Beat a Go Go

Aleš Rendla

How did you and Nino start playing music?

When we were very young. I started to play violin when I was six, I think. I’m not sure about Nino, but I think he didn’t go to any music school when he was young. We were friends then and lived in the same house. When I moved out of the house with my family, I was still coming back to the place because my grandmother lived there. So Nino and I would play children’s games. Nino had a boat, and somebody destroyed his boat, and then gave him drums to replace it. So that’s how I got to play my first drums. Nino made his own bass guitar, completely of wood. And then we started playing. We practiced in Nino’s basement, under the café.

Bruno Subiotto on the cover of Manitu

What is your inspiration when you are writing texts for songs?

Life is of equal value for human beings like for other living creatures, animals and plants. No one has the right to take anybody's life. It's one of the, let's say, "cosmic rules" and breaking it means misfortune and misery. The scale of suffering is equal to the negligence of this rule. Don't we have the commandment: do not kill? This commandment is meant for people, not animals ­- they have other rules to follow. Sorrowfully, people proved not to match such a "high" standard.

Matjaž Sekne backstage at Siddharta's stadium concert

You were born in a small ironworks city in a valley in the Slovenian Alps. When you were nine years old, you started to learn violin in music school. Was it your decision or your parents'?

My parents enrolled me in music school. I didn't wish this very much because I was a child and of course kids don't like to go to any school and learn. But later I found out that I love to play violin.

Nino de Gleria, soundcheck at Cerkno, May 2003 (photo: Bogo Pečnikar)

How long have you and Aleš known each other?

I’ve known Aleš from birth. We were living in the same house. We were neighbors. We were together all the time as kids. We had a puppet-show together. Then after Aleš moved, he began to learn violin in music school. My first wish was to play cello. I asked my father to enter me in music school. But something had happened a few days before my request. At that time I was very young, six or seven years old. I went with one of my friends from home and we got lost. We were walking at the river Gradascica, very far away from home. Our parents went completely crazy, worrying about where we were. At last they found us in another quarter of Ljubljana. Then when I asked my father about going to music school and playing the cello, he said, “If you are independent like this” - he was thinking about my vagabonding – “you can go and enter yourself in music school alone.” This was a kind of pedagogical step. Of course I didn't go to school alone.