Bijelo Dugme (album) (original) (raw)

dbo:wikiPageWikiLink

dbp:lyrics

dbr:Goran_Bregović
dbr:Bora_Đorđević
(en)
Goran Bregović (en)
Miljenko Žuborski (en)
Samo Tomášik (en)

dbp:quote

From the band's position, it was the self-preservation album. [...] They were together on the recording of that album. They breathed as one, spent all of the time in the studio and followed Bregović's energy. They thought about every detail. That album is a collection of incredible details imbibed into an incredible unity. [...] Generally speaking, it's a magical album, magical in its every moment, in every note, in every sung syllable. Or—as Đorđe Matić, the author of the best essays about Bijelo Dugme that were never written, would say—'something that is, all at the same time, like the Sex Pistols, like the Russian suprematists and the Italian futurists, and like, in the more extensive context, Yugoslavia itself — all of that could, now it is obvious, last for only a short, the shortest period of time, just like any supernova — the explosion of a star, by its nature, can't last for long.' If the album Uspavanka za Radmilu M. was a hint of Bregović's own genre, the album Bijelo Dugme was the announcement of it. It represents the greatest artistic independence reached by the Yugoslav culture when it comes to popular music. And then, it's the album which doesn't resemble any other album, from anywhere else. (en)
Suppose we view Laibach and Mizar as ideological avant-garde — the Marx and Engels of Yugoslav rock, and we further assign Riblja Čorba the role of the people, then Bijelo Dugme can be looked at as the Communist Party's local neighbourhood branch. Bijelo Dugme was a compound of Yugoslav reality with an image that had been created to show what things are supposed to be like, but without excessive illusions. Bijelo Dugme offered a mildly stylized, slightly removed state of things. On their 1984 self-titled album, Bijelo Dugme recorded one of their biggest hits, 'Lipe cvatu', a song that's larger than life. The album opens with a cover of the Yugoslav anthem 'Hej, Slaveni', a decision that's a typical example of Titoist pseudo-dissidence. And they also brought us a clinical plagiarism of Van Halen in 'Padaju zvijezde'. All in all, if you needed an album to point out as the definition of this band's canon, here it is. Of course, it is even more important to bear in mind that this album knocked the entire SFR Yugoslavia off its feet, that its hits became immortal, and that Bregović's had begun to write his book on making hit records around the time of this album. At that time, he allegedly stated he intentionally doesn't put much effort into mixing due to figuring his fans have bad stereo equipment anyway, while further assuming those who do own good equipment certainly wouldn't waste their time listening to Bijelo Dugme. Yet another one of his nuggets of wisdom when it comes to creating hit tracks was that he knew 'Lipe cvatu' would resonate with a mass audience because he statistically calculated the last time a song in that rhythm became a hit. Anyhow, this record is a primer on how to make a commercial monster of Yugoslav rock, a record for weddings and funerals, for Yugoslav stereo equipment, for entertainment of the nations and nationalities, and how to create a bubble that can't be blown away. (en)

dbp:studio

RTV Sarajevo Studio I, Sarajevo (en)
RTV Skopje Studio, Skopje (en)
RTV Zagreb Studio IV, Zagreb (en)
Studio Akvarijus, Belgrade (en)

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