Just now (2021) I heard a piece of "Funkytown" by Lipps, inc, and it's still as awful and disgusting as it was at the time. Heard it often on the radio (both Studio B and 202 would regularly add about 50 new songs a week, so whatever came) and even saw one of the videos on TV, probably on "Sunday afternoon", which was now a whole afternoon block, starting after lunch and ending about 18:00 or so. The athmosphere in the whole country was kind of somber - no big shows, the pop music festivals didn't get aired or didn't appear in full pomp and advertising, as Tito was ill, leg already amputated, and we were all "looking at front pages of the newspapers, just to see if obituary is there" (as the joke went). Still, this kind of shit knew no barriers. The only worse offender that I remember was "Disco duck", where I don't know which was worse, the imbecile music, the ugly voices, or the faces of the singers, how lobotomized they were made to look.
About this months some cousin of hers came by, with his girlfriend. So we took them to the hotel for a drink and I guess dinner, though it was still daylight and a bit early for dinner. There was some band playing, and of course they played "Jugoslavijo" (vocative case!), which I somehow memorized as Brena's song, but it can't be, because Brena was just starting her carreer in this same hotel )but even that would be in the second half of the year) and the song was a federal hit. Perhaps we did hear her, not knowing what she will become. There was that patriotic and "nobody can do us nothing" vibe that spring. We knew the old man won't take long, and yet we lived like he'll do a century... which was a paraphrase of one of his slogans, anyway.
We set by a yard facing table, each couple having its own window. There was a column in between, covered by two furniture grade planks, and the plank on our side was dangling. It was screwed on top, loose on the bottom. So she grumfed* it with a chewing gum - stuck it between the planks and pressed. It miraculously held.
Not just held. Several years later we sat by the same table, and the chewie still held, firm as ever.
In other news, the couple did get married soon afterwards, but she died within about ten years. Too bad, she was cute.
Some time this spring we went to see Polanski's „Tess“. The only thing I remember that the fashion was rapidly changing - thick dark eyebrows perhaps work fine on Nastasja, but I expect to start seeing them everywhere soon. Or perhaps this was already in the works, some fashion photos from 1977 have that already. Before that, it was unimaginable, and all of a sudden we all like it. Or have to pretend to.
----
* v. Alan Ford
25-VI-2022 - 11-XI-2025