. I suppose a classic power trio is lead, bass and drums, well multiply that by four and you have this outfit: four flugelhorns, four bass horns (three tenors like squashed French horns, and a helicon) and four drummers. Their discipline was amazing. The wall of sound kept coming at us. "Disco Dzumbus" was one of the highlights of the first set as the bass horn players did a funny little dance move & Boban and Marko traded leads.
Though Halloween is weeks away a girl dressed like a sad clown wandered through trying not to smile. Her posse, a group who had clearly just escaped from Middle Earth, stood outside smoking weed. But that's Berkeley, and the crowd on the sidewalk probably had great sound, while those inside proved you can dance to anything, forming a human chain and making a spiral around the room doing the hokey-cokey. During the break I saw a friend I haven't seen in years, "Boban!" I yelled, as he walked by. That was funny. How often do you find two people called Boban in the same room in California? Only a couple of nights earlier I had gone to a birthday party for a Croatian friend where we all wore paper neckties, in honour of the "cravat" given to the world by Croatian mercenaries in the 17th century. Music is a great pacifier and Ashkenaz emanated the "loving vibes" we've felt at so many shows.
The second set was more free-form with Boban singing old folk songs to which the audience responded with fanatic devotion. The bass drummer who had a felt-covered striker in one hand and what looked like a willow wand in the other, was flailing furiously. The show went three hours and there were brisk sales in t-shirts and CDs in addition to several generous dancers who threw wads of paper money at the stage. The liner-notes to one of their CDs posit that because Bill Clinton played saxophone and appreciated gypsy brass music, he curtailed the bombing of Serbia. Whatever, these guys slayed us with their message of musical might. The band are midway through a hundred city tour of the USA and have gone from strength to strength; not only are they the best brass band in all of Serbia (having won the golden trumpet enough times to be disqualified from competing further), they may well be the best brass band on the planet.
09/20/04 >> go there
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