The Dubrovniks at 3pointmagazine: “We will return louder, faster and dirtier”

Considering the distance between them, one could say that Greece and Australia have had a rather peculiarly special bond for decades. This can also be seen in their musical preferences, as one of the Greek audience’s favourite bands (that also happens to love Greece) is the Dubrovniks. ‘Audio Sonic Love Affair’, ‘Love is on the Loose Tonight’, ‘Holy Town’ … we can’t even remember how many times we have heard these songs on the radio, in a bar, or out in the street.

From the 6th to the 14th of June the Dubrovniks are on a special tour, only in Greece, to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary (see more about the tour here: http://bit.ly/1VdoBz5). As Boris Sujdovic, one of the founding members told us: “We never really thought that after all these years the fans still want to see us play. It’s fantastic, and for us Greece has always been the best place in Europe to tour. I think that Australia and Greece have a good understanding of rock ‘n’ roll”.

“I think that Australia and Greece have a good understanding of rock ‘n’ roll”

This year, as mentioned above, the Dubrovniks celebrate 30 years since their formation, although in these years there had been a pretty long time period when they were apart: “The long break from playing with the Dubrovniks has one great benefit  and that is we now only play for fun. We don’t have record companies telling us to what to do. We don’t even care if we make any profit on tour, and that just gives us so much freedom”, Boris clearly stated, adding that fatigue is not an issue, “because we only do very short tours now and like I said only for pure enjoyment. That’s why this tour is only in Greece”.

After the show on the first night a girl came up to us and told us she came a long way to see us, her only sadness was that we hadn’t played the song Christine. We arranged for her to come to the show the next night and played the song for her.

After the long break that turned out to be refreshing in every aspect, the Dubrovniks are back together for good. It all started in 2014, when they were reunited for a benefit concert for a friend of theirs that had been brutally assaulted. The news about their reunion had spread, people were asking for them again, and they decided to give it a try. However, they don’t plan to release any new music, at least for now: “We do some solo stuff. G.O.D. (Garden of Dreams) Records in Greece have released my band with Chris [Flynn] called Black Dirt. The album is called Sonic Redemption. James [Baker] plays in a great band called the Pain Killers and Chris [Flynn] and Peter [Simpson] will release some solo stuff soon”.

Concluding our conversation, we couldn’t leave out one of the most important issues of the last months, now overlooked by the media as it doesn’t ‘sell’ anymore. We talked about the refugees and the refugee crisis. Boris himself comes from Croatia (hence the name ‘Dubrovniks’, it’s his town of origin). In Australia things are different: “It’s good when different cultures mix and some times that takes one or two generations, but everyone must be willing to integrate or there might be problems” he said to us, pointing out that “It is very sad when people have no other option but to cram onto a small leaky boat and cross a sea, not knowing if they’ll make it alive to the other side.  I’m not sure what the solution is to that”.