Maxa Plans Mega Show

Maxa Catovic has already sold half of the tickets for the June 23rd show he’s doing with Balkan pop legend Zdravko Colic at Red Star Belgrade soccer stadium.

And he’s confident the 70,000-capacity Stadion Crvena Zvezda, where he last promoted Colic in 1978, will be sold out by the end of the month.

“We had to bring in all of the equipment for that ’78 show, including sound, lights, lasers and even the stage. Three big trucks full of equipment came from London,” the Belgrade-based Komuna chief explained. “Back in those days Serbia was a Communist country and it was an incredible thing to happen. It was one of the first big outdoor shows we’d had in the region.”

Catovic intends to make this summer’s show just as spectacular. Nearly 30 years later, he still has to source some of the equipment from outside of Serbia, although this time the extra gear will be coming from Slovakia, Bulgaria and the neighbouring Balkan countries.

Colic, who was a huge star throughout former Yugoslavia, appears to have retained that following.

He represented Yugoslavia in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1973 with “Gori Vatra.” It did nowhere near as well as Serbia’s 2006 entry but became a massive hit back home.

Ti I Ja (You and Me), his debut album, came out in ’75 but it was ’77’s Ako Prideš Bliže (If You Come Closer) that really established him, selling nearly 1 million copies throughout Yugoslavia.

He reached his pinnacle at the beginning of the 1980s, when he was arguably the country’s most popular pop performer.
After the war and a long pause, he embarked on a comeback and soon regained his legions of fans.