Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Boban Marković Blows (The Boban i Marko Marković Orkestar - Martyrs', 21 July)

Imagine a mariachi band, oompah band, drum and bugle corp and punk band, rolled into one. Now cast a Danny Devito doppleganger with the voice of Mario Lanza and some serious horn skills, and you've got Boban Marković and his band of merry men.

Coming off a weekend of Chicagoland performances that included the likes of the Pitchfork Festival and the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival, this troupe wrapped up their stand in our city with a raucous set at Martyr's on Lincoln Avenue. The sold-out show started (over an hour late...) with a couple of instant crowd pleasers, including a rendition of Hava Nagila before moving into even more crowd pleasers, that continued to please the crowed even more and more as the evening wore on. The played for a couple of hours, working the crowd into a soggy frenzy with each number. The finally ended just after 11 with the barreling "Kalashnikov," which had the entire audience, from 70-year-old Serbian men to world-music-savvy token hispters clapping and dancing along.

If you like loud brass and watching musicians who love their jobs, this band's for you, partiularly if you can catch them live. The Boban i Marko Marković Orkestar is a blast, and even though I don't know what the heck they're saying, everyone around me did know, and they were elated about it, so I was too.

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