The Magyar Scott Walker?

Máté Péter brings the pathos.

The Space Monster Never Sleeps

In this amazing photograph, Neil Young looks like a space monster.

Guerilla Radio

Dear Reader, if you are at all a fan of the writings found in this fine publication, you are no doubt wondering: “Rick, why in the world haven’t you yet reviewed any books about punk rock from the former Yugoslavia? You seem to like music from there so much, and are always boring people to tears with little anecdotes and facts you’ve learned about the people who made it, so why don’t you etcetera?”

Etcetera indeed, Dear Reader.

Although we here at the Little Black Egg don’t like to actually review things, we are happy to strenuously recommend that our readers purchase a particular product. And for those of you who have felt the pull of Balkan rock music but have been unable to find out any information on any of the bands short of that which appears on blogs, wiki entries, or indescipherable online translations of articles in Serbian and Croatian, I would like to recommend that you pick up Guerrilla Radio: Rock’n’Roll Radio and Serbia’s Underground Resistance by Matthew Collin.


Now, Guerilla Radio isn’t a book on punk rock from the former Yugoslavia, because that book doesn’t exist in English. This is better. Collin’s book examines B92, the Belgrade radio station that was the voice of anti-Milosevic Serbia in the 1990s. It’s totally fascinating, and if you’ve got any interest in YU-Rock, or radio stations, or music, or the Balkans at all, you ought to get a copy. I think I got mine from Amazon for like $1.50 or something unfair and insane like that.

As someone with a keen if amateur interest in this part of the world, I was surprised how little I actually knew about B92 and the resistance it fostered. The huge anti-war, anti-Milosevic movement that rose up in Serbia didn’t exactly have a huge amount of ink spilled about it the Western press. Huge demonstrations that took place against Milosevic occurred in Belgrade, and B92 was a key component of setting the stage for people to feel free to voice their discontent.

Amidst state run media organs, B92 basically stood alone as the de facto voice against the regime. It was shut down, its people threatened, and its offices ransacked. The Milosevic regime thought that this tiny radio station posed a threat to their power over the country. They were right. Huge street protests against the government enveloped Belgrade, ultimately causing the Serbian army to send tanks into the streets of the city to disperse the protestors.


Collin uses B92 as the lens through which to focus the reader’s attention on the events at this time. This book is succinct rather than exhaustive, which works to its advantage. Collin reported from Belgrade in the mid-nineties, and a lot of the material in this book comes from first-hand interviews conducted with the people who were a part of the events described. I’m no expert, but I haven’t read a better book about this period of time in Serbia’s history. Guerrilla Radio avoids sensationalism and hyperbole completely; instead, it’s a very human, very compassionate look at a handful of extraordinarily brave radio misfits who became, well, heroes.


We here at The Little Black Egg suggest you acquire a copy immediately.

Šarlo Akrobata

Šarlo Akrobata were a Belgrade-based Novi Val band active in the early 1980s. They only had one album (Bistriji ili tuplji čovek biva kad...) and it's unbelievable. I'd cut off my hands for a copy of that on vinyl.

Here is some hilarious video goodness from them that washed up on the You Tubes:



and:


and:


Hard to know what to say about these guys except, you know, when you gots it you gots it.

Hail Satan

Satan Panonski!

Goodbye 400 Years of Culture

It’s been a dry time here re: the word production of we here at The Little Black Egg, but a totally super-exciting time in our actual lives. Now, there may be some seething pedants amongst my Dear Readers who are cocking their heads and waving their fingers all in my face and saying “Rick, shouldn’t your entire life center around word production? And if so, doesn’t this mean that your life is therefore all the poorer, since you’re not producing any words for The Little Black Egg?”

To you pedants, I say this: my life is none the poorer—it is your life, shitface, which is the poorer for my absence." And for this, I apologize. I am returned to you now, Dear Reader: the sun rises once again over this blighted land, so you can turn your eyes towards the truth and light.

Now, I didn’t have any of those year-end lists or anything like that, because I never really know what exactly is happening in time and space. We here at The Little Black Egg can’t be keeping abreast of everything in the world. Instead, with the New Year, I would like to mention something that I will be leaving behind. As the trees grow bare, as flowers wither, as eczema forms in the cold, I will steadfastly turn my back on this thing and walk away.

Now, saying arrivederci to something is never easy. For instance, it took years before I could make myself stop buying $1 exotica albums. I just no longer have the capacity to house these goddamn things. Like many people, I have been known to part with a buck for a record with some weird looking white dude shaking maracas with a parrot on his shoulder and foxy ladies reclining on flowers with title that says like “Tropical Organ Moods.” You know what though? Owning those records does not pay off. What happens is, you become this graying dude drinking beer alone, listening to a record of the Cincinnati Lutheran Ramblers play “Stardust” on steel guitar, and feeling sad about yourself. Those are the wages of lounge, my friend. At the end of the day, it’s best to stop trying to squeeze enjoyment out of things that you don’t like.

The thing that I’m turning my back on this year, is the opera. Now, you may be saying, “Jesus H., mister, we didn’t come to this here internet publication to read about the opera. If we wanted to read about the opera, we’d—wait, we’d never want to do that.” And I say to you, “listen pal, you’ll eat what you’re given and you’ll like it.”

Now, let’s begin at the beginning. For some time, my better half had a job with the Great Big Opera here in NYC. This job allowed her to get extremely discounted opera tickets. Therefore, we here at The Little Black Egg would attend the opera a whole lot. Often enough that some people had the mistaken impression that we were “opera buffs.”

There are many things I enjoyed about the opera, to tell you the truth. For instance, I liked having a seat right up front, so’s I could walk by all the fancy opera patrons and mutter under my breath: “Sorry you have such horrible seats, you revolting peasants.” Then I’d go sit up front with the agéd creatures who looked like dried apricots in evening finery and try to hear the music over the sound of them snuffling, dozing, and in one instance, listening to the Yankees game on what had to be the oldest goddamn walkman I ever saw, seriously, it was like the size of a carton of milk, and instead of headphones he had this flesh-colored ear plug thing.

Now, listen, I know opera is highly unpopular with a large swath of the population, but you know, it was kind of interesting. Like many people who latched on to le punk rock in my youth, I was accustomed to existing in a very small Musical Comfort Zone. So when I finally decided to branch out and explore the teeming wilds of audioville, it was like being dropped into enemy territory with no compass, survival knowledge, tools, etc. However, it did build my character and make me strong like bull. So I bravely started listening to all sorts of boring, go-nowhere musical things that I hated for years until my brain gave up and began grudgingly liking it. And after many years of striving, I learned to like weird, atonal operas like Wozzeck and Lulu. Then, before you know it, I’m having conversations with opera people.

Despite having seen dozens of these things, I really didn’t know doodly about opera. In fact, I don’t know anything, at all, about music. I had gotten in too deep, and developed a terror of the Lincoln Center creatures who hovered around during intermission. The joke had gone too far


Or had it? Maybe the joke had not gone far enough. Maybe if I’d put my nose to the grindstone and really done the homework, I could be walking in two worlds. Sometimes I’d be sitting around, listening to the kind of stuff I do now (i.e., audio of three Polish dudes whacking on metal in 1982 that was recorded on a wobbly dictaphone and sourced from a tenth-generation tape), and other times I’d be dressed all natty in a three piece suit, sipping a glass of shitty white wine while I held forth on why Luigiani Fotzabini was an inferior tenor compared to Francesco Fettucini.

That would be good, right? Old ladies and assorted waspy-looking old palsied dudes would cluster around me. They'd hanging on my every word while, half-concealed behind a pillar, New Yorker critic Alex Ross would surreptitiously record every word I wrote, like some creepy Salieri-type feller. He would have espied me in the orchestra seats and followed me out, hoping to soak up my nuggets of expertise. So there he'd be, furiously scribbling in his notebook as he snatched my insights from the air and retooled them for an awesome New Yorker article (with lots of umlauts over words like “reëxamine" and "coöperate"). I will catch a glimpse of Alex Ross’ loafer poking out from behind the pillar, and I will smile quietly to myself, because you know, I’m not desirous of the limelight.

Then, right, there will be the sound of chimes—the ushers signaling everyone back to their seats—and I will blend in with the seething mass of evening wear-bedecked Skeksis as they hobble back into the orchestra sections. There, enjoying the sonic advantages of row L, I will look at the wood veneer of the opera house (made from a single rosewood tree, should you be wondering) and think, oh opera house wood veneer, thanks to Alex Ross recording my intermission chatter with his fancy Marantz recorder thing, and then utilizing it in an article that will be read by the smartest of the smarties, my thoughts on this opera will echo through space and time long after its final notes have reverberated through your wood-grainy woodness. Then the chandeliers would rise towards the ceiling, the Skeksis would cease their chatter, and I would half-close my eyes as I soaked up the first mercurial notes of the 4.5 hour act as they wafted through the room, alighting on my ear like velveteen butterflies of the dawn.


That would be pretty nice, wouldn't it? Velveteen butterflies of the dawn and all. I'm serious about that! It would be nice, but unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. Now that I don’t have a ticket hookup anymore, though, I find that I don’t think about opera whatsoever, not even a little bit. However, once in a while I think about What Could Have Been. The last opera I went to, I was sitting about six rows behind Alex Ross. (I didn’t know it was him until a musician friend of mine pointed him out.) A whole bunch of people talked to Alex Ross between acts.

The opera was about Oppenheimer and the first nuclear bomb—I thought it stunk and was ridiculous. Alex Ross gave it a really good review in the New Yorker. During intermission, I spent $5 on a coffee because I felt like I was going to fall asleep, and drank it while everyone I was with analyzed what they were seeing and hearing. I just never got it. I guess it’s like how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t etcetera. Cold comfort.

For a while there, I really wanted to have this stuff figured out. I was like a guy looking at a map of a strange, impossible continent, and dreaming about exploring it; but when I got there, I was just lost and desperate to leave. Today, when I want ornate, overwrought Italian music, I’ll listen to proggy horror movie soundtracks. Thusly I turn my back on opera in 2010; not as a hero, but as a failure. Arrivederci.

It's Halloween

Dear Reader, regular broadcasts from The Little Black Egg will now resume.