Sarajevo's Midnight Runners

Today we are taking another dip into the bag of goodies I brought back from my trip to Zagreb in September. This time we are featuring a band so beloved in their native Bosnia that the national music award is named after them. You'll have guessed it already. It's Indexi, of course.

Indexi were founded way back in 1962 and only disbanded in 2001 when singer Davorin Popović passed away. His longstanding comrade-in-arms, the great guitarist Bodo Kovačević, joined him on the other side three years later. 

I picked up a double CD compilation called "The Ultimate Collection". The first CD covers the period 1967 to 1973, the second 1974 to the end of their career. The first is excellent, and includes such gems as "Negdje Na Kraju u Zatišju", believed to be the first rock recording of over ten minutes duration from the former Yugoslavia.

The second CD is not so good in my view. Like many bands of that era their music got progressively less interesting as the 60s turned into the 70s and then into the 80s. Having said that, their 1978 album "Modra Rijeka" is apparently considered a symphonic prog masterpiece, but there is only one track from that album on the compilation so I can't vouch for the accuracy of that claim.

Here are a couple of cracking tunes from when they were in their pomp in the late 1960s. 

"Šabn-Dabn-Šabn-Du-Bajo" - Indexi

"Jutro Će Promijeniti Sve" - Indexi

Indexi's "Pružam Ruke" was entered into the competition to represent Yugoslavia in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest but it lost out to Lado Leskovar's "Vse rože sveta" - an absolute travesty in my opinion. 

A couple of members of the band made it there eventually. Davorin Popović represented Bosnia in 1995 and finished 19th out of 23. But he was beaten there by Kornelije Kovač, whose keyboard playing adorns "Jutro Će Promijeniti Sve". 

After leaving Indexi Kornelije formed his own band called Korni Grupa who were chosen to represent Yugoslavia in Brighton in 1974. They may have been feeling hopeful as they stepped off the stage; those hopes lasted only until the next act (some Swedes). Korni Grupa came in 12th - another travesty, it should have been much higher.