'Naši dani - priča o hrvatskom rocku'

I watch TV very, very rarely but recently found myself seriously enjoying TV documentary titled "Naši dani – priča o hrvatskom rocku" (Our days - stories about Croatian rock) that to my biggest surprise was done in excellent manner of the best foreign documentaries, not to mention this is the subject I always loved - history of popular music and the effect it had on listeners back than.

It is directed with greatest care by Andrija Vrdoljak using lots of archive material, original footage and interviews with surviving rockers who are almost all elderly citizens by now (its great fun to watch 1960s dancers who must be grandfathers and grandmothers now) and from technical/visual point of view it is in the same league as any BBC or "Discovery" production I always loved so much. The first two episodes were brilliant - they followed change from "family entertainment" to music of angry, young people who consciously or unconsciously used this music as form of rebellion against parents and society (but as ex-rocker Siniša Škarica notes, not against politics, that was too dangerous - all those angry young rockers who loved Jimmy Hendrix, for example, stayed clear from student demonstrations in early 1970s). The beginning of this documentary follows first "beat groups" like "Bijele Strijele" who idolised "Shadows" and were mostly clean cut, nice young men with slightly longer hair and our first rock star Karlo Metikoš who emulated Presley and drove girls crazy. The second episode explains the start of serious "author's work" or should we say beginning of original rock music as opposed to previous cover versions and this happened in early 1970s with Drago Minarec (first rock LP), excellent group "Time" and all-star musicians who backed young Josipa Lisac on her debut LP - composed by same Karlo Metikoš from previous episode - Lisac is curiously enough the only woman  in the story so far (along with some occasional back up singer) and lone female in the bunch of guys who actually matters. It is good to be reminded how important she was in the whole story because we simply don't have anybody else except Lisac as our own rock heroine.

Just saw a third episode and enjoyed it very much - it dealt with our first rock opera "Gubec beg" and all the nonsense its creators had to go trough while trying to get it on the stage, beginnings of some really successful Croatian rock bands and how everything changed when "Bijelo dugme" came along. "Bijelo dugme" were of course from Sarajevo (Bosnia) but they signed a contract with savvy recording company based in Zagreb since everybody else rejected them, so they somehow fall under umbrella of this title. Very good documentary.