I think I was quite young when I read about CDs first. It was in the early 1980s. The legendary magazine of the Yugoslav youth back in those days was ITD, which published a short article and a picture of the future replacement for cassettes and vinyl records.
In 1986, when my cousin Nino returned from Melbourne where he had spent six months, he didn’t bring any CDs with him (he did bring some records which I devoured), but he brought photographs from all around the city, including photos taken in a mall. One of the stores that he photographed was a CD store. I saw walls with tiers of small square tiles with some discernable album covers on them.
Finally, in the summer of 1990, my cousin Ivona was dating a guy who was working on transoceanic ships, and he had just come back from
I was lying on the couch in my cousins’ living room, with big headphones on, listening to one CD after another. I knew most of the songs, but it was funny and cool to see how quickly and neatly songs could be shifted and traced on the digital display. So, it wasn’t too much about the music.
However, when I played ‘Soul Shadows’ I was overwhelmed. The first time I heard it I was sure it was a very familiar song (it could well have been for it was about ten years old then). I played it over and over again, never getting tired of it. It was one of the brightest moments that summer.
When Nino and I were driving to a new disco club in his ‘71 Mercedes, and when we glided over a slightly undulating road to Ploce (
In September 1990 I went off to
When I left the military forces, and when the country went to hell, ‘Soul Shadows’ had remained a song that was a charger of positive atmosphere. I even introduced myself with it at the beginning of a few relationships I was in. Now I am trying to write a book of fiction, and I have already written the bit in which the main character is caught unawares by this song, and cries his heart out, which I never did. Although I could have.