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Published: February 11th 2011
Tomo and Brennan
Performing Johnny Cash's "Hurt"I arrived in Zagreb in daylight. Two somewhat frustrating hours later, I finally found my host Dunja’s home. Dunja is a singer and folk song enthusiast. She can talk about folk music all night, if you let her – and you’d be a fool not to.
Dunja set out early on just trying to give me some background on the Croatian music scene, and introduced me to a few artists.
Dunja’s apprentice, Nina Romic, was the first Croatian musician I heard when I arrived at Dunja’s home. She’d set it up so that I would get to hear Nina right away when I walked in the door. Her soft voice, laid over misty, haunting arrangements was quite striking.
I learned a tremendous amount from all the time I spent with Dunja. “I’m very emotional,” she said, “But I’m aware of it and that allows me to not let it interfere with my life.”
Dunja introduced me to Davor, the sales manager at her label, Dancing Bear, who I found to be very receptive to the idea of working with me to try to get American distribution – the goal of my new music company,
Scaled Ascension, Ent..
His wife had just
Dunja and Brennan
Dunja, with Brennan in his motorcycle pants. had a baby, but he found a few moments to chat with me about their artists and the national music industry. Then he put together a package of about 50 CDs that he wanted to me to push for him.
At the end of my stay, we took the hundreds of music samples that about six different labels had provided me with, and laid them on the dining room table. Dunja helped me sort them, suggesting categories like “Croatian World Shit,” “World Folk Shit” and “Bosnian Folk Shit,” among the quality genres I mailed home.
As a European Union candidate country, Croatia uses the Kuna rather than the Euro. The Kuna’s current exchange rate is about 5.5 x US Dollar, so you end up paying about 12 Kuna for a slice of pizza. It ends up just a bit cheaper than standard American prices for most items. Fuel is a true bargain by European standards, pricing out around $6.10/gallon.
Street Observations
Walking on the time-worn streets of Zagreb, I saw a pasty-faced, red-eyed man with a surgical mask. His eyes darted sheepishly, guiltily, like he was carrying the black plague and he knew it.
Hours later, I passed a woman
Brennan at the Palace
This is where I lost my scarf. on the street with a baby in a stroller. The baby had fallen asleep in a forward lunging position, hunched over his tray and looking dead. I had to laugh.
One night, after a rest, I wandered out to track down some jazz music. Taking the trolley (Zagreb seems to be the most trolley-dominated city in the world), I got off one stop too early and walked through the beautiful old buildings and parks to arrive in the central square. There were teenagers playing near the fountains in the warm spring evening, and couples walking arm in arm.
I bought some French fries, dipped them in a very sweet ketchup, and wandered through the cobbled streets of old Zagreb until I found the BP Club. It was 10:35, and I asked the man at the door how late the players were going to blow, and he said it may finish up as soon as 11. I tried to talk him down on the price, since there wasn’t much left of the show, but he said it was impossible. Dejected, I wandered over to the other Zagreb Jazz Club to find it closed for a private party. “Plan C,” had me
Angry flower
Was this woman just having a bad day, or what? wandering down to a brewery a couple of kilometers away and playing the “beer journalist” game again. As I wandered past the national opera house, I snapped a picture in the dark that came out pretty well. I loosened my scarf a little for the photo, and let it hang around my neck. By the time I reached the brewery, I’d lost my third scarf somewhere along the way.
Notes from a Zagreb Brewery
Zlatni Medo, the brewery, was crammed full of internationals, as some of the world’s biggest sharks prepared for the European Billiard Championships. I wanted to swipe this chick’s coat, but it looked too darned good on her. She was a blonde punk with attitude and a nose ring, wearing a jacket that said “Swedish Billiard Federation.” In any other scenario, the chick would have been wearing it just to be ironic; not here. There was a rowdy accordion band with synthesizers, tattooed baddasses in wheelchairs, people drinking out of four-foot tall table taps, plus a guy in a bear-suit wandering around.
I stood invisibly at the bar for several minutes, while I took in the enormity of the scene. There were Germans, Greeks, Swedes and Irishmen,
each at their own tables with their country’s flag. It was here that my Oregon State University writing pen, warmly gifted to me four months prior by my thoughtful cousins on the eve of my departure, and used every day since then, petered out. A fine metal pen it was; it had never failed me for a second before this moment. It was like a true horse collapsing dead beneath my feet, never giving a warning that it was about to abandon me.
Standing at the bar, waiting for service, I was in a strange mood. The feeling was that of being both lonely for company and yet reclusive, simultaneously. I tried their beer, and was surprised to find that their light beer had far more flavor than their amber or dark, unlike every other brewery I’d visited so far.
End of the Night
I hurried back to catch the last regular trolley up the long, meandering roadway that led back to Dunja’s house. After watching 5 modern trolleys roll past me on their way to the station house, I saw old number 33 lurching toward me. A relic from the communist era, this blue, two-car, metal beast trudged along
and screeched to a halt in front of the clean concrete sidewalk and about 20 people piled in.
I stood in the back and leaned against the window, reading my copy of Kerouac’s
On The Road. As we shimmied along the way, I tried to see if we were nearing my stop. I soon found that because of the absolute filth on the windows of this – what must have been the oldest, dingiest and most disgusting trolley in the world – I really couldn’t see anything outside, let alone the lights of Pivnica Mlinarica, the pub-restaurant next to Dunja’s home, which I had decided to use as my marker. I went and squatted behind the trolley pilot, peering over his shoulder to try to see more clearly which would be my stop. It was too late; I’d missed it. I waited 20 minutes for him to turn it around and got off at almost the right place on the way back. There, well after midnight in the most foreign city I’d seen, I guided myself home under that gaze of creamy moonlight.
Baseless Meanderings
My feeling of isolation persisted the next day, as I lurked behind the ten-meter walls
of the city’s cathedral, admiring the Gothic architecture during the Sunday service. The spires were under restoration. One was a glistening white ivory with a golden cross at its summit that caught every ray of the brilliant spring sun. The other was a dull gray, like chimney ash. The choral voices echoed distantly while I pondered this.
I wandered through the market, and alleyways full of brilliant flower displays. I looked for postcards, but found nothing worth mailing. I’d been warned about the cost of postage in Croatia, reportedly the worst in Europe. Near a bakery I found a shop playing P.M. Dawn’s “Set Adrift on a Memory Bliss,” and was reminded of my adventures with P.M. Dawn on Molokai, as their singer swore he’d dedicate his next album to my intern, whit whom he’d become infatuated. Oh what a life. But the memory of this pulled me out of my doldrums, and made me excited for tomorrow. What’s tomorrow? Why it’s another day of course – another day in the life of Brennan.
As I looked over the old walls of the buildings of Zagreb, I noticed the peeling old paint, like every other city in Europe. Out of
nowhere came a crazy idea. What if you could biologically engineer a bacteria of a particular color that fed on oxygen, and grew on the side of walls? It would be constantly creating a fresh coat of paint. I’ll have to run that by my bio-engineering friends and see what they think.
BP Club
Bosko Petrovic was a strange fellow. According to Dunja, there was a time when this man was respected for bringing the first international jazz stars to Croatia. When I met him, he was still living these glory days in his mind. One night I sat at his table during the last 20 minutes of a fantastic jazz performance, featuring a talented violinist.
Hardly acknowledging my presence, let alone my appreciation for his achievements, Petrovic refused to give me the name of the person he sold his record label to and said he was then working with Croatia Records. I left him to his solitude, and the bottle of wine he shared with himself. He died last month.
Amazing Show
One night Dunja secured free entry for us to see a performance by Australian ambient rocker Brandon Perry. Perry is famous for his work with Dead Can
Dance in the 1980s and 90’s. His penetrating, ghostly baritone vocals, wall of sound accompaniment and dooming, emo lyrics rattled me to my core; it was fantastic. Perry, a bald old Aussie who now lives in Ireland, has the voice of Neil Diamond on heroin as he stings with lines like, “…your love a stained-glass window, your heart a chandelier.”
Dinner Party
To introduce me to the people in her life, Dunja held a dinner party and invited her sister and some friends. Jonathan, an Englishman who wrote the
Rough Guides to Croatia and Bulgaria came, as well as her friend Tomo, who takes an authentic approach to Croatian folk songs as he performs them in industrial/doom metal arrangements.
I immediately took a liking to both of them. Jonathan disappointed me when he told me that Rough Guides wasn’t interested in sending a writer to create a travel guide in Pakistan, Malawi, or Georgia, or some other perilous place where I could give my mother more grey hairs. Tomo and I eventually set to work to develop our own rendition of Reznor’s “Hurt.”
My search for record labels led me to the one-time home of Memphis records, on the south
Aries Bass
Bass guitar, hand made in Croatia. side of town. Someone told me that it was above a bar, on the building’s second floor (they call it the first floor in Europe), but I soon discovered the company had gone belly-up five years before. As I decided that my work day had come to an end, so I stayed to have a drink there.
In this working-class office bar I made the acquaintance of a music producer named Samir, a bassist in one of Zagreb’s longest running rock bands. Samir showed me his studio, and improvised on the most incredible bass guitar I’d ever seen. Aries Basses (handmade in Zagreb) had sponsored his band and was providing them with this top quality equipment. The wood looked to be mahogany, or some similarly aesthetic grain. Samir played for me some unreleased tracks by a band called the Voodoo Lizards (www.voodoolizards.com) off an album that had been recently recorded in America, though the band was unable to secure a record contract during their visit. They had paid to record and mix the fantastic English-language rock music, but had no label to release it. I made it a point to contact the band immediately.
The Voodoo Lizards
The next day
I had lunch with lead singer Zack Dust and his friend Hex from The Voodoo Lizards. They met me at the BP club. I waited at the bar, and before Zack arrived, I looked at the menu for the cheapest item and ordered a small bottle of Tuborg.
Zack and Hex are very cool guys, and they kept talking to me like Californians. At one point I told Zack that his singing voice had a Axl Rose quality to it, and he said, “Thank you very much, I really appreciate that.” Some people probably wouldn’t react so positively to that comment, but I meant it for all the complimentary reasons.
They gave me their promo albums, and we went to eat. They were headed for McDonald’s, but I asked if we could do something else because the food there has always made me ill. They took me to a Mexican Grill in an underground mall below a nice hotel. It was very generous, and though the guacamole was very odd in appearance, the square burrito was fairly tasty. Hex offered to pay, and they dropped me off for my meeting with Scardona Records.
Hit Records
In my record label search,
I eventually arrived at Hit records one day at about 5:35pm, and there was only one person left in the office… the company director. Kristina was brilliant, and I didn’t realize she was in charge until just before I left. She was beautiful, and she helped me with everything, even collected their whole catalog for me. She looked at me strangely as I packed it on my little moped. I was pleased as she introduced me to Kaliopi, the most famous singer in Macedonia, and I chatted with her for quite a while about her life and the growth of her career.
Final image and a tearful goodbye
The night before I left Coratia, Dunja took me to Mochvara, a club she had been telling me about since I arrived. There I met her friends, who are perhaps the best musicians in the entire country. I went with her friend Mojmir to a restaurant in search of food - but it was clear that it was far too expensive, so I ate at the MacDonald’s at the bus station. I was very hesitant. I was screaming mad when they gave me NO ketchup, and wanted 2 kuna for it or
for more McNugget sauce. However, Croatia’s MacDonalds’ are actually a separate franchise operation, and they use local animals from within the country; I found it did not make me as ill as American MacDonalds – at least not right away.
When I returned to the club, I met Nina Romic and several other beautiful performers. Dunja was incredible. She controlled the room. No one talked, they all listened intently. It was like a variety show, and a dozen acts performed at different parts of the night. It was like open mic night at a great café – if the performers just happened to be the best musicians in the entire country. My new friends even dragged me up to sing an acoustic-doom version of “Hurt” with Tomo. Tomo had been obsessed with “Hurt” for days; he even recorded his own take on Johnny Cash’s version of the song. You can hear his version of it
HERE At the end of the night, I left early to get home as soon as possible. I took the busses and tram and arrived back about 25 minutes before Dunja arrived herself. Finally, for the first time, on my last effort, I got
A Song about How Cool I am
"Bold Brennan On the Moor" off the trolley at the correct stop.
As I left the next day, I thanked Dunja for the priceless friendship she had bestowed upon me - a gift that will last a lifetime.
Random Poetic Moment
The rain stopped the moment that I left the shelter.
The bus arrived the moment I came to the stop.
The cameras watched me as I entered the station.
I saw you on his lap, as he gave you his cough. Bonus: Cut from the story
… I spent the first several days in Zagreb running about and tending to my music business matters. I hardly saw the city at all, just dancing around the outskirts and meeting with industry professionals…
…I was lost trying to find the street I wanted to turn on. I had no map, and was growing more frustrated by the minute. I finally decided to look for a hotel to get a map, but then I couldn’t find any hotels for the longest time. As soon as I found the Westin, I got myself straightened out, and 10 minutes later I arrived happily at my destination. Somehow I didn’t know that it may be hard to find
a particular street in a city with over 800,000 people…
… Dunja went with me to make an appointment at one of the other labels in Zagreb, Aquarius Records. Aquarius is the label that one of her prodigies has been recording with, Nina Romic….
… Because I’d stripped the oil bolt, I had to leave my scooter to have the oil changed for hopefully the last time before reaching Greece….
… The man gave me a bottle and tried to charge me 15 kuna. I said it was supposed to be 12, and he said that was for the draft. I told him to get me a draft then, and he went away and came back angrily with the draft. He poured the other one down the drain…
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