Tako

Tako's history begins when the first lineup of the band Opus had broken up. Bassist Dusan Cucuz wanted to form a new band, so he gathered musicians who where fond of a more complex rock sound. After he met Djordje Llijin in the spring of 1975, they showed each other their compositions and concluded that the material would work well. They invited Sava Bojic and Milan Lolic and this become the first lineup of Tako (which literally means "this way").

After months of rehearsals and gigs, the band made their first recordings that were offered to several record companies with no success. In November 1975, they had the opportunity to share the stage with a lot of famous bands of Belgrade. This gave the band new opportunity to make new recordings. During 1976, Tako worked on new compositions and accumulated experience by playing live. Then the guitar player had to join the army and the drummer started to drink too much. So, a new guitarist (Miroslav Dukic) and a new drummer (Slobodan Felekatovic) joined the band. This lineup first appeared at a concert at Pinki hall in Zemun with some other pop/rock bands. Tako was completely different from the other bands and made a good impression on public and critics.

After a very good performance at the Belgrade Summer Festival at Dom Omladine (Youth Center), Tako played in front of an audience of 100,000 people at an open-air concert in Kosutnjak with other local bands. This appearance at the Youth Festival and in others, mainly in Subotica, brought the band their first LP contract with RTV Ljubljana and their material was recorded and mixed in 36 hours.

In 1979, things were not good for the band. In the middle of preparing for the second LP, Llijin developed arthritis. After some discrepancies between Dukic and the rest of the band, he quit and formed his own group while the band tried to find a replacement. But it didn't last long and Dukic came back. The band was together again and new ideas and everyday rehearsals marked the next period. Disappointed with the approach and manners in the other studio, Tako decided to record a second LP in a private studio. In September 1980, the band signed with RTB and played gigs in Belgrade.

In the beginning of 1980, the band had a chance to take part in a big show as bands from Belgrade gave concerts in Zagreb and vice versa. Although they gave a memorable performance and got a good reaction from the public, Tako was almost ignored by the critics, who at the time turned their ideas to punk and new wave. This change, coupled with bandmembers' lifestyle changes, led to their last concert at the Philosophy College in Belgrade. Felekatovic went to the army; Dukic went to work as a producer and recording engineer; Llijin became a teacher, ethnologist in a museum, and a record engineer; and Cucuz supplied sound equipment for gigs in Belgrade.

After a proposal of reissue of both two albums from Thomas Werner, a collector and amateur of the '70s Yugoslavia rock scene, the band got the first master tapes (they already had the second). In 1997, Rock Symphony, a record label of prog rock in Brazil, reissued both albums.