the Common Place

Artem Troitsky, shown here bumming a cigarette off Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparian while lead singer Viktor Tsoi looks on, wrote the book on the 80’s underground rock scene in the USSR. He also seems, from what I’ve read, to be one of the few really independent journalists left in Russia. In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, he recounts how Back in the USSR came to be written, and shares his views on the Russian music scene, then and now:

“But if we’re speaking about the songs, I was more interested in the lyrics, rather than the music. I really think that poetically Russian rock is at least not worse than American, although it’s absolutely different, of course.

“So when this paradigm of the 1970s/80s Soviet rock that was dear to me disappeared, evaporated, inevitably I lost my interest in it. But speaking about the music itself, I always say that we have some quite likable guys, whose work I treat with sympathy and understanding.”

One of the most “likable guys” of that era has to be Viktor Tsoi, who I personally think can hold his own as a songwriter on any territory, though of course given the challenges of the times a lot of the recordings are pretty rough. It seems, thanks to the Knackered Hack, that I am now part of a not-secret plot to bring the cult of Tsoi to the West.

I’m not sure what I can to help the Hack battle the evil robots, but I agree with Troitsky that they’re still out there:

Even though civil liberties and freedom of speech have been gradually stifled under Putin’s rule, there is no new rock revolution in sight, according to Troitsky.

“There are certain speculative, theoretical prerequisites,” he said.

“It’s evident that the current Russian Federation, with the exception of […] its market economy and disappearing democratic add-ons, has virtually rolled back, full-time and full-scale, toward the Soviet Union of the early 1980s.

“So there appears the idea that if there is clampdown, if there is censorship again, this and that, then the young people will get angry and there will be some new rock wave. But practically, nothing like this is happening, at least on my observations. Though I’d be utterly happy if it happened.”

However, Troitsky also traces Russian rock music’s decline to international circumstances.

“The reasons are not fully clear to me, I think in many aspects it has something to do with the situation in global rock,” he said.

“All this rock energy was fed by what was rock in the rest of the world. I can’t imagine Akvarium or Mike [Zoopark’s Mikhail Naumenko] or [Kino’s Viktor] Tsoy without their Westernist music-fan streak. I knew them pretty well. First and foremost, they were fans — some of Lou Reed, some of Marc Bolan, some of Duran Duran — and only secondly they started scribbling their own songs.

“Globally, this inspiring rock situation stimulated rock music here. There isn’t anything like this anymore. What is Western rock now? Linkin fucking Park? It’s hilarious.”

[ More from the St. Petersburg Times here ]

I get what he’s saying about influences and inspiration, but of course most US and British musicians were fans first, as well, whether it was the Beatles and Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan hitchhiking out to see Woody Guthrie, or my own fave Jonathan Richman’s teenage obsession with the Velvet Underground.

And the influence isn’t so unidirectional anymore - there’s no reason why Viktor Tsoi couldn’t inspire some kid in the Central Valley or wherever.

So, here’s to the plot to battle the evil robots, and death to the running dog lackeys of musical mediocrity.

Special bonus: For German-speaking readers, here’s an interview with Troitsky where he makes some of the same points:

In den späten Siebzigern und frühen Achtzigern gab es dieses große Untergrund-Phänomen, den russischen “Underground-Rock”, der natürlich von der Opposition beeinflusst wurde. Es ging darum, sich gegen Unterdrückung zu wehren, sich gegen das sowjetische System aufzulehnen. Die meisten Bands waren nicht offen politisch, aber sehr stark und talentiert. Mit Glasnost wurden viele dieser Bands dann sehr erfolgreich, Bands wie Aquarium, DDT, Alisa und Nautilus-Pompilius. Einige Bands wurden von westlichen Labels entdeckt, aber es hat nicht funktioniert. Meist gab es ein Album, und dann verlief es im Sande. Mit dem globalen Rockding konnte der russische Rock nicht mithalten. In den Neunzigern sah es dann eher traurig aus, die Bands hatten keine Angriffsfläche mehr, verloren ihre Identität. Einige sind gestorben, viele sind auch emigriert. Wahrscheinlich habt ihr schon mal von Kino und Viktor Tsoi gehört. Letztere sind die größte Rockband des Landes, ihr Bandleader Viktor Tsoi starb bei einem Autounfall. Der beste russische Poet, Alexander Bashlachov, beging 1988 Selbstmord. Und Mike Naumenko (Frontmann von Zoopark), eine Art russischer Lou Reed oder Serge Gainsbourg, er sang sehr lustige, sexy Songs, starb 1991 an den Folgen seines intensiven Alkoholkonsums.

From intro.de

[The photo in this post is cited here as originally appearing in “Russian Reporter”, Vol. 9, 2007]