As soon as they crossed into Serbia, the map on his phone went blank.
Damon Krukowski was driving with his wife, Naomi Yang. They were two-thirds of the late-’80s indie rock band Galaxie 500, touring through Eastern Europe as a dream-pop outfit called Damon & Naomi. After years of war in the former Yugoslavia, Belgrade was still under economic sanctions, and off the grid; tech firms had no access to street maps. “We entered the noncorporate world, out of the reach of the West for political reasons,” Krukowski told me.
He had to find a pay phone and write down directions on paper, a crude throwback to the early days of touring. The venue was behind a radio station that had resisted the Milošević regime. And when Damon & Naomi took the stage and started to play, in a city severed from every method for a band to reach an audience, Krukowski realized that everyone in the room knew their songs.
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