Vampiri

Vampiri are a rock band from Belgrade, formed in 1987, who won over the Yugoslav public at the start of the 1990s with a sound built on 1950s doo-wop and rockabilly. Army service held them back at first. The early line-up had singers Aleksandar Eraković "Era" and Dejan Pejović "Peja", backing singers Dejan Petrović and Dušan Varda, guitarist Dušan Pavlović, bassist Dejan Jovanović and drummer Goran Redžepi, soon joined by Borivoje Borac on saxophone and Dejan Tomović on keyboards.

Their version of "Rama lama ding dong", a song by the Edsels, got a video in June 1990 that national television turned into an instant hit, and "Lea", "Anđela" and "Malena" were soon on the radio, earning the band a contract with PGP-RTB. The debut album Rama lama ding dong (1991) made them stars with the country's teenagers. That spring they sang "Beograde" at Belgrade Spring; in June 1991 they opened for Vaya Con Dios at Sava Centar, they sang backing vocals on Toni Montano's Lovac na novac, and with "Meni njena ljubav treba" they won MESAM 1991 and its Discovery of the Year award. A second album, Tačno u ponoć, followed by the end of the year.

In March 1992 Vampiri finished second at the last Jugovizija with "Ding ding dong", and in May they played at the student protests, with a version of Zdravko Čolić's "Glavo luda". They recorded the music for Srđan Dragojević's film We Are Not Angels, and four of those songs appeared on their third album, Be-be (1993).

In 1994 Pejović, Petrović and Redžepi left to form Familija, leaving Eraković as the only original member. The smaller line-up made Plavi grad (1995), with "Plavi grad", "Neću", "Stari voz" and "Ona i ja", and then Monkey Food, produced by Saša Habić, a more experimental record whose title track covers the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man" and on which Kornelije Kovač plays keyboards. After it the band broke up, in 1998.

Eraković reformed Vampiri in 2012, and in February that year they played Sava Centar with guests including Toni Montano and Plavi Orkestar frontman Saša Lošić. Their first album since the 1990s, Letimo, came out in 2022, and in 2025 they competed in Pesma za Evroviziju with "Tebi treba neko kao ja". The band's first guitarist, Dušan Pavlović, became a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade and, in 2016, a member of the National Assembly of Serbia.