Lollobrigida Girls

Infobox musical artist
Name = VIS Lollobrigida


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Alias = Lollobrigida Girls, Lollobrigida
Origin = Zagreb, Croatia
Genre = Electro-pop
Trash
Years_active = 2003 – present
Label = Dop Music/Menart
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Current_members = Ida, Sanja, Dino, David, Kleemar
Past_members = Natalija, Anise, Zoki, Lora, Ivana
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Lollobrigida girls, also known as VIS Lollobrigida (VIS is Croatian acronym for 'band', used often in '70-ties) or Lollobrigida is a Croatian, Zagreb-based, female electro-pop band.

Lollobrigida band members

* Ida, vocal
* Sanja, vocal and bass guitar
* Dino, David, Kleemar

History

As a duo, Lollobrigida performed for the first time at a bigger public concert in June 2003 in the student club KSET, as an opening band for German trash-style musician Mambo Kurt, attracting immediately a pronounced interest within Zagreb's underground-music audience.

In the original set-up there were Ida Prester and Natalija Dimicevski singing and playing bass-guitar on top of their computer-generated music matrix. In February 2004 the duo performed as a sole band at the crowded concert in Zagreb's Studentski centar; after that they signed a contract with the Croatian label DOP Records/Menart.

In June 2004 Lollobrigida preformed at the third Zagreb Pride.

Lollobrigida's first single, Party, was released in September 2004 soon becoming a pretty well-accepted hit, rendering the underground phenomenon into a name known to almost everybody. Sizeable media covering, involving print-, radio-, and TV-media, release of an anti-holiday single 'Unhappy Christmas', and a very successful performance at the big rock-concert Fiju Briju all enabled Lollobrigida to keep a high level of interest in the audience till the release of their debut-album 'Cartoon Explosion', in May 2005. The girls have promoted the album in the club KSET again. The introductory band at the latter concert was a hip-hop duo Bitcharke na travi from Serbia, Beograd.

In 2006 Lollobrigida transformed to some extent their musical and stage-performing concept. Natalija left the band. Several instrumentalists, playing keyboards, guitar and bass, joined the band adding a new sound quality to the electronic matrix background. Unlike Ida, the band founder and the Lollobrigida constant, other band members were changing rather frequently. The prefix VIS has been also added to the band name. (A sort of sentimental homage to pop-rock music of socialistic times). During that year Lollobrigida started working on their new album, 'Lollobrigida Incorporated', finally released in May 2008, following the promo-concert taken place in Zagreb club Tvornica. In 2005 the single 'Bubblegum boy' was released. Soon after, the accompanied video spot was broadcasted by MTV-Adria and many other local TV-networks. In 2006 the band increased its popularity by releasing the single and video spot 'Moj decko je gay' (meaning My boyfriend is gay). In 2008, a few months before appeareance of the new album, the single (and a video-spot) 'Miss Right and Mrs. Wrong' was launched, reaching the top positions on many Croatian musical top-lists.

Lyrics, music and stage performance appear to be equally important elements of the way that Lollobrigida band communicates with it's audience. By insisting on honesty, simplicity and originality Lollobrigida keeps distance from standard musical and textual stereotypes, choosing instead a sort of genre indeterminacy. At variance with the latter elements, the perfection of their musical and vocal interpretations is not particularly cultivated. Ida Prester authors the lyrics of all the songs being simultaneously, taking into account the whole opus up to now, a leading author of all music as well. Critics have expressed variety of opinions about Lollobrigida; some are denying any value and/or musical importance (examples may be found at http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Explosion) while there are also those remarking '...Lollobrigida is the biggest thing that Croatia gave to the international music scene in the past years...' (announcement of the invited participation at the Budapest Sziget festival 2008, http://www.budapestinfo.hu/en/calendar_of_events/sziget_festival_2008).

Since their start-up Lollobrigida was performing at numerous concerts in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary...Among their live performances one can especially single out a sequence of four very successful performances, from 2005 on, at EXIT (festival), Novi Sad, Serbia. There, Lollobrigida became a sort of a Trade-mark of the festival's 'Elektrana' Stage.

Discography

Albums

* "Cartoon Explosion" (2005.)
* "Lollobrigida Inc." (2008.)

Singles

* "Party" (2004.)
* "Nesretan Božić" (2004.)
* "Straight Edge" (2005.)
* "Bubblegum Boy" (2005.)
* "Ružna Djevojka" (2005.)
* "Moj decko je gej" (2006.)
* "Mrs.Right and Mr.Wrong" (2008.)

External links

* [http://www.lollobrigida-girls.com official band's web-page]
* [http://www.myspace.com/vislollobrigida MySpace pages] Some articleas and/or interviews in Croatian media (in Croatian):
* [http://www.vip.hr/sp/d_show?idc=2100201&idartist=46872 VIP portal]
* [http://www.index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=328851 Index portal]
* [http://www.dopmagazin.com/file.asp?area=0&pd=20050605_074349&print=print DOP Magazin]
* [http://www.glas-slavonije.hr/mozaik.asp?rub=3&ID_VIJESTI=3597 Interview in Glas Slavonije]
* [http://www.novi-tjednik.hr/index.asp?dID=852 Interview in Novi tjednik]