admission, Muharem also used the tremendous success of Zabrenjeno Pušenje's Das ist Walter album as his main selling point with Škarica who reportedly needed further convincing as he made the band record more demos. Through personal connections like Prljavo Kazalište's , Muharem got Parni Valjak's to agree to record a few more demos with the Plavi Orkestar youngsters, which brought Pavičić back into the fold and by January 1985 all four were off to Zagreb to record in SIM studio. Subsequently, these new demos also managed to secure a pre-contract with Jugoton. The album named Soldatski bal came out in February 1985 and instantly created a sensation all over Yugoslavia, placing the young band among the most successful Yugoslav rock acts like Bijelo Dugme and Riblja Čorba. Muharem essentially stayed true to the promotional techniques he previously implemented with Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors—print media and soundbites—though the sarcastic bravado of EJK&HM was now replaced with Plavi Orkestar's dreamy boyish charm. However, this time it had a tremendous commercial effect as the band embarked on a Yugoslavia-wide tour in late summer 1985 with scenes of thousands of screaming and fainting teenage girls repeated in town after town. Named 'Bolje biti pijan nego star' (Better Drunk than Old) after the band's hit track, the tour included 140 concerts in sports arenas and other large venues throughout the country. Muharem additionally hired journalist-turned-filmmaker Goran Gajić to shoot a tour documentary thus reuniting with him two years after Gajić wrote a glowing summer 1983 piece on Elvis J. Kurtović in Start. Furthermore, Gajić directed a video for Plavi Orkestar's hit track "Kad mi kažeš, paša" featuring actresses Tanja Bošković, Sonja Savić, journalist , and TV personality Suzana Mančić. The album ended up selling 550,000 copies. Though with unexpected and sudden success the band's sensibility quickly transformed even more into folkish pop as they almost morphed into a sugary boy band, many media outlets still presented them as a new primitive group, giving the movement unprecedented promotion in Yugoslavia during the first half of 1985. 1985–1986: Ričl leaves Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors to form Crvena Jabuka, gets big immediately After parting ways with their manager Malkolm Muharem in mid-1984 following the disappointing commercial performance of their debut album Mitovi i legende o Kralju Elvisu, Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors kept soldiering on with the same lineup, releasing another record—1985's Da