I suppose that my decision to play had a significant influence on the fact that there was always an acoustic guitar in my house that my father played, and also that my mother had some records, among them a small plastic 33 rpm black single from the Jukebox 60 at the time. them Have you Lakes Your Mother Baby Standing In The Shadow? The Rolling Stones. Then I heard Hendrix. By the way, I was also in the "Mokranjac" music school, where I played the double bass, but in fact I didn't, the double bass was a very bulky instrument for me, and it is not electric. But, in Mokranjec, I already met a lot of the team, started to play bass more seriously and attended all the happenings around the city. Then there was a guitar party at ETŠC "Nikola Tesla" (where I previously also spent a year of my failed education), so I met many players there as well.
SKC was, of course, the most important place in Belgrade, with April Meetings, performances by Kosta Bunusevac, various things jam-sessions and concerts. There I hung out at the rehearsals of the groups Inammorata (whose drummer Đuk I knew from before from the city), Game of Glass Beads, Interaction and Lemon Tree (Mikica - guitar, singer Milan - guitar, Dule Dejanović - drums, Maksa - bass and Gaga - guitarist), with whom I hung out the most. Duleta, who was often late or did not even show up at rehearsals, was often replaced by Vd or Čavke, or Švab would sometimes fly in instead of Maxa. Anton and Vd played in BG 5. Dejan Kostić from Group I was also there later. I played a lot during rehearsals together with all of them and made some combinations of my own.
Otherwise, the so-called the punk scene evidently existed in Belgrade before Packages arrangement, they had their own events, there were also interesting groups, but most of them somehow did not survive... maybe we should see what they did afterwards. Those whose parents bought them the latest ripped punk clothes whined (and I believe they still sell that story today) how they were oppressed by the communist system and how they decided to sing about it... That's how the English came from New Musical express to exotic communist Yugoslavia to fill two pages of their next issue with pictures of the kids they persuaded to happily pose next to busts of Lenin and Tito in the SKC. As if the Churchills were something else...
Communism, Tito and system change was not something I would explicitly mention in my lyrics, nor play in a group that wants something like that. I was most interested in musical expression and change in the musical sense. And it bothered me that there weren't any real Yu punk or new wave records either, since none of those original Zagreb, Slovenian or Vojvodina punk bands moved me at all, because basically they were just half-baked Sex Pistols copies or something worse, or they simply called themselves 'punk'. Even the members of Atomic Shelter claimed to be a punk band at the beginning. So I really wanted to make something that would change the B.dugme-Smack atmosphere in the country, (Bulldozer started it first), and that would be much better than what was called punk or new wave before.
In SKC, the editors of the so-called The external program included Moma Rajin and Nebojša Pajkić, who boldly organized real and good actions. So, at one point, Pajkić offered me to lead a music panel, which we called New Wave tribune and where I'd play music and bring in guests to theoretically back it up, because I hated talking, I'd just play records and announce what we were listening to and maybe say, "Aaaah..." between songs. Moma Rajin also helped to publish my text in "Jukebox" about the concert of the English band The Roots in Pinky... For me, the most important newspaper was always "Jukebox", I never paid much attention to the youth press, youth and student organizations and their actions, except that in fact we spent most of our time in an institution that has the word "student" in its name.
Since the Lemon Tree fell apart, only Milan and Gaga remained from the whole band and they invited Vd and me to continue as the Lemon Tree. We played the first and last concert in that line-up in front of Pankrto, in the small hall of SKC. Long-haired Gaggi was spat on by young punks in shiny and expensive leather jackets, he didn't like it at all, he left the group and after that we changed our name to Charlo the acrobat.
Then the concerts started in Croatia, Slovenia and slowly everyone started to notice the group that played some things from Lemon tree, together with new themes by Milan and mine, which we all arranged together (that's why the records are signed as author Charlo). Then there was that Subotica festival, before that I never paid attention to that event, everything was as usual. Since it was actually a competition (?), that year the first places were won by some Yugoslav new wave groups. And of course, soon some people gathered around us, starting with stupid journalists and some musicians who, I assume, still consider and talk about their irreplaceable role in the whole God-happening of that time. That's how the idea of a joint album by Charles the Acrobat, Idol and Electric Orgasm came from the side.
At that time, of course, I was against the project called "Package Arrangement" for many reasons. I guess that was the action of Enco Lesić - Jugoton, I hardly remember much of it at all, except for the recording with Enco, with Cvelet, which was very interesting, it was the first time I was in the studio (I definitely had the least musical experience of all from the group.) By the way, I never liked either the idea or the name of the compilation, the whole record sounded quite bad tonally and I preferred that each of the three groups from the compilation had its own LP, which later happened, thank God. I think that apart from the Belgrade arrogance that all three groups have, they don't have too many similarities. Maybe we also had in common the fact that we sang about some things that were not often sung about in Yugoslav rock 'n' roll until then, although again all from different milieus.
Then, I was annoyed by the mass of all those senseless people who suddenly found themselves around us, forcing their way into it all. The whole thing was, of course, taken over by Belgrade's decadent hedonistic party-team, which Belgrade has never lacked. And really, you don't need to worry much, it happens everywhere, the children of the rich have more access to information, and there are honest ones among them. The problem is that everything came down to just pop entertainment and dancing, modeled on the ZG make-up new wave dance scene, so that in the end Mr. B. dugme understood it, sneaked in and sold it to the people... Charlo the acrobat had regular conflicts with the music establishment, the media, with managers and members of other groups, with the audience at concerts, since we persistently resisted that established path of a rock group.
Boy which promises is another part and document of that moment Packages arrangement. I didn't like that movie for a lot of things, and I criticized it in interviews afterwards, thereby denying myself a possible extra money later, all because I realized how important it could be and how much better it could have been realized... I didn't like it. liked it Niko kao ja placed as the background music of the main character's masturbation, then, some scenes of the live performance, which is really a document, were shortened as much as possible and I thought that maybe it would have been better if the main characters were naturists as well, rather than the crew acting EVERYTHING. But who would watch it then? However, in Boy which promises it also has a lot of cool moments, including the name and surname of the main character, is full of music, and perhaps unknowingly foreshadows what will hit us later. But the main moment for me was that I bought a Rickenbacker bass guitar from the fees.
So, as can be concluded, many things then did not turn out the way I imagined them, but of course from this distance, after everything that happened and shook Belgrade and the whole country, when I felt as if all those records I had made in fact they don't exist and due to the absolutely tragic fact that so many people from that scene are no longer alive, today I think so Packages arrangement and it wasn't such a bad record.
