Belgrade,
Serbia
Thursday, May 28, 1981
After the spendour we had just experienced in Italy and Western Europe, I was not really prepared for the bleakness that was northern Yugoslavia (now, Serbia). Belgrade was the epitome of the communist/socialist-type of building and city design: utilitarian, lifeless and ugly. My impression was also influenced by the fact that I saw very few people in the streets here, and that when I did, their movements were so stiff and formal. That most of them were in military uniform probably had much to do with this first impression. One early afternoon, I was walking around a deserted city square that has a small park in the middle of it. I was looking at the statuary which depicted 'working people' and soldiers, struggling valiantly towards some goal that eluded me, and busts of important leaders (mostly Tito), when a set of doors opened and a couple of hundred uniformed men poured out onto the street from what must have been a theatre. There are only a few times in all of my travel experience that I have felt very uncomfortable about the situation I was currently in, and this was one of them. Perhaps it was all the stereotypes about the Communists and Eastern Bloc that I had grown up with and heard through the media, in combination with actually being there on the ground, alone, and with no one with whom to speak to about it.
Our shows here were typical of our whole Yugoslav experience, save for a few exceptions. We never could quite figure out if the audiences were enjoying the shows. They tended to be quite unresponsive and reserved in displaying any sign of enjoyment or emotion. Eventually, I was able to find some people that explained that that behaviour was quite common for audiences here, and that the response we were getting was actually quite an enthusiastic one! Go figure. Another peculiarity that these audiences had was how they clapped along with a song when they did participate. Typically, a western audience will clap along to a standard tune in 4:4 time on the second and fourth beat. Here, they clap on 1 and 3, which really can screw up your counting while you're playing! By this time, we knew our shows completely by rote and feel, but we found that we really needed to apply a different level of concentration to block out this particular form of audience participation!
