As newly independent Croatia broke away from the past, the biggest recording company "Jugoton" became "Croatia records" and started milking its archives (the trend that unfortunately continued to this day) instead of focusing on new artists. Perhaps 50+ years of documented music were somehow more interesting than new recordings,who knows. In all honesty we can admit that golden years of pop music are behind us now because the whole profession had more dignity and meaning in times when people were not concerned with harsh reality of survival like today.
However, the first artist who was honored with CD box of complete works (studio albums) in Croatia was not any of the biggest commercial movers & shakers because they come and go,but somebody who endured decades and inspired countless other musicians - undisputed rock queen Josipa Lisac, brave and eccentric lady who never sold tons of records but from the start enjoyed massive amount of respect for her talent. I remember clearly when this CD box came out that my girlfriend nonchalantly said "well,who else?" about the fact that from the whole recorded history of "Jugoton"/"Croatia records" Lisac was the one with legacy worth releasing complete on CD. Where other artists had occasional spark of inspiration in their times, Lisac was the one who continuously went step above expectations and stayed contemporary, no matter what musical trends were in fashion.
As her complete studio albums collection shows, Lisac was exceptional voice from the very start in late 1960s and sounded intriguing even in the festival "schlager" music of the day.,surrounded with strings,huge orchestras and bombastic orchestration. Instead of staying there, she moved quickly towards jazz-rock territory and distanced herself from generation that would fall out of fashion very soon,building reputation as a rock singer and in process winning younger audience who supported her trough decades. Most of her output here was composed by her own composer/partner Karlo Metikoš who worked as her teacher/mentor/Pygmalion and though their collaboration is now classic and legendary, I wish she worked with other people some more (everybody gets very upset when I mention this). The point in the case are several uninspired early 1980s LPs and than sudden renaissance with album "Boginja" (The Goddess) where other composers got chance to shine - it was her most commercially successful release in many years and gave her career completely new wings.
Along with Lisac's usual studio albums (mostly presented as two-on-one CD) this box gives us complete recording of rock-opera "Gubec beg" (1975) and english version of album "Made in USA" that was originally released in croatian version in 1979. Of course I had all this stuff from the times of their original release (in multiple versions, tapes AND vinyl) but had to get CD box as well. For a completist like me extra CD with singles and guest performances would have been added bonus,but unfortunately this time we got only albums. So far only Oliver Dragojević got the similar treatment and his discography is far less varied than Lisac who worked in jazz,rock,pop,classical and many other genres. Good thing about this CD box is that it introduced her work to a generation of younger audience who was perhaps not aware of all this.
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