YU Garage Lives
Sarah and I went to Serbia in 2005 to the Guca Golden Brass Festival. This is a week-long festival of Balkan brass band music, and was possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.
Anyway, we spent a lot of time hanging out with Sarah’s friend Nevena, and her friend Sasha, who as a real cool guy. Sasha was nice enough to fill two CDs full of Serbian music for me, including the Partibrejkers. They have to be the best garage band in the whole of the former Yugoslavia, and they just landed in my lap. Oh Fortuna.
The Partibrejkers have this grimy, uh, Pretty Things by way of Motley Crüe sound. The singer has a real scrappy delivery without a whole lot of pretense—he just belts it out. I have no idea what he’s saying, but he sounds really satisfied with how he’s saying it. Kind of like he knows that he’s doing a good job, and you know he’s doing a good job, so he’s not gonna work too hard to impress you. 
According to the Partibrejkers website, they formed in 1982 and are still kicking around today, albeit with a different rhythm section. I keep hoping that I’ll be in the same place at the same time as these guys so I can catch their show.
Although I’ll probably look like a fucking idiot if I do, yelling “Yeah! Yeah! Yeeaaahh!”
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2 comments:
Being exposed to actual Balkan brass band music, what do you think about the U.S. band Beirut, if you've heard them?
First three Partibrejkers albums are great collections of punky R&B tunes and I'm glad that you like them (and yes, their first is my favorite one). As Michael mentioned Beirut, referring to Balkan music, I'd suggest you to go further back and check so underrated yet phenomenal British band 3 Mustaphas 3 who were, one could say, pioneers of "world" music.
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