I still raise people to this day

Davorin Bogović (1960), is ours new wave and a punk hero from long ago. Anyone who in the eighties of the last century heard the following: "My name is Davorin Bogović, and everything around me is a black and white world", had to click on a generational message with a deeper meaning and a further horizon, like a cosmic code of teenage existence. . Parents and children, the first confused, the second nervous, all together in front of the television on which this SFRY message for the future is pronounced, received their dose of electric energy from the cosmos of a new age that long ago in 1980. Early Dirty Theater definitely belongs to the best part Rock and Roll history of these regions.

Today's Prljavo kazalište, led by original members Davorin Bogović and Tihomir Fileš, has just started its new concert life with an unexpectedly successful comeback - one of the events of the 2024 season is certainly their exciting live performances in Zagreb and Belgrade this autumn - as well as the recent one in London - where, after more than 40 years, we finally had the opportunity to hear the classic rock tracks of this line-up in their full glory, from "Happy Child" to "We let's dance" to "Everything is easy when you're young".

Before the performance of the Dirty Theater on the evening of December 30, in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ušće, organized by the City of Belgrade and the Youth Center of Belgrade, and as part of the "Belgrade Winter" event - where the YU group, Kerber, Nichim pravada and others also perform - Davorin Bogović tells a story of his life. Warm, noble and kind-hearted, as he himself is, always and forever.

WEATHER: How did your first band come about? - the one before the Dirty Theater - and how did you start singing in the first place? How you discovered your voice as a teenager?

My mom was a rocker to me - every time I came home from school I'd either whistle or sing something, old Kinks or Beatles mostly, and then they'd hear me arrive when I was three blocks away - so it was discovered earlier, huh - huh. I had the will and a pretty good ear, but I had to concentrate, it didn't all go smoothly - I was still in primary school with Nino Hrastek and Marijan Brkić and then one evening on a park bench in front of the house we came up with the idea of ​​forming a band ourselves and we agreed. We called ourselves "Cifershlusi". We played in local communities and schools, everywhere you could perform at that time, so we performed a lot. Here in the neighboring local community near me, for example. Kontam si - we were really a supergroup - Marijan Brkić one guitar, Zoran Cvetković another guitar, Nino Hrastek bass, Tihomir Fileš drums and me - vocals.

By the way, "Cipherschluss" is a patent for pants, ha-ha. It was going really well for us. And then, I don't know why, Cvetković invited Jasenka Houra from Gornja Dubrava, whom he knew, to the band - his father was a doctor and then he could afford everything, including the equipment, i.e. the big "dynacord" got stronger... So then he too connected there. Then Brkić could have left, I didn't want to leave Brkić, Zok said - I'm leaving soon, and the first album was being recorded - so that Brkić would finally come back. That's how "Dirty Theatre" began.

Did you go to a music school??

I did, I went! I played the accordion, ha-ha. I wanted a guitar, but my mom didn't consider it a serious instrument. The second solution was a piano, but then we had a small space, so if we had brought in a piano, we would have had nowhere to go - and then she surprised me just one day with an accordion. But I practiced it properly and went, passed all six years, and then I started high school... Now the problem arose: that serious instrument of hers - the accordion - was not in high school. Not then, but now. It would have been absurd if there was no accordion, because the accordion is still a miracle of an instrument - you can really play anything on it. Afterwards, I joked around and played the accordion in one play (it's about the play "Gustl Salon", which has been played many times, which was staged by AG Matoš based on the lyrics of Damir Šaban, known as Mazalo from the cult TV series "Smogovci", otherwise Davorin Bogović's aunt's brother , also a participant in this project - ed.)... But I did a cover of "Kraftwerk" - "The Model", ha-ha.

My professor had an electric accordion, and there are all kinds of possibilities - he used to play in the Tambura orchestra of Radio Television Zagreb, the accordion was his hobby, so I listened to him play jazz on the accordion! But it wasn't all rockery. In high school I already knew the groups Focus, Jethro Tull, Colosseum (symphonic or "progressive rock" - ed.), so I picked up an interest in flute and saxophone - in high school I wanted to continue some of that, but it turned out that I'm too old, haha. I should have started with it in lower music school. And it was all a matter of total misunderstanding, because I didn't know that in high school I could have taken solo singing and piano - I would have learned the basics of the piano, and I would have normally started singing with breathing - but they gave me a trumpet! For the first six months, I didn't play the trumpet, I just practiced breathing and came home semi-conscious every time, because it's terribly complicated and you have to have all your teeth healthy. The mouthpiece has to be custom-made, and that wasn't available here, so I went to Italy to buy a silver one, which costs hoo-ho... I eventually practiced on it a little after those six months and only then realized that it was even more difficult than those exercises breathing. I survived the first year with the trumpet, and then the next year they gave me a lighter instrument - the trombone, ha-ha! I thought the trombone was harder to play because it's bigger and has that pull handle, but it's much easier to blow into! Of course, I liked that even less, and we were already working a lot as a band. Secondary school also suffered because of that - I completely left music. I had too much of those rocker genes to seriously think about anything else, but just that - how to become a rock star.

photo: Marko Lopac

Yet, you are a multi-instrumentalist!

Yes, but it's nothing perfect, but a little bit of everything. For example, I always have to have both an electric and an acoustic guitar. And then when I do some songs, I usually take the guitar - especially in the summer evenings, when I go out and then some melodies or lyrics come to me by heart. At one time, I carried a dictaphone with me everywhere, so when I went to the city, if an idea came to my mind while on the tram, I would go out of the tram, to the first haustor, and then I would either sing a melody or recite the text and left for later. Then when I would make a song on the guitar, I would hand it over to the guitarists and almost afterwards I didn't even know what key the song was from. They ask me: what key is that song from, I said - I have no idea. I basically became a singer because I had long ruddy hair and a lot of female fans who didn't even hear me sing - and I was known to be shameless... I didn't hesitate to walk up to anyone and say anything, haha. And then they concluded that I am good for a singer!

So what was the first punk record that moved you so that after it you changed your style and went from Jethro Tull to completely different music?

I still listened to all that a little bit, but then I liked the Sex Pistols the most, and surprisingly, I wasn't such a big fan of The Clash, which everyone swore by - only the first album was okay for me and still not really. But, for example, the first The Stranglers were very good to me and their strange "farfisa" keyboard... And then Magazine, and later Termites from Rijeka, who all had the same keyboards. That's how I managed to find some groups in punk that were different, but they were still punks. I spent a lot of time in Australia, I really liked The Saints, a lot of good things came from there... In addition, AC/DC were called punks at the beginning - I listen, and they - pure hard rock.

How did you get information and records at that time?, when you mention the Australian scene, which was not so well known?

I had a small transistor on which every night I searched for Radio Luxembourg and the famous John Peel, a disc jockey who discovered new things for me, so that I remembered something, you wrote something down... But I had a problem, because every hour she got lost station, since Radio Tirana had a terrible signal on a similar frequency, so it kept coming in, ha-ha.

That's how it started, and I also had a neighbor here who used to buy me rare and strange records - for example, Van der Graaf Generator or Gentle Giant. My mom often went on a business trip... And everywhere she went, she would get my list - so she brought me Genesis - but often there was no album to be found there either, and she used to go around the whole foreign city until I found it. found Then I also got a gramophone, which was the best in the neighborhood, so I had a listening room, ha-ha. I always wanted to listen to something new and different - today it sounds funny, but back then everything was full of glam-rock, and I didn't like that, I was into hard and symphonic rock. So the team gets together and we listen to those records.

And I was so into it that I once brought the album of the electronic group White Noise from the city, put it on the record player and lay in bed with headphones on, when I realized that on that last song "Crna misa" ("Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell” - ed.), the needle starts skipping and the music doesn't end at all - but I was so scared that I didn't get up to stop it, ha-ha. With me, there were always some kind of anecdotes and madness, something would come to my mind that others didn't, and that seemed terribly interesting to me at that moment!

What kind of student were you at that moment, that is, what was your relationship with the school?

I was excellent in primary school, but after secondary school I got stuck. The first year of high school was still fine, but in the second year we were already working with the band - so the second year was spent many years, ha-ha, in various schools. I signed up somewhere, they kicked me out somewhere - so I wouldn't fall. The guys from the neighborhood said about me at that time that if I didn't do at least one life-threatening thing during the day - my day was incomplete, ha-ha.

But part of it is that you spread the love of music!

It is, it is - I still raise people to this day. When they let me see something that's not right, I immediately tell them everything I think is bad, to make them hate it to the end, ha-ha. And only rock and roll rises to the sky. We have one song dedicated to how rock and roll is not dead, on our last album "Underground" (Croatia Records, 2023). In art - rock and roll is eternal!

What makes rock 'n' roll so enduring and why we keep coming back to it?

Special energy. When it growls, and the drum enters and beats its nervous rhythm, that's when the soul starts... When I hear "Master of Puppets" by Metallica, I have to jump on the table immediately!

Now let's jump to the moment when you already became known as the singer of the Dirty Theater and performed with the group around SFRY. What do you think of the Yugoslav rock scene at the time from today's perspective?, especially her "new wave"? Are we just being nostalgic when we say she was fantastic? Did you feel that energy too??

We are not exaggerating at all when we say that she was fantastic. It was an incredibly creative period in our entire area of ​​the former South - Ljubljana, Rijeka, Belgrade, Sarajevo... In everything, not only in music, but also in journalism, photography and so on. A new generation came and brought something completely new, not only for ours, but also for the world's concepts. At that time, journalists from "New Musical Express" and "Melody Maker" came to us and did large reports on the phenomenon on two pages, with photos of the places where we hung out. But we didn't go out much, we were enough for ourselves in Yugoslavia, we often visited each other - for example, when there was the event "Greetings from Zagreb" in Belgrade, and then "Greetings from Belgrade" in Zagreb.

And that happened right in the Youth Center of Belgrade... Dobro, which according to you were the most important bands of that moment in Yugoslavia? Who did you compare yourself to as Dirty Theater and which sound did you like in our groups??

In fact, before Kazaliste, I listened to Timeovce, Indexe, YU group, Korni group - that was interesting to me, the darkness. Even before the "new wave", we had excellent musicians and excellent albums, and I still love hearing that to this day. And I'm really looking forward to meeting the Jelić brothers in Belgrade soon (the YU group is also a participant in the concert on December 30 in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art - prim.aut). Here's why: they were once extremely fair to us as a Theatre. We were little kids who performed more than the others, so everyone was envious of us. And I remember that we were on television filming "Sunday Afternoon", which was a very popular show at the time. We went by plane to Belgrade by invitation and we said to ourselves - why would we take any of the equipment with us, when everything is going to playback anyway. But when we arrived, none of our "new waves" wanted to lend us instruments, just to take pictures. And then suddenly the YU group comes to the studio, for the same recording, and says to us: "Ooo, where are you kids!", and we to them: "Ooo, Jelići, you arrived at the right time." And they: "What is the problem?" I say: "We don't have guitars and other things we need here." "Oh, no problem", said Jelići and took out the equipment: "Here we have it - we are a guitar band, just like you... Just take it, and if you need to bring something else, let us know." I said: "No, thank you, and this is more than enough" - they really blew me away! They are old men, and we are kids, but they have always been fair.

photo: Marko Lopac

As for the "new wave", we as Prljavo kazalište actually started everything with our first single "Televizori" and our first album. Afterwards, for example, I fell in love with the group of Charlot acrobats. I also loved Parafe and Termites and Electric Orgasm - I totally appreciated them from the beginning, ugh. As for Pankrt - a little less of them. After that came Ekaterina Velika, which was also a great band. I somehow experienced that the most out of our groups. I didn't like Azra and Johnny too much, he was pathetic. Haustor did have a few good moments, and Film - maybe only later, those ballads like "The truth is written on the wall" and "We are not alone", that was okay for me. But I always preferred to listen to foreign music, and when I produced and worked on something myself, I didn't listen to anything so that I wouldn't spoil myself and that something wouldn't get in my ear, and then it turned out to be plagiarism. I really wanted it to be totally mine - with my strange voice, strangely sung!

"New wave" has also brought a much greater presence of creative women on the music scene. How do you remember them?? First of all, Margita Magi Stefanović from EKV, which you mentioned a moment ago, maybe Slađan Milošević, Wim Cole and others...

Yes, yes, they were all there, and Cacadou Look, and Xenia with Vesna Vrandečić - a really excellent singer, it's a shame that she didn't want to continue, she wasn't really drawn to it... I appreciate and love women extremely, and my colleagues were especially dear to me - a woman and she's into rock and roll, ugh, I feel like it right away! There was also Zana Nimani, and Marina Vulić, the bass player in Električni Orgasm. I also had a bassist in my band Davorin i Bogovići, she came from the Zagreb band Contessa Nera - they didn't break through, they had other obligations, music was their hobby, but their bassist was excellent. She just had a "bird in her head", so it was a little more difficult with her - once we were supposed to start a gig, and Romana was nowhere to be found, we were looking for her, when she was in the women's toilet, the women gathered around her, and she was entertaining them, talking jokes... She sang and played very well.

One thing we also all shared was comics "Alan Ford". Why exactly that comic book was important to everyone, and how it came to be that you took the name of the band Prljavo kazalište from it?

"Alan Ford" was simply reading material. And that had to happen. In the home country, Italy, it did not go so well - for them the text itself was not very funny, there were no tricks - but Nenad Brixy, who translated for us, was extremely funny. I have read his books about Timothy Thatcher before - he was also a detective, but totally confused - an anti-detective... Very witty, as he also translated "Alan Ford", all with some sentences that became important to us. These are ready-made quotes - so my motto in life is: "If you want to win, you must not lose", ha-ha. We were all caught up in it and of course, when we were looking for a name, the new "Alan Ford" just came out with the "Broadway" episode: it was about a run-down, dilapidated theater... and then someone mentioned it as a name for our band. When we said that the band would be called that, people told us - "Well, that's terrible", and when we told them what ideas we had before - they said: "No, then this is quite decent"! The only thing is that we can't remember which one of us was the one who uttered those fateful two words - Dirty theater!

How do you explain the popularity of Dirty Theater today?? You had notable concerts in Zagreb at Tvornica kulture and Belgrade at Dom omladine. There were also a lot of young people on them. How did you light the fire in the young generation?, which is very different from ours?

About the Theater, I can only talk about the part in which I participated, and that is one energy... At every rehearsal, we now perform a complete concert, and I go crazy the whole time. I feel good and always get carried away. Today's kids understand those values. Because then we totally changed the way the lyrics are written - until then we talked about some strong eternal loves, and we remember the sewage system in the neighborhood and what: "What is it in a human being that leads him to drink", ha-ha. But these are still current things! There is a bit of patina on those songs, we just refreshed them a bit, but it was a very high-quality expression of talented kids. At that time, we made up for the lack of concert quality with rehearsals - and we even rehearsed on Sundays. We would get together there, play for two hours - then we would get bored, take the ball, and play soccer for half an hour - that would be our rest and then we would come back and play for another two hours.

Now the children of former fans are coming to us and now they are becoming fans. You can see that they are really well-bred kids - and those are the ones whose parents don't even let them listen to gossip. It was amazing to me when my wife - who is not as hard a rocker as I am, loves South American muse - said to our sons as soon as they played some painfully stupid song on their cell phone: "As long as I'm alive, we won't listen to it in this house no tricks, no chance." And I don't even listen to the original folk muse. They once asked me: "What, you don't listen to any folk songs at all?!" I say: "I can't do any, not even Japanese or Chinese, I don't like folk music!"

By the way, one of our friends drew our attention to the fact that the Zagreb and Belgrade comeback concerts were different - while in Zagreb everyone came with question marks above their heads, in Belgrade everyone came with exclamation points! And it was clear that in Zagreb it took a little bit of work to get it rolling, so that in the end it would be total madness, while in Belgrade it was known from the beginning what it had come to and what was eagerly awaited.

Can this return of the original Dirty Theater also educate some younger bands on the current scene?

I hope it can, although the current bands have disappointed me so many times... I have a feeling that our future, second comeback album, will be a fierce hard rock album, so it will be possible to learn a lot there. I really like that there are only four of us. Bands today seem to be on their way to being big bands - lots of them, and all of them lost. When Sale Novak came to us as a guitarist, we asked him: "Do you know someone else who would be our second guitar, who would be good for you for the gig?", and he told us: "Listen guys, I think I can do all this play it myself - if it's needed, I'll be the first to speak." We were a little skeptical, but when he started, he keeps the rhythm and then goes solo, everything is exceptional. And Fileš as a drummer is very precise, you can measure the time by him, he is very accurate here, as is Micika, the bass player with a pick - everyone agreed that this is the best line-up.

Those old songs are now classics, but at the concert it is obvious that you live them, you are what gives them life - then and now. How much truth is told in them?

A lot. They still crack me up to this day. My strongest thing is not hearing, but diction - to understand everything while singing. The more these young people perform in reality shows, bathroom singers, the more beautifully they sing - but they don't know how to interpret those songs. When I sing, I like to convince people of what I'm singing, and that seems to work well for me.

Finally, the question we all wanted to ask: how the famous one came about - "My name is Davorin Bogović, and this is all about me, it's black-white world"? Who came up with it and at what time?

Ha-ha, that's the thing about me being late for rehearsal all the time. In fact, not coming - and if I did come, then I would be late. And always when I was late, I would open the door and apologize in some way. But the way I would apologize was - never mind, what they say. And now the boys look first and always expect some explanation for my delay, and it was always something stupid. Also, in this case I come and say: "Hey, my name is Davorin Bogović, and everything around me is a black and white world", ha-ha. And then people really liked it, and I elaborated a bit and made a haiku out of it.

And we all remembered that!

It looks small and silly, but it works!