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.

Bogo Pečnikar, playing with the Madleys at the Cerkno Jazz Festival

Tell me how you met Bratko for the first time.

How I met Bratko for the first time ... it was a long time ago, of course. Almost thirty years, I would say.

Aleš Rendla, Nino de Gleria and Bratko Bibič in Cerkno, Slovenia, May 2003

It's May of 2003 and we're on our way to the jazz festival in Cerkno, a small town about an hour's drive from Ljubljana. We're hurtling along the narrow road at high speed and I'm watching the countryside flashing past.

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.