Tribute to the cult rock album sans original performer

Thanks to wonders of youtube I stumbled upon something very dear and close to my heart - a concert tribute to legendary all-star Croatian LP album from 1973. The album itself was a debut studio showcase for than 23 year old Josipa Lisac who was surrounded by the cream of local musicians and it is now considered to be one of undisputed masterpiece of Croatian rock music, with generations after generations of new listeners discovering it trough the years. During my teenage years, lady herself would very rarely perform these old songs, since she had tons of new material and was happy introducing new songs that her partner Karlo Metikoš tailored specifically for her - I clearly remember even back than, in 1982 people would complain that her voice is now not what it was before and that she changed her style too much from the original recordings - fast forward to 2023 and she had metamorphosed so much into almost unrecognisable artist than nowadays her concert performances hardly resemble those old recordings - at this point she is all about jazzy improvisations and experimentations that alienate quite a lot of people, including (dare I say it?) me as I grew up with original recordings and loved every note.

On June 10th, 2023 there was a very interesting performance tribute to this whole album by a young local band, led by vocalist Lucija Pećar Končić and her guys - they performed a complete album in chronological order and in original arrangements, as they were recorded in 1973. Josipa Lisac herself was amused and flattered that her masterpiece (now 50 years old) is apparently capable to exist on its own without her, but she was not present or performing in the concert - it was all about the music, not about her. I knew vaguely about this but was not expecting to find it available on youtube and when I discovered it today, I must say that I was overjoyed. After all, I know every single word and every note by heart.

 

One interesting thing that struck me immediately is "oh, they really followed original recording note by note" - by now we are so accustomed that Lisac is constantly experimenting with new versions that it comes as a shock to hear album the way it was. At first i wasn't even sure what I think about it - I thought, well, copying original note by note can be done by anybody, right? Even I could do exactly what the singer Lucija Pećar Končić was doing here, just give me a microphone and a spotlight, I know every word and every single ornamentation. And this is one of the reasons why Lisac is such a celebrated singer, because she never rested on her laurels but was constantly changing and evolving (to the point that now she is singer's singer but too complicated for wide audience). But after a while I got so carried away with the music, that I didn't care anymore - I was singing along from the top of my lungs and decided that even in this, obviously well-studied version, its simply a labour of love from musicians who love, admire and know this music - its a joy to see all of them so young and so clearly in love with music. And it confused me a bit, since I never really liked how Lisac herself was twisting original recordings into something unrecognisable but now when I see it performed exactly as it was my reaction was "hm, that is too easy". In any case, this live concert made me very happy and I have not only shared it around with everybody but also listening right now, its the soundtrack of my life and I can only hope that in the future there will be more of similar tribute concerts to this fabulous music and this wonderful lady.