Dr SPIRA PERFORMED LIVE AT CFS
At the end of the first Creative Forum Serbia evening, powered by SAMSUNG, we witnessed a performance of the legendary eighties electro sound pioneer in Serbia, Dr. Spira, who brought his new material from London, to bring us back to the era of his iconic album “Diagnosis“, to confirm the existence of the album “Design for a Real World”, for which many experts claimed to be nothing but a myth – a Belgrade urban legend.
It was most certainly the highlight of the evening: performing in front of a few hundreds of hardcore fans who waited with anticipation from 19h until nearly midnight, Dr. Spira came to BDW with brand new exclusive English material of some 30 minutes. And what material it was! Even though we announced his performance as BDW’s response to the recent KRAFTWERK performance at MOMA NY, Dr. Spira proved us wrong with his new stuff, which was more like „Joe Cocker meets Leonard Cohen“, but with his signature distinct, inimitable guitar riffs of two carefully selected electric beauties he brought with him from London.
The electric guitar virtuoso, Dr. Spira also lived up to his reputation of a sound designer and innovator, which is the primary reason he was chosen to launch the INNOVATION SQUARED Conference. The fact is that, in the eighties, Belgrade’s rock ’n’ roll had its little secret – the „Iron Chicken“. The Iron Chicken was a small guitar tube amplifier, which contained the details of much bigger commercial amplifiers and it was the pinnacle of electric guitar recording experience at the studio Druga Maca, owned by producer and composer Dušan Mihajlović – front man of the cult „Doktor Spira i Ljudska Bića“ band („Dr. Spira and the Human Beings“). Spira made these amplifiers in Belgrade in the mid-eighties, until he moved to London. The Iron Chicken would have remained one of Belgrade’s urban legends, kept alive only through a few remaining pieces, if Dr Spira hadn’t needed a small amplifier for his own home studio these days. When he realized that he couldn’t find what he needed on the market, after two decades, Dr. Spira took the soldering iron, and the result of his work was shown as a world premiere at the BDW – the brand new „Steel Chicken“: Dr. Spira played using the „Steel Chicken“ as amplifier the entire concert.
The highlight of the performance was a ten-minute version of his legendary Yugoslav hit „Dolazi zima“ („Winter Is Coming“), one of the most beautiful songs from the late seventies, performed by a variety of the most prominent national musicians such as Sladjana Milošević, „Suncokreti“ („Sunflowers“): “Dolazi zima, duga i hladna, zatvori vrata, upali vatru… Pada prvi sneg…” („The winter is coming, long and cold, close the door, light the fire… The first snow is falling…“)
