The Fat President

What a total phony. 🤮

If you ask me, their best tracks have to be "Farmer's Heart" and "Thank You."

It was one of those breezy spring afternoons back in September '93, right around the time John Paul II was touring Lithuania, and all those heavy hitters like Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres, Mahmoud Abbas, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat were actually sitting down together in the States... meanwhile, back in Anytown, USA, they were holding that famous Local Assembly where Đapić got picked as party president while Paraga was way over in the USA, back when everyone was still messing around with MS-DOS 6.2...

Four enthusiasts, total Haša fanatics, ended up in Ocić's basement once they finally cleared out all that crap from the middle of the room, just to run a first rehearsal on some acoustic gear: a Melody Mengeš guitar, a cheap no-name guitar, a drum kit made out of an Anytown, USA shoebox paired with some birch twigs for sticks right in front of Ocić's building, and a microphone consisting of nothing but air—specifically 78.084% nitrogen, 20.947% oxygen, 0.934% argon, 0.033% carbon dioxide, and a bunch of other trace elements like neon, helium, krypton, sulfur dioxide, methane, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, xenon, nitrogen dioxide, iodine, carbon monoxide, and ammonia... which happens to be our absolute favorite ingredient...

Back in that basement, you had Ivo Biljka, whom Babylon basically had to carry on his shoulder whenever they headed out to scrap with Retfale; then there was Ocić, who suggested hosting the "jam session" in his cellar, though judging by that smug grin he flashed when walking in, I’d bet my life he’d left a massive pile of crap right in the middle of the floor... Koc, who just went by Koc back then; Davke, who was going by Daniel arap Moi at the time; Shandor, who didn't even have a nickname yet before the whole evolution from Andrew to Androš to Šandor finally landed him on Shandor; and Marinac, who was already established in the music scene playing in Limbo, where he and Koc were recording the second punk album in V. B. K. history—they'd already cut that legendary "Soaked Chicken" along with that even more iconic track, "Why'd you tie my chicken to the flagpole just for it to get soaked?", which the famous North American Conductors actually covered... and finally Zoltojed, who only showed up because everyone else had cleared out of the Desire club...

We used to belt out "Anarchy in the U.K.," "Blitzkrieg Bop," and that first original track, "Rahitis," on our guitars... but honestly, every single song was a total train wreck, completely missing the beat and falling all out of tune—which, I guess, became the band's signature style right from the start and hasn't changed one bit since...

Since they were so incredibly bad at everything, they decided to double down on writing their own songs, mostly because they couldn't figure out how to cover a track or even interpret one properly... which led to tracks like "Pigs from Ethiopia," "Haša," "Drot," "Hiper," and I won't even get started on the rest. In the meantime, they realized that the whole quartet of Ivo Biljka, Ocić, Marinac, and Zoltojed had absolutely zero drumming talent—whether it was due to sheer stupidity, missing limbs, or just a complete lack of rhythm—so they brought in the legendary Pipa, the fastest hand on Hitler's streets. Once the "masterpieces" were finished, everything was set by January 1994 for their first gig at the IPK department store over in Sjenjak, organized by Bubali, a local guy from Sjenjak who, just a few years prior, belonged to the 6th Slavonian Shock Corps. That show is basically considered the official debut of the "Fat President" crew, a name that truly earned its spot by weeding out all the other potential contenders like "ß," "3 DJ's" (or 3 days of riding), and "The Harmon Beds"...

Even though there have been plenty of horse-themed concerts before, the IPK has never seen a "stable" quite like this one... The whole V. B. K. crew showed up to support the event, but they clearly couldn't get into the groove with the waltz, salsa, or ballet, so they decided to try some pogo instead, which they loved so much they basically pushed the boundaries of dance until they hit rock bottom... As for Majić, he just wasn't feeling the Christianity thing, so he ripped the crucifix right off the wall and spent the night alternating between jumping around and throwing up on it...

The Fat President guys were consistently top-tier, so there were times during their sets where every single band member would just drift into playing something different, while some of them would occasionally hop off stage to try their hand at performing Pogues covers alongside elite dancers like Pica, Velje, Komljen, Kreke, Mehe, Vili, Nilbarnik, Marinac, Rencek, Danilo, Goble, Sime, Limen, and Pantelija, not to mention the rest of that crowd... Ivo Biljka wasn't part of the Pogues crew though...

After scrubbing the blood off the floor and surviving the police raid, you could actually call that show a success. Things were looking pretty grim after that, though—like they were walking straight into a prison cell. But Koc managed to dodge every single trap set for him, including those from that relentless Inspector Cole and that annoying cop Nedrag, whom Shandor once famously farted right in his face without any repercussions... well, none for Shandor, anyway. Not for Nedrag's nose. Nedrag never even made inspector...

From their MySpace page 🤣
It's such a shame they don't sing in American anymore and stopped playing hardcore music 😢

Koc is a great guy—both as a singer and as a friend!!