I sort of remember hearing him even then, with Grupa 220, in the spring of 1967 (i.e. 08-VI-1967.).
I remember seeing Grupa 220 then often at Kale's, don't know why at his place, we already had a teevee set. Guess it happened so that Ristić's „Concert for young crazy world“ emisija would occur at some left field time when my folks don't turn the television set on yet, guess mondays at 18:30 (or rather 19:00, the daily news were still at 20:00), and many spots (as the short videos, covering one song whereby the band would hop over meadows, ships, construction sites, ruins... and pretend to sing) I still remember from then, when I see them now. But I didn't know the guys' names then.
Dragec stayed with the band for a few more years, then went solo. They put out few more hits and probably an album as well, and then remorphed into „Parni valjak“ (steamroller). He, on the other hand, went into something lyrical, in acoustic waters, was often a guest in the „Series which isn't there“, which lasted the whole glorious year, bringing to cameras the whole acoustic scene, what with Buco and Srđan, and Tomaž Domicelj (Tomaž Pengov appeared a bit later, when the series was no more), Ibrica Jusić, Vlada and Bajka, Suncokret, Dag, Maja de Rado and Porodična manufaktura crnog hleba and Dragec himself at least three times. Too bad I had nothing with which I'd record those performances, because later, when published on a record, they sounded completely different.
And then there was the end of 1972 and in Presprom, in Šaca's bookstore, the „A ti se ne daj“ (then you don't give up, his first solo album) appeared. That is, it got published, but didn't appear in the store until about march, when „Pjesme sa planine“ (songs from a mountain) also got published. Somehow it happened that I bought both, probably in wrong order, within barely a week, just at the time when we two were learning about each other, so he became a part of our lives' sound background, and stayed there forever. He's on the playlist to this day, and at least two of his songs are minor anthems. One is „Jur nijedna na svit vila“ (cause no in the world a fairy), because of two verses about „breasts whiter than snow and milk“ in medieval dalmatian dialect; other is „I should have, but I didn't“ because I heard it when I needed it, and thus avoided the verse „as if I lived in vain“.
That he has some big voice, does not. That he's a grand composer, is not. That he's extraordinarily skilled singer or guitarist, no champion. That he's very original in verse, is not really. But with exactly those minimal means, sticking to his vocal inabilities, he managed to write so many songs, where, without any great phantasizing or complicating, he managed to say what we thought and felt, to which we would have, I guess, come on our own but then let him be the one who'll say those thoughts aloud... We needed one like that, and he got found.
22-VI-2025 - 23-VI-2026