Aleksandar Makedonski

Aleksandar Makedonski was a Macedonian rock and pop-rock band from Skopje, active from 1987 until early 1997. It was founded in March 1987 by Vladimir Petrovski Karter, when his earlier group, Badmingtons, took the new name with the same line-up after failed attempts to return to the stage.

The first concert under the new name was at Dom Omladine in Belgrade in March 1987. After a short spell with the bassist Kokan Pandilovski, Zoran Janković Bajo took over the bass, bringing his wife Vera Janković, and Melita Stefanović joined on backing vocals. That summer the band opened the Štip Cultural Summer and played a big concert at the city stadium in Skopje with EKV, Električni Orgazam, Film, Mizar and Leb i Sol. In September they were finalists, out of a hundred bands, at the Palilula Culture Olympiad in Belgrade.

In November 1987 the band recorded its debut album, Za heroje i princeze, at Radio-Television Skopje's M-2 studio, with Bratislav Zafirovski as engineer and producer and the journalist Dejan Popovski as manager; by then Dean Škartov Deko and drummer Vladimir Dimovski Čavče had joined. Jugodisk released the LP on 1 June 1988. Its biggest hit, "Bezabi babi", was the only song on it sung in Macedonian, and "Da, da, da" had already gone out on a promotional cassette.

After the line-up left in the autumn of 1988, Karter put together new ones. A ten-song album recorded in 1989 was never released and its tapes were lost in the war in Sarajevo; only "Mi se igra" came out, on a 1990 compilation of the youth radio Klub 100. From sessions in 1990 only "Voz", recorded with Goran Tanevski of Mizar, was finished.

Late in 1991 Karter moved to Germany, where he worked as a studio producer. He later revived the band with Boris Georgiev But, Bajo and the guitarist Aleksandar Krstevski Cane. In June 1996 he released the second album, Moeto carstvo, on his own Makoton label, with the hits "Ako mi dadeš" and "Ubav den". The band's last appearance was on TV Sitel's New Year show on 31 December 1996, and early in 1997 Karter declared Aleksandar Makedonski finished.