Photo by Veronica Rusnak
Nev Crnojevich
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Nev Crnojevich. It was the winter of 1981 at The Vietnam, one of Milwaukee’s first Southeast Asian restaurants, at a party of friends and strangers connected in some way to the music scene. Nev entered the room wearing a long coat, a black fur hat and a pair of round spectacles, looking very exotic, like an Eastern European Yoko Ono.
Nev died earlier this week.
Fiercely devoted in her way to her Serbian Orthodox heritage, Nev’s early forays into music included playing in a tamburitza orchestra. One suspects that some of those eastern minor chords found their way into the postpunk music she made in the ‘80s and ‘90s leading groups such as Blue Room and Well. Astringent and unconventional, they fit no easy category. I helped drive Well’s van to Austin in 1995 for the band’s gig at SxSW. After Well ended, Nev collaborated with Rose Blades in Immortal Plants, whose album, Bash, was released in 1996. Always willing to try new things, she performed a cabaret-style duo in the early ‘00s, singing standards from several eras with Milwaukee producer Bobby Friedman.
Nev was a regular at Trashfest, that annual spoof-a-thon of popular music organized by Voot Warnings and Paul Lawson (who also passed away recently). During the past year she became a one-woman band hauling her electric guitar and amp to gigs. She performed a set of Nico material during last fall’s closing weekend of Circle A in Riverwest, the neighborhood she called home in recent years.
Nev was outspoken on every issue of the day, a vivacious companion with wide interests, a love of cats, ethnic food from any continent and a talent for music that had not found enough outlets in recent years. She will be missed.
