Paraf
Encyclopedia
Paraf is a punk rock
and later post-punk
band from Rijeka
, Croatia
, known as one of the pioneers of punk rock in the former Yugoslavia
.
in Europe
, teenagers Valter Kocijančić (guitar, vocals), Zdravko Čabrijan (bass) and Dušan Ladavac "Pjer" formed Paraf during the late 1977. The band had their first live appearances at the Rijeka
high-schools along with the bands of similar musical orientation, Termiti
, Protest and Lom. During the late 1978, the band started performing frequently, even outside Rijeka. They played in Ljubljana
, Belgrade
, Zagreb
. The band also performed at the Novi Sad
BOOM festival, as well as an opening act for The Ruts
concert in Zagreb. In 1979, they released their debut single "Rijeka", a cover version of the Ramones
song "Chinese Rocks", but Kocijančić signed as the song author in order to test the Yugoslav
critics of the time. Despite the intention, it was the Džuboks magazine journalist Petar Luković who recognized that the song was a cover version. The band also appeared on the various artists compilation album Novi punk val 78-80
, released by ZKP RTLJ
in 1980, with the song "Narodna pjesma" ("Folk song").
After several delays, the band debut album A dan je tako lijepo počeo... (And the day started so nicely...) was released by ZKP RTLJ during the Spring of 1980. Due to the explicit lyrics, the album was taxed as kitsch
despite the fact that a part of the lyrics had to be changed and the band had to use an alternate album cover. Following the punk rock ideology, the band discussed several themes which were at the time new to the Yugoslav rock: the songs featured ironic usages of communist slogans, mocked, at the time, one of the most popular bands, Bijelo Dugme
, in the song "Pritanga i vaza", insulting the police in the censored version of "Narodna pjesma", and dealt with social themes typical for a seaside city. The album production was done by the band's close associate Goran Lisica "Fox", assisted by Igor Vidmar.
After the album release Valter Kocijančić left the band, later joining the band Istočni Izlaz, until quitting his musical career and becoming a teacher, which is also his current occupation. The new members had become the vocalist Pavica Mijatović, using the pseudonym
Vim Cola, and the former Zadnji guitarist Klaudio Žic. The latter soon after left the band and the new members had become the guitarist Mladen Vičić "Riči" and keyboard player Raul Varlen. With the arrival of the new members, the band also changed their musical style, moving towards post-punk
, influenced by the popular British
bands of the genre.
After a series of promotional concerts, the guitarist Vičić left the band, being replaced by a former Termiti
member Robert Tičić. The new lineup started recording the third studio album, and during the period in between the recording sessions and the album mixing the twenty-two-year-old Tičić got a flow of blood onto the brain which was fatal to him. His replacement was the former Konjak guitarist Mladen Ilić, later the founder of the band Psi. The album Zastave (Flags), released in 1984, featured lyrical themes related to the near history, influenced by Miroslav Krleža
. The album was produced by the band themselves with the Borghesia
member Aldo Ivančić. Despite offering a serious release, especially in the tracks "U pobjede nove" ("Into new victories") and "Zlatno doba" ("Golden age"), the album, due to being uncommunicative, was not well accepted by the audience.
The band existed until 1986 when they disbanded. Pavica Mijatović and Zdravko Čabrijan got married and moved to Krk
where they started a tourist business. Drummer Dušan Ladavac joined Let 2 but left the band before it evolved into Let 3
.
group Blagdan Band, and the recording of the song appeared on the live album Pallach's not dead. The original lineup reunited again on December 13, 2003, and the recordings of the songs "Rijeka" and "Hit tema" ("Hit theme") from the performance were released on the various artists live album 25. Ri-Rock, released by Dallas Records in 2004. Four years later, in 2008, the band reunited in both the punk rock and post-punk lineups at the promotion of the Riječki Novi Val box set.
compilation album.
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
and later post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
band from Rijeka
Rijeka
Rijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, known as one of the pioneers of punk rock in the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
.
Punk rock years (1976-1980)
Following the expansion of punk rockPunk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, teenagers Valter Kocijančić (guitar, vocals), Zdravko Čabrijan (bass) and Dušan Ladavac "Pjer" formed Paraf during the late 1977. The band had their first live appearances at the Rijeka
Rijeka
Rijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
high-schools along with the bands of similar musical orientation, Termiti
Termiti
Termiti were a novi val band from Rijeka, Croatia, then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Their music, sung in mother tongue, had the quirk of an organ sounding keyboard and complex and unusual leading melodies, backed to the usual New Wave rock ensemble of images. They are included on the...
, Protest and Lom. During the late 1978, the band started performing frequently, even outside Rijeka. They played in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
, Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
. The band also performed at the Novi Sad
Novi Sad
Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....
BOOM festival, as well as an opening act for The Ruts
The Ruts
The Ruts were a reggae-influenced British punk rock band, notable for the 1979 Top 10 hit "Babylon's Burning", and an earlier single "In a Rut", which was not a hit but was much played and highly regarded by the UK BBC Radio 1 disc jockey, John Peel.-Career:...
concert in Zagreb. In 1979, they released their debut single "Rijeka", a cover version of the Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
song "Chinese Rocks", but Kocijančić signed as the song author in order to test the Yugoslav
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
critics of the time. Despite the intention, it was the Džuboks magazine journalist Petar Luković who recognized that the song was a cover version. The band also appeared on the various artists compilation album Novi punk val 78-80
Novi Punk Val
Novi Punk Val is a compilation album of Punk rock and New Wave music from the SFR Yugoslavia. It covers the period from 1978 till 1980. It was released by ZKP RTLJ in 1980...
, released by ZKP RTLJ
ZKP RTLJ
Založba kaset in plošč RTV Ljubljana or Založba kaset in plošč Radiotelevizije Ljubljana , was a major record label based in Ljubljana, Socialist Republic of Slovenia, during the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...
in 1980, with the song "Narodna pjesma" ("Folk song").
After several delays, the band debut album A dan je tako lijepo počeo... (And the day started so nicely...) was released by ZKP RTLJ during the Spring of 1980. Due to the explicit lyrics, the album was taxed as kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
despite the fact that a part of the lyrics had to be changed and the band had to use an alternate album cover. Following the punk rock ideology, the band discussed several themes which were at the time new to the Yugoslav rock: the songs featured ironic usages of communist slogans, mocked, at the time, one of the most popular bands, Bijelo Dugme
Bijelo dugme
Bijelo dugme was a highly influential former Yugoslav rock band, based in Sarajevo. Active between 1974 and 1989, it is widely considered to have been the most popular band ever to exist in former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and one of the most important acts of the Yugoslav rock...
, in the song "Pritanga i vaza", insulting the police in the censored version of "Narodna pjesma", and dealt with social themes typical for a seaside city. The album production was done by the band's close associate Goran Lisica "Fox", assisted by Igor Vidmar.
After the album release Valter Kocijančić left the band, later joining the band Istočni Izlaz, until quitting his musical career and becoming a teacher, which is also his current occupation. The new members had become the vocalist Pavica Mijatović, using the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Vim Cola, and the former Zadnji guitarist Klaudio Žic. The latter soon after left the band and the new members had become the guitarist Mladen Vičić "Riči" and keyboard player Raul Varlen. With the arrival of the new members, the band also changed their musical style, moving towards post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
, influenced by the popular British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
bands of the genre.
Post-punk years (1980-1986)
The new musical orientation was presented to the wider audience on the second studio album Izleti (Excursions), featuring the songs "Pobuna bubuljica" ("Acne uprising"), "Nestašni đački izleti" ("Naughty school excursions"), "Javna kupatila" ("Public bathrooms") and "Federico u bačvi" ("Federico in a barrel"), the latter being inspired by the Federico Felini film Fellini's Casanova. The song also featured the song "Tužne uši" ("Sad ears"), also released on single, featuring a minimalist lyrics "Ležim na leđima i plačem a suze mi teku u uši" ("I am lying on my back and crying while my tears are flowing into my ears").After a series of promotional concerts, the guitarist Vičić left the band, being replaced by a former Termiti
Termiti
Termiti were a novi val band from Rijeka, Croatia, then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Their music, sung in mother tongue, had the quirk of an organ sounding keyboard and complex and unusual leading melodies, backed to the usual New Wave rock ensemble of images. They are included on the...
member Robert Tičić. The new lineup started recording the third studio album, and during the period in between the recording sessions and the album mixing the twenty-two-year-old Tičić got a flow of blood onto the brain which was fatal to him. His replacement was the former Konjak guitarist Mladen Ilić, later the founder of the band Psi. The album Zastave (Flags), released in 1984, featured lyrical themes related to the near history, influenced by Miroslav Krleža
Miroslav Krleža
Miroslav Krleža was a leading Croatian and Yugoslav writer and the dominant figure in cultural life of both Yugoslav states, the Kingdom and the Republic . He has often been proclaimed the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Miroslav Krleža was born in Zagreb, modern-day...
. The album was produced by the band themselves with the Borghesia
Borghesia
Borghesia is a Slovenian electronic music / rock music group, created in Ljubljana in 1982. The band was formed by members of the alternative theatre group Theatre FV-112/15. Borghesia created its aesthetics using the imagery of prohibited, tabooed and repressed...
member Aldo Ivančić. Despite offering a serious release, especially in the tracks "U pobjede nove" ("Into new victories") and "Zlatno doba" ("Golden age"), the album, due to being uncommunicative, was not well accepted by the audience.
The band existed until 1986 when they disbanded. Pavica Mijatović and Zdravko Čabrijan got married and moved to Krk
Krk
Krk is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Rijeka in the Bay of Kvarner and part of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar county....
where they started a tourist business. Drummer Dušan Ladavac joined Let 2 but left the band before it evolved into Let 3
Let 3
Let 3 is a modern rock band from Rijeka, Croatia formed in 1987. The band frontmen are Damir "Mrle" Martinović and Zoran "Prlja" Prodanović. The band is popular in Croatia and other former Yugoslav republics due to their original approach to rock music and their obscene live performances...
.
Reunions
The original Paraf lineup reunited in 1994 in order to perform at the Ri-Rock festival, the third Fiju Briju festival, as well as to perform several solo concerts. In 1996, Kocijančić performed the song "Rijeka" with the ad hocAd hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
group Blagdan Band, and the recording of the song appeared on the live album Pallach's not dead. The original lineup reunited again on December 13, 2003, and the recordings of the songs "Rijeka" and "Hit tema" ("Hit theme") from the performance were released on the various artists live album 25. Ri-Rock, released by Dallas Records in 2004. Four years later, in 2008, the band reunited in both the punk rock and post-punk lineups at the promotion of the Riječki Novi Val box set.
Unreleased material
"Goli Otok" was a highly provocative and controversial song that was never officially released, but performed live. Yet another song from the period was "Narodna pjesma" which featured censored lyrics on the debut album, but the original version appeared on the Novi punk val 78-80Novi Punk Val
Novi Punk Val is a compilation album of Punk rock and New Wave music from the SFR Yugoslavia. It covers the period from 1978 till 1980. It was released by ZKP RTLJ in 1980...
compilation album.
Legacy
- SerbiaSerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n hardcore punkHardcore punkHardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
band KBO!KBO!KBO! is a Serbian punk rock band from Kragujevac. They are one of the first hardcore punk acts on the former Yugoslav punk scene. Since the very beginning, the band accepted the DIY ethic by forming their own record label KBO! Records, through which they have released all their official releases...
covered the song "Moj život je novi val", and the song appeared on the Svi protiv svih various artists compilation. - SerbiaSerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n punk rockPunk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band Atheist RapAtheist RapAtheist Rap is a Serbian punk rock band from Novi Sad.- 1980s :The idea of forming Atheist Rap came to vocalists Aleksandar Popov, also known as "Dr. Pop", and Vladimir Kozbašić, also known as "Pećinko" at the Rambo Amadeus concert, which took place on November 29, 1988 at the local club Mašinac,...
recorded a cover version of "Narodna pjesma", released on their second studio album II liga zapadII liga zapad- Personnel :* Leki * Acke * Goja * Radule * Dr. Pop * Pećinko - External references :...
. - The Milano band Homoplastik recorded a cover version of "Moj život je novi val", released on vinyl single in 700 copies.
Studio albums
- A dan je tako lijepo počeo... (1980)
- Izleti (1982)
- Zastave (1984)