Continuing the Novi Sad deep dive, what better record than Plitka poezija — the first punk rock album to come out of Serbia, and Novi Sad specifically. The band operated in pure punk rock territory with a slight ska tinge, while building a reputation of frenetic, high-energy live shows that caught serious media attention for being the first of their kind in Yugoslavia. They’d go on to play alongside the Sex Pistols at EXIT Festival in 2008 — an extraordinary achievement!
Pekinška patka formed in 1978: vocalist Nebojša Čonkić, guitarist Sreten Kovačević, drummer Laslo Pihler, and bassist Miloš Žurić. Čonkić picked up the punk fanaticism firsthand — he was on an English language course in the UK at the time and got hooked on The Clash, The Specials, Magazine and the other bands touring London. He brought the sound back to Yugoslavia, leading the punk revolution alongside Zagreb’s Prljavo Kazalište. The two would later appear together at the 1979 Subotica Youth Festival where Džuboks writer Branko Vukojević called them “the biggest breath of fresh air” at the time.
Poderimo rock opens things with an intense intro and some proper punk rock guitar riffs before the vocals come in spitfire-fast — the core riff is genuinely nice, and the vocal delivery is executed really well. Thematically, the focus is youth frustration and open hostility toward the older guard and disco. Next track, Homburg, the Procol Harum cover sung in English, is still punk rock in spirit but doesn’t hit as hard as the opener, featuring some pretty poor vocals.
Bolje da nosim kratku kosu is the key track here, built around a guitar line that’s instantly recognisable — it’s a real punk rock anthem. Ja sam panker u sakou starom lasts 80 seconds and is about as punk as the record gets (sadly it’s over before you know it), and Kontracepcija brings some genuinely cool and different guitar riffs into the mix. There’s no shortage of catchy vocal lines and choruses either — Biti ružan, pametan i mlad and Gledaj, ja sam svoj both land in that department.
Where it wobbles is the English-language covers and the satirical tracks. Even though they’re not meant to be taken seriously, they still grate a little. The album runs 16 tracks in just over 30 minutes, short and fast with plenty of highlights scattered through it, but — much like the Sex Pistols — it hasn’t aged perfectly. The raw energy and rough production cut both ways: they capture exactly the youthful punk sound the band was going for, but they also expose the lack of experience, and a handful of the tracks just don’t hold up as well as the rest.
That tension is really the whole story of Plitka poezija — a record that’s historically massive and, track for track, genuinely inconsistent, the same way the first wave of UK punk records often were. It’s less a front-to-back classic than a document of a scene figuring itself out in real time, riffs and all.
