a review of
godina zmajaan album by psihomodo pop
released in 1988
review by
james corbettscore: *** (out of ****)
one line blurb: Godina Zmaja is
"much, much better than Sexy Magazin."Once upon a time, while discussing with a friend just how totally awesome the genre of Punk Rock was, I came up with an impromptu list, in no particular order, of countries around the world who can make themselves some awesome punk music:
- America (Television, The Ramones, The Misfits, Rise Against, among others)
- England (The Clash)
- Japan (The Blue Hearts)
- Croatia (KUD Idijoti)
Of course choice number four raised some confusion. After all, everyone and their mother has heard "Linda Linda" and the entirety of
London Calling. But who has ever heard "Zbogom Marija (I love how Firefox's spell checker does not consider those real words!)?" How many people even know how to
pronounce that title (uhh, aside from the entire country of Croatia)?
Anyways. Psihomodo Pop. I will admit that the first album of theirs I heard,
Sexy Magazin (which actually came out two years after
Godina Zmaja), was not quite so hot. It completely sucked, really. I could have completely written off the group based on the impressions of one album, but I chose to stick it out. This group had been recommended to me by a really good friend of mine who happens to be Croatian, so I figure she may know what she's talking about, right?
And stuck it out I did.
It's pretty awesome!
It's pretty great!
It's some happy, poppy, pre-war music that is heavily, and I do mean heavily, inspired by The Ramones, right down to featuring two Ramones covers, "Hej, djevojko!" ("I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend") and "Ramona." Both of which are in Croatian, similar to what's-his-name who did all those Bowie songs in Portuguese.
Since I'm absolutely rubbish at reviewing music, I'll go ahead and end this here. End it with a download link, that is!
[Get Godina Zmaja Right Here!]
