TV blog

It's July. I'm in Novi Sad again. EXIT has entered...our consciousness again.

Although I had first come to NS way back in 1996, it was the fact that my Hungarian band, Trottel, was invited to play at EXIT 1 that started bringing me back to NS regularly, at least once a year and sometimes even more frequently. I must admit that the first year, I had been awake a solid 48 hours, and been on the road for 15 hours, before I finally arrived in NS on that fateful Sunday in 2001. So tired was I that I decided not to go to the festival that night. My friends, however, were having none of that; after all, this was the first big EXIT up at the castle. Nine days long of pure revelry. But that is exactly why I don't need to go tonight, I said. I still have 6 more days (I arrived on Sunday and had missed the first two nights and still had six days to play with even if I didn't go on Sunday. Incredible for a festival, really. And the price at that time was so ridiculously low that I wouldn't even feel like I was wasting my money. But...) No, you must come. And besides, Roni Size is playing. Who? (This is a whole nother story in itself, this Roni Size and drum and bass story. Ask me about it sometime. Or, better, yet, find me front and center at 2 all this week. I am the black guy with dreads).

Istina je sledeća: kada negde krene ne možeš ga zaustaviti i teško ga je pratiti. Sa Exita se uvek vraća šest sati posle nas, spava do sutradan popodne, a nekad se ni ne vrati. Odgovorno tvrdim da nijednom, ma koliko želeo, nije prespavao kod neke cure već uvek završi kod nekog frika, muzičara ili slikara obično, kojeg je upoznao pola sata pre nego što će otići kod njega na doručak i sovku. Evo, upravo gleda izjavu Džordža Buša o tome kako USA mogu pobediti u Iraku i nervira se. Daću mu još jednu palačinku zapečenu u rerni.

That was me in 2001. Now, 6 years later, I'm still coming. I have often wondered what it is that keeps me coming back, both to EXIT and to NS in general. I think over the years, I have figured out why NS attracts me; it's the similarity to my own Sacramento. Ja sam iz Sacramenta. (And now you say: Vlade Divac, Peja Stojakovic with a big smile on your face. Then you add "Sacramento Kings" as if the team were somehow here in Serbia and not in California). Yes, as it turns out, the plants are the same, the trees are the same, the basketball players are the same; I even found a fork on a sallas which was the exact one that was my favorite fork back in Sacramento when I was a kid in the seventies. To confirm this, I brought the fork back to California and showed it to my family. Sure enough, right down to the "made in USA" etched on the back, this was the one. It's the river and the smell of the river, the fact that streets don't all have sidewalks (at least in the Telep where I spend a good deal of time), it's the fruit, it's the fact that today I had homemade strawberry ice-cream made by a grandma and the last time I had homemade ice-cream it was strawberry and made by my grandfather. Also with fresh strawberries from our garden. In the seventies.

Granted, not everything is the same; we can't make domaci rakie and not go to jail. We can't walk down the street drinking a beer. We were not bombed by you guys. We don't even really know where Serbia is. But whatever, for my purposes, NS is the sister city to Sacto. Now, as to why I come back to EXIT each year will have to be explored in a later blog J

Eto, Tod i ja ćemo narednih dana povremeno apdejtovati ovu sranicu, pod uslovom da vam ne bude dosadno i ako bude bilo hemije. Znate na koju hemiju mislim. Onu koja radi kada posmatraš, pričaš, prolaziš pored, preživljavaš i pamtiš.

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