Zagreb '73

The way these pop festivals go, 1973 was actually not a bad year at all. 

Sure, mammoth orchestras were still plodding behind performers and strings were swirling to the skies, but same things were happening everywhere else at the time, from San Remo to Eurovision so I guess it was unavoidable. You can just imagine conductors twirling the batons and backing choruses clapping hands in unison, big and very lacquered hair, however the victory is between the lines in a small steps: old dinosaurs are slowly being replaced with fresh, new artists and the impression is that old festival actually promotes some different, promising names instead repeating same old names again and again. Where in 1950s and 1960s this festival constantly had same list of performers, now we actually have some young voices who would later mark the decade.

Ex-rocker Dalibor Brun leaves Rock music for good and strikes biggest hit of his career with excellent, soulful ballad by husband & wife tandem Hrvoje Hegedušić and Maja Perfiljeva whose songs brought huge hits to many artists at the time. "Otkad si tuđa žena" was kind of "When a man loves a woman" ballad and its still played on the radio. For a moment it seemed that Brun might became interesting artist. Instead of him, the next big thing would became  young, fresh-voiced singer from Sarajevo named Zdravko Čolić who was here making his first steps on serious, bigger music scene and although this particular song was not very memorable, he sings like a dream and very soon he will explode like a supernova, his truly great moment is just around the corner so its interesting to hear him in this moment, everything is ready, he just needs the right song. Usually I don't care for Miro Ungar at all and his quasi-intellectual intro here is irritating, but it soon it turns into passable Tom Jones imitation and refrain is surprisingly danceable and even energetic in "She's a lady" kind of song. Judging by this LP, ladies were not particularly inspired this year: even last year winner Josipa Lisac had a forgettable little ditty (but than again, her team was busy creating her now-classic debut album and the first Croatian rock-opera simultaneously, so its a wonder they ad anything for her at all). However, the prettiest surprise was a acoustic duo from Dubrovnik called Buco i Srđan whom I vaguely remembered just by name and always thought it must be something wimpy where in fact they were actually darn excellent. On this festival they had now-classic song "Dobro jutro Margareta" that we all remember today from a cover by completely another singer and it came as surprise to find out this was original and very, very beautiful indeed. I liked the sound of these guys so much that I did some more research about them later.