When Josipa asked me to write a few lines for Live in 'Lap', I took this as an honor, a privilege and as an obligation due to my long time acquaintance with her and Karlo. Our relationship didn't lack the periods filled with though words, but I have the feeling they only made us closer.

Only later have I become aware of the ad hoc dimension of the promise I pledged to keep, because what we have here is not an ordinary record. It brings back the memories and rewinds the film, on the icy surface of emotions on which one can slip very easily - and then, of course, fall.  That is why I took the opportunity and decided to write my moderate contribution to the first Josipa's album that Karlo will never see (even though he heard it) from a distance, in a small room in Greenwich Village. The place here is filled with New York replies to Zagreb's 'Lapidarij' club. I met Ben E. King, the original performer of 'Stand by me', in 'Tramps' club and gave him to listen Josipa's concert version.  He was thrilled! This first, male compliment for Live in 'Lap' came from a singer who indebted us all with a special chapter in the anthology of soul and rock and roll! Karlo, who was marked by his professional and personal fate as a timeless cosmopolitan, would surly know to appreciate Benny's compliment.

"Stand By Me"!  This phrase is certainly symbolic. Josipa and Karlo stuck to this command for more than twenty years, and their 'Dnevnik jedne ljubavi' ('Diary of one love') album they made together back in 1973, like a dedication to the union of the two human beings that interweave the threads of their multipliable relationships in an unbroken line of life. "We were one" - Josipa remembers. "Nobody had to ask him why he stopped singing; Karlo sang through me. He made me what I am. As a friend and as a musician he always analyzed every aspect of my interpretation. He curiously listened to my application of it in the different genres." Here is the solution of the possible enigma: why does the spirit of Karlo Metikos define this record of Josipa Lisac on which she, similarly to the movement of the flipper ball, touches a rather unconventional repertoire, such as the popular American songs ("Stormy Weather", "Over the Rainbow", "The Lady Is a Tramp"), jazz ("Round Midnight"), pop/rock ("Yesterday", "Moondance"), together with her and Karlo's hit songs? Karlo Metikos distinguished himself from his contemporaries because he never wanted to remain rooted in his better past. To be honest, the paths on the musical map of his sentimentally memorable reminiscences regularly led to the crossroads of Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino; Elvis and Rick Nelson, but his awareness that the life does not cease in the shell petrified with nostalgia gave him the encouragement to form Josipa's interpretational profile in accordance with the esthetical conventions of the modern musical production. He knew where the sign of equality between trend and creativity ceases to exist. He also knew that the steadiness of a singer-artist, which Josipa undoubtedly is, reflects in the variety of the inborn vocal talent, traditional heritage and open-mindedness in accepting of all the new invectives of the discographic industry, which, following the course of the political thought and practice of the 20th century, seeks to inhibit all the bounds.

Josipa always readily, compatibly and expertly adjusted to this ambitiously set task. I think that exactly on this concert release of Live in 'Lap' she managed to put the ball at rest, that is, to surpass her public image of the extravagant person from the stage and put it in the frames of the pure musical expression. During the course of history of the pop music, the live recordings were not always a reliable key to decipher the real truth about a certain musical performer. We usually see them as a routine contribution to the particular discographic opus. Josipa's voice, to use this famous Sinatra's nickname in our pop context, combined with the special treatment of the songs, sometimes sophistically orchestrated, accompanied by the competent musicians (Ante Mazuran, guitar, Davor Crnigoj, bas guitar, Salih Sadikovic, drums), sound realization (for which the veteran engineer Mladen Skalec says is one of his most successful ever) and excellent postproduction, make Live in 'Lap' an exception to the rule.

The English would say: "Labour of Love", made by Josipa Lisac and Karlo Metikos, together with passion with which they penetrated into the music. I would personally, therefore, call Live in 'Lap' the second part of Dnevnik jedne ljubavi (Diary of one love) album, which does not need any quotation marks, since the years have altogether removed them long time ago.

Drazen Vrdoljak
New York City, February 26, 1992