It may actually take decades to respond to reader mail, a Jim Gray can attest. I recently found an envelope from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, mailed to Skate and Annoy sometime in 1988, only to be fully examined in an entirely different millennium. Do I regret not reading this letter from Darko Kolesar, AKA “Gricko” from Zehun, Yogoslavia? Do I lament the lost opportunity to create a cross-cultured, transcontinental friendship, let alone the chance to establish an outpost behind the Iron Curtain? Would I have loved to have a copy of the Yugoslavian skate zine Body & Soul in my collection? Do I wonder what Yugoslavian skate rock sounded like in the 80’s? Do fell like a dick? Yes.
UPDATE: A response from Gricko! Thanks to everyone who helped track him down. Read the Darko chronicle appended to the post!
Honestly, it was buried in a box of zines. It must have gotten lost in the move that happened shortly after we… moved and got a P.O. box for the zine. What a waste. I’m sorry Darko! I love the drawing of the skatespot.
This is the punk band Orthodox or possibly Orthodox Christians that Darko mentions in the letter. Apparently they had one song about skateboarding. I hesitate to dwell on how much money that poor kid had to pay to get a Thrasher sweatshirt in Yugoslavia.
More historical artifacts.
A response from Gricko!
Turns out it wasn’t hard to track him down after all these years, and unbelievably, he heard about the post second hand. Darko responds:
Ok. this might be the long one, so brace yourself.
first – much respect to everybody tracking me down and to kilwag for the post.do not know where to start…
like…. iron curtain…. i guess there was a ‘curtain’ but it was not iron in any sense. very light and very porous. we had a red passport [very dark red, almost brown] but were free to travel around the world. did not need visa for the states, western europe. and we did travel. the thrasher hoodie was bought in london, rough trade shop. we did live quite an easy living.
’90s were the bitch, but you all know it, i guess.
we did not get to be drafted, go to war or had somebody shoot bullets at us, but economics changed quite a bit. immense pressure and depression all around.so – bass player vanja and drummer andra put out the first issue of the body&soul zine. i helped a bit towards the end. the that was in spring of ’87. vanja and me did the next one in the spring of ’88. we called it 1 1/2. kind of ‘special edition’. it was in english, just about YU scene/bands and meant for abroad distribution. then i did my year of mandatory army service. the second one was [i think] in the summer of 1990. and that was about it. in ’91 shit hit the fan we we got to be the world news for the decade and there was no room for zine making.
#1 and #1 1/2 i do not have. neither original plates nor copy. have #2 plates for sure, maybe even some unsold copies. i know i saw them in the closet some years ago, but i’m not sure if i threw them or moved them to deep archive. anyway – if anyone is interested i could scan #2 plates and post them somewhere. i might ask around for other two issues if somebody still have them and is willing to let me borrow and scan. but that might take months.
the band you can find on you tube. very hard search, words are very common but i did manage to find two that are representative of what we did. This one is a demo we did in ’87
this one is a live recording
the band did not continue after i got back from the army. vanja and could not play together that was it. wolfie did not get to make any music that matters and vanja went on to sing for ‘overdose’
skateboarding? all four of us did it for a certain period of time but only vanja was really, really good and passionate about it. before that london trip where vanja and myself got that thrasher hoodies and ‘real’ boards the only skates you could see were those small ones that looked like this.
My sk8boarding career ended in late ’90 or early ’91 when a bus run over it. i’ve managed to save myself by grabbing a street light pole. board and one truck died and i just did not get replacements. my son got to use my bullets with his first deck. wheels the deck came with were…. generic. from time to time he’s asking if he could get some new, smaller wheels. he’s the only one w/ ‘weird’ wheels. and i’m telling him to be proud of his wheels.
that’s about it. feel free to ask if i missed something.
36 comments
igor
Here is HQ digital version of “Body And Soul” fanzine #1 1/2 I saved from my friend archive in Pula, Croatia. Zine was mentioned in this post so I thought people would like to see it too:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/l3g016cfuqwh7md/BODY_AND_SOUL_FANZIN.pdf/file
iain
Gricko, i’ve been doing my sums – if you bought that Thrasher hoodie from Slam City Skates (the skate shop in Rough Trade Records), then it’s probably me that actually sold it to you. I worked in the shop then.
gricko
btw – both hoodies and decks were bought in slam city skates.
iain
Yep, you would have bought them from me. That makes this whole story just that little bit more amazing.
gricko
if you were there in july ’87 then it is a possibility.
iain
This is so cool Gricko, glad we found you, and you found us.
Bevilacqua
great journalism here – world news is one thing, news from a single specific person is a lot better !
Welcome young rider on big bullet wheels !
gricko
ok. this might be the long one, so brace yourself. 😉
first – much respect to everybody tracking me down and to kilwag for the post.
do not know where to start….. 🙂
(EDITOR’S NOTE: I moved this response to the body of the post.)
talentlessquitter
Great to hear from you. That ’90’s shit’ was all over the news here in western Europe and was some pretty serious messed up stuff.
skabo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49oIcOTFWmg
Orthodox playing live in 1987. Gricko is the one with Thrasher hoodie, playing guitar…
caspar
for all you people wandering who these people are.. the guy who wrote the letter is alive and well and lives in Belgrade.. that’s where the whole thing came from ( the town he lived in is ZeMun (not ZeHun) ..It’s a part of Belgrade, Serbia) the guy with the trasher hoody has sadly passed away a long time ago, but nice little detail : he’s the namegiver (is that a word) to my son Vanja.. the real Vanja was one of my wife’s best friends.. so anyway.. my wife somehow found this online and checked out the others.. from the four people in this story two (the letterwriter and the singer are both alive and well) the other two gone.. but like my wife said: sadly those are about the rights statistics in our scene…
caspar
ok I just missed the post of Darko himself replying allready.. well that’s sorted then 😉
K.C.
I love how he makes it clear in the first paragraph that he’s not a Metalhead. My 20 year old self salutes you Darko!
gricko
i got to live abroad for some time during late ’90s/early ’00s. one of the jobs i worked had UK management. so, at the interview they ask me what’s my name.
– darko.
– yeah, right. really?
– yes, really.
– no way man. ROCK’N’ROLL, YEAH!!!!!
sometimes i have to be upfront how that’s just a name in my ‘neighborhood’ and does not have any metal link.
cheers KC
gutter-rat
yo gricko!
I would like a copy of your zines if it’s no problem for you. ;d this whole thing seems really intersting and it would be rad to read that stuff!
tell me if you will be able to send me any of those ;d
gricko
i would need to dig through my deep archive to see if i have any hard copy left. have plates, that’s for sure – was handling them about a year ago and then returned them deep underground.
K.C.
Cheers to you Gricko, glad you found this thread!
Prickly Pete
An interview with Darko about proto-Yugo-skaterock and O.G. skating behind the iron curtain would be a cool feature on S&A.
iain
Great idea!
poolpunx
how about here: https://plus.google.com/+DarkoKolesar/about
…guitars look correct……
Kilwag
Agent Orange sticker on the bass!
Betsy
Don’t throw this letter away. I will poach it for my exhibition, that is if I ever get the money and permission to do my exhibition. But this is what we nerdy loser historians like to call primary source material. Thanks for sharing…
Bevilacqua
Great find, next time I send you a letter I will add “Keep in touch” … for what it’s worth …
houseofneil
that is soo cool. But Randy, if i’d have been in charge of the S&A mail this never would have happened!
iain
BOOM – this has to be the guy, actually looks like him, posted a Red Kross tune on his page – i’ve left him a message in his timeline. He’s not been online on that page for 18 months, let’s see what happens next.
https://plus.google.com/+DarkoKolesar/posts
talentlessquitter
He just replied!
iain
YES!
Kilwag
Excellent, Tim (above) showed me he had an elance profile too. This looks like him. I joined elance to contact him,still waiting for the confirmation email. Posted something on his google+. We’ll see.
iain
Definitely him – there’s a facebook profile too, with plenty of evidence (skater mates, all the bands you’d expect him to like). Let me know if we need to contact him that way – happy to do it.
iain
OK, let’s find him.
Linkedin turns up this guy in Croatia, so post-yugoslavia, obviously.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/darko-kolesar/16/288/372
Tim
I know the feeling, I have stacks of unanswered mail from all over the world. I remember getting mail from Poland from someone that had gotten my bands first 7″ or first album in the late 80’s. I hope I answered that one. But I know there are stacks of them that never got a reply. I was in Yugoslavia in 1990, some of the coolest people I ever met.
Kilwag
I’ve got a flyer to post from a Polish skate punk band that I grabbed when I was in Warsaw circa 94ish. Been meaning to post that. Have to dig through some stuff to find it though.
ditchwork
how long have you been doing this?!
Kilwag
85-ish…
wes
so fucking cool! Dang. THE ONE ENVELOPE that should have been opened first. Someone will see this!! I hope so
talentlessquitter
This is very impressive and touched me right in the heart.
I hope the guy is still alive!
“The band Orthodox is the only band in yugoslavia that has songs about skating.”