YUGOSLAVIA: Bob Geldof performs in Belgrade

Record ID: 602245

  • Title: YUGOSLAVIA: Bob Geldof performs in Belgrade
  • Date: 19th April 1996
  • Summary: GELDOF SAYING IT'S A GOOD SONG TO SING IN BELGRADE TONIGHT. IT'S A SONG ABOUT KILLING. IT'S A SONG ABOUT KILLING FOR NO REASON. IT'S A SONG ABOUT PSYCHOSIS AND PSYCHOTIC PEOPLE. IT'S CALLED 'I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS' (ENGLISH)
  • Embargoed: 4th May 1996 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA
  • City:
  • Country: Yugoslavia
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA5IG0U2UA6NEGA0YDULX5LIILR
  • Story Text: Irish singer Bob Geldof has became one of the first international acts to perform in Yugoslavia after four years of war and sanctions.
    Geldof held an open-air concert in front of Belgrade's city hall on Friday (April 19), introducing his former group The Boomtown Rats's signature song "I Don't Like Mondays" with a politically charged stab at the war in Bosnia.
    "It's a good song to sing in Belgrade tonight," he said. "It's a song about killing. It's a song about killing for no reason. It's a song about psychosis and pyschotic people. It's called 'I Don't Like Mondays" Few in the crowd of some 50,000 to hear the Irish musician and his band the Happy Clubsters knew much about the performers, but that was hardly the point.
    After almost four years of sanctions imposed because of rump Yugoslavia's role in the war in neighbouring Bosnia, a major international act was at last appearing in the city, and few of its young were prepared to miss the free performance.
    The organisers of the Belgrade Marathon, which was starting on Saturday morning, invited Geldof as a curtain raiser.
    While Geldof's name may only be a distant memory for those in the crowd who recalled his last visit in 1982, they were primed by four years in the international cultural wilderness.
    The audience, most in their 20s, hear western rock music that is the staple of almost a dozen radio stations in Belgrade.
    The band worked them into a delighted frenzy, but in the capital of Yugoslavia -- now consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro -- the politics of war is never far away.
    "This is a good song to sing in Belgrade tonight," Geldof said, introducing another one of his songs. "It's a song about nationalism, and I fucking hate nationalism, because it leads to war and murder and ethnic cleansing." As he waved towards the austere stone building which houses the Serbian presidency on the opposite side of the square, Geldof declared: "I'm glad to be standing here in front of that fucking building, because I want to dedicate this song to (Serbian) President (Slobodan) Milosovic. It's called 'Banana Republic'." While most of the Serbo-Croat-speaking audience may not have understood exactly what he said, the message raised a cheer.
    Armed and uniformed police guarded the stage and trench-coated security men were in the crowd.
    Most of the audience, however, were just happy to be there and hear some live rock and roll.
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