Old pop festivals: Split '73

Along with similar festivals in Zagreb and Opatija, Split was firmly established as one of the biggest seasonal pop music events in a country. It also had a twist - from its earliest beginnings it promoted local dialect and cultural tradition of life on coastline, with occasional pop hit or two that would define the whole summer. It's easy to make fun of ubiquitous subjects of this material, on the other hand there is a certain charm to it and these countless songs about  sea, sailors, ships and good old days were often soundtrack of our childhood summer vacation memories. Around this time it still functioned as international music festival with foreign guests, but this method will cease soon and focus will be on homegrown artists.

In 1973 Split music festival was already accepted as bastion of mainstream schlager MOR music and even though we had burgeoning rock scene with its angry young talents, it was here that biggest radio hits were promoted - critics could smirk all they want, but audiences just couldn't get enough of people like Mišo Kovač, Tereza Kesovija and Radojka Šverko who represented inoffensive, family-friendly TV entertainment. Artists represented here were usual suspects, habitually promoting newest material by composers as Stipica Kalogjera, Alfi Kabiljo and Đorđe Novković who would regularly tailor songs specifically for this audiences and conforming to certain standards of what  was expected of this occasion - when people talk about good old days when festivals still mattered, they forget that such contests rarely dared to bring something radically new, which means that most successful were songs that cautiously followed stereotypes. That even outside composers like Jože Privšek and Mojmir Sepe from Slovenia would bring material perfectly indistinguishable from the rest of competition just shows what a strong image this festival had. Artists that were less prominent but nevertheless interesting were Mladen Kozjak and Nevia Rigutto who might had better chance for exposure if this institution didn't so openly support small group of favorites that concentrated around this stage from year to year. Amongst the singles released from this year (and not present on LP album) were those by  Đorđi Peruzović, pop bands Delfini and Mladi batali but by far the most unusual and memorable was lovely local eccentric Toma Bebić with "Tu-tu, auto, vrag ti piz odnija" which was so mad that it sounds light years before its time. If this was some old family photo album, Bebić would be my favourite cousin, grinning and winking amongst formal and proper relatives suffocating in their starched collars.