Dancing to the jams that DJ Stanislav Zabic was spinning simultaneously took you back to some mythic international post-punk rock and roll wonderland, and grounded you in the early evening light (the doors opened at 6PM!), all the while challenging your brain to translate rough-and-tumble Slavic dialects perfectly suited for the angry, angsty sounds.
Whether the music veered towards classic rock covers (Rolling Stones’ Out of Time, The Velvet Underground’s Waiting for the Man) or blasted Serbian favorites that got the crowd singing along (see and hear Električni Orgazam), Yugo Rock Night at the Slovenian National Home existed in that liminal space between (and in the basement of) our collective rock and roll dreams, in a wood paneled social club asking a two dollar membership to drink three dollar beers on the East side of a town that seems to have not changed much in 40 years. View the video here.
While Yugoslavia exploded into seven separate states in 1992, the diaspora of young people raised on 80’s rock found their way to Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and, unsurprisingly, Cleveland. Our friends met DJ Frog, as he is know, at university in Louisiana, of all places, and drove up from Yellow Springs, Ohio to hear him spin.
With a finger on the pulse, he kept the dance floor hopping, the embarrassment of riches that allowed bona fide rock stars, famous writers, incognito doctors, and faux-leather skirted housewives from Rocky River, in one giant circle by the end, to share the spacious dance floor with a joy that both harkened back to their youth, and also celebrated the relative peace and security of living in the Midwestern USA after so many years of political strife.
In fact, that Rolling Stones tune could have been the theme song for the evening:
You don’t know what’s going on
You’ve been away for far too long
You can’t come back and think you are still mine
You’re out of touch, my baby
My poor discarded baby
I said, baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time
https://www.slovenianhome.com/event-calendar-1
Cleveland, OH 44103