White City

by Karl Jorssen
Editor-In-Chief

New Year’s Eve in Belgrade. So many options to ring in the NewYear. If you chose it to spend it at Club Cinema you were in for a few surprises. Of course almost everything in this town is not what it seems and Thursday night at this particular venue was no exception.

Neverne Bebe, Serbia’s favorite and most well-known contemporary rock band is no stranger to playing New Year’s Eve. Although usually playing at some gig in one of Serbia’s other cities, or outside in some main square as part of the municipal festivities, this year the band played the smaller and more intimate Club Cinema in town and if the club’s patrons were looking forward to a great performance, they were not disappointed. About 500 of them were provided with what one would come to expect from one of Serbia’s best bands, the sextet of Milan Đurđević - the band’s leader and keyboardist, Saša Ranđelović on guitar, Vladan Đurđević on bass, drummer Vladimir Ružičić and the powerful vocals of Jelena Pudar and Jana Šušteršič.

In what could be considered a radical departure of their usual playlist, about 75 per cent of the tunes belted out were popular covers, carefully selected to highlight the strengths of all the individual band members, while still providing the best of the best NB tunes. While the hardcore Neverne Bebe fan might have been slightly let down by the evening’s limited content of the band’s own repertoire, there probably wasn’t a whole lot of their core fan-base represented on this night. And at 40 Euro a ticket, one can understand why. The band’s habitual audience being the student set normally paying somewhere between 6 and 10 Euros a ticket, let’s just say the audience on this night at this particular venue was more Club Magasin than Sunset Café, more collars than T-shirts, more thirty something than twenty something, more dresses than jeans. But Neverne Bebe’s solid fan base was represented, as it always is wherever and whenever they play, some of them bringing foreign friends with English, Spanish and French overheard amongst those in the audience.

The band was tight, as they always are. You’ll never get mediocre performance from Nerverne Bebe. These guys are professionals, for every three-hour gig they’ll spend at least as many hours in the studio practicing for their upcoming performance, and New Years Eve was no exception. They’ve had over 500 shows together so it’s no accident that they have such an acute sense of self awareness when on stage – knowing where the other band members are musically, lyrically and physically on stage. A rare treat at this gig was the lyrical contributions from Ranđelović, who led one tune while still providing the strong guitar lead their fans have come to expect. The covers they belted out included everything from James Brown to Queen to Pink Floyd to Katrina and the Waves and a lot of the stuff in between. And they played it like they played it every night – and they don’t often do covers that often.  A strong performance, most notably in the band’s rendition or Prince’s Purple Rain led by Jana, backed up by an equally strong guitar lead and solo by Ranđelović who seemed to relish the opportunity that this cover provided him to display his magic on the Fender Stratocaster in what is a very technically-challenging guitar piece.

The big surprise of the evening, of course, was an impromptu guitar performance by Serbia’s Minister of the Economy Mlađan Dinkić who played three of four tunes and not just chords. Dinkić, who attended the evening with his partner, showed that he is a capable musician in his own right, not just strumming the axe but providing vocals as well. Though to be fair, he could probably be advised to ease up on the microphone when reaching a vocal crescendo. Perhaps the Minister’s performance was not the highlight of the evening but it was certainly entertaining and the place ate it up, digital cameras coming out in droves. One can assume you can see it already on YouTube.

All in all, an exceptional evening, with exceptional entertainment, from an exceptional band and Minister Dinkić now has an interesting story to share with his colleagues at the next Cabinet meeting.