One of those strangely unpublished articles/interviews from the era when the second wave of the C-19 epidemic brought everything to a halt. We decided to publish it retroactively, in its entirety, through a conversation with Jugoslav Petrović AKA “JP”, the band’s founder, frontman and writer of all the lyrics, and after the concert at the former “AKC”.
alxspirit: Impressions after the concert?
JP: The concert was great. It is important that the people liked it. We have never been to Jagodina. We were in Paraćin in 1997, and here we are next door. I hope it’s not the last time. I think the audience loved it. There were mostly people who know us and who have been waiting for us for years, and now I dig that if the word gets around the city that the gig was okay – that next time it can be done on a slightly bigger level, in the sense of making it even crazier party.
alxspirit: Where did the idea come from to insert a green “Land Rover” into the video for the song “Jahrastafarraj”, a jeep whose appearance in the video has become somewhat of a cult thing for some crews?
JP: Djora from the band drove a green military jeep “Land Rover” back then. To tell you the truth, it’s uncomfortable because it shakes, but it’s iconic in its own way, because not everyone drives that model, and then when he came to my place in Russia in 2000 to play and try some music, he sold it for about 6,500 German marks. Then he lived with me in Russia for about four months, where together we made some of the songs that were included in the album “004”.
alxspirit: What can you tell us about Russia?
JP: I left for family and business reasons in 1993. I finished school, university, (film) directing there… I also founded a band there, because at that time I was already writing songs, for example, “SloboDown”, “Belgrade”, “Straight Gangsterism”, “Malo Sreće (Some Luck)”. I wrote those songs when I was about 14 years old, but they are still relevant today. Inspiration comes to me out of nowhere, I write a song and I never rewrite songs. I don’t know how many songs I have, but I think that you can’t talk a lot and write a lot, and at the same time make that every word is in its place. People constantly write and release something, which ends up being exaggerated and causing the opposite effect. That’s why we don’t have many albums, but you saw for yourself that the people who came know all the songs and all the albums. There was not enough time, but if we had played all the songs tonight, these people would have known all the songs and sung all the songs.
alxspirit: How did it feel to be profiled as a band in the “nineties” and to be a “mirror of urban society”, and very often of society as a whole?
JP: Well, I was lucky enough to live a happy childhood in (former) Yugoslavia. As for the “nineties”, we were teenagers, kids, and when you’re young, it’s always different. On the one hand, you experience it differently than your parents. On the other hand, since 1993, I have been alternately in Russia and Serbia. In the mid-90s, there was a publishing house “Metropolis” and all the bands were gathered there, us, “Eyesburn”, “Bjesovi”, “Sunshine”, “Block Out”… At one point, from the mid-nineties, the music scene was active, but not at that low and destructive level, but in the sense of social activism. There were a lot of songs and lyrics, a lot of gigs and independent festivals, such as local festivals, and all the other forms… There was rock and roll, and rebellion!
Straight Jackin on: Facebook, Instagram, MySpace.
Date: December 27/28, 2019. | Location: Former “AKC”
Photography: alxspirit | Video: YouTube/@metropolisrec (Metropolis Music Serbia)
alxspirit 