Oddly enough, but apart from the Aquarium group, there were other rock bands in the former Soviet Union, and in a variety of directions, including symphonic rock and psychedelic. And the record of Soviet psychedelic music of the 60-80s, recently presented by the Melodiya company on the net, is a good example of the diversity of the musical heritage of the USSR.
The country was huge, and it could not remain in music with only two or three dozen performers and musical groups. And the fact that many areas of creativity of Soviet youth were in tune with Western trends is not surprising - music cannot be locked inside only one society, especially after the invention of radio.
But our radio stations cover the Soviet musical heritage very poorly, so you can learn about the legendary Soviet performer Eduard Khil or the equally legendary Turkmen group Gunesh only by pure chance, having stumbled upon their songs in the vast expanses of the same network.
Again, Eduard Khil thundered in 2010 after his song Lololo became an Internet meme. And even after that, other songs of Khil himself or any other musical rarities of the Soviet stage did not leak into the playlists of domestic radio stations. And there are many of them, they are simply completely forgotten, or generally unknown to a wide range of listeners.
From the repertoire of the Iveria group, only one song from the children's cartoon Argonauts remained on hearing, and even then only a few. But they also had other compositions, and their records were released by the Soviet record company Melodiya, as evidenced by their early piece from the psychedelic record “Song of Georgia”.
Now almost no one remembers such a group of young Kazakh students as "Dos-Mukasan", who played at that time exemplary psychedelic rock in the local ethnic key. And, by the way, in the GDR, at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin, they received a gold medal for their bright musical creativity, and both the local Kazakhstani and the central press wrote about this. At the same time, the color and pressure of their music is quite comparable with the overseas rock idols of those years, such as Pink Floyd or Jim Morrison.
Another group featured on this Soviet psychedelic record is the Gunesh group from Turkmenistan. She stood out for her colorful drummer, who simultaneously beat 15 or more drums and drum cymbals at once, but also for the fact that they used the local musical instrument dutar instead of a guitar. And this could be a separate trend in music, as when the Beatles had an Indian sitar. And world youth and student festivals could compete with Western rock festivals like Woodstock.
In the USSR, rock music was considered a weapon of the CIA, but if they could then shift the focus a little, then such a confrontation between Western culture and Eastern culture, at least in music, could have been avoided. And the culture of both those and others would be much richer and more diverse.
So it becomes clear that not only the official singers of the party and the Kremlin remained from the Soviet era, but also many other performers of different musical trends and styles. It's just that this unofficial music has long been removed from the musical underground of the USSR and given, so to speak, wide publicity.
Soviet psychedelics that could conquer the world
Pavel Gaikov, especially for MIA "Russia Today"
Firma "Melodiya" presented on the net a collection of Soviet psychedelic music of the 60-80s. "Soviet psychedelia" opens the door to the world of the amazing cultural heritage of the Soviet years, which is almost forgotten today, for an inexperienced viewer. After all, the Soviet stage was not limited to two dozen names that are on everyone's lips today.
There were many musicians, and they played a variety of music. It was a special musical universe, often in tune with what was played in the West.
The generation that did not see the Soviet pop music had its own idea of it: it is based mainly on the repertoire of today's retro radio stations. The same retro hits interspersed with Italian hits on the weekends come from every suburban area along with the smell of barbecue. But sometimes something original and forgotten flashes on the Internet. Listen and be amazed.
So in 2010 the world discovered Eduard Khil. Many Russians from the generation of the 90s then first learned about Gil as "Mr. Trololo". The singer spent the last years of his life basking in the rays of glory. But for some reason it never got into the repertoire of our retro radio stations. And the listener, inexperienced in the Soviet stage, will have to make many more similar discoveries.
"The light breeze of the steppe expanses, the power of the mountains and the rustle of leaves, the rumble of forests and the timid beating of the heart, the breath of the era, sung in the rhythm of the twentieth century - all these are songs, works of the Dos-Mukasan ensemble," the Kazakh newspaper Leninskaya wrote in 1973. youth" about the game of the local student team. In Berlin, at the World Festival of Youth and Students that year, "Dos-Mukasan" was awarded a gold medal.
The music they played on the other side of the Wall was known as psychedelic rock. When you listen to this Kazakh group, you can easily imagine that history could have taken an alternative path: students from Kazakhstan could be world idols instead of or on a par with Pink Floyd and Jim Morrison.
Or the Turkmen group "Gunesh", which used an ethnic stringed instrument, the dutar, instead of a guitar for solo-loses. Imagine that the dutar becomes an international symbol of freedom and rock and roll and can be found on the signs of all bars from Los Angeles to Bangkok. Tattoos depicting the soloist of the group Murad Sadykov are in fashion. Instead of Woodstock, everyone is going to the new World Festival of Youth and Students.
What today is commonly associated with Western civilization, in the most unexpected forms, made its way to the countries of the socialist camp with downright mystical persistence. Someone believed that rock and roll is the secret weapon of the CIA, and someone played it at that time and, moreover, contributed to its development.
"Soviet psychedelics" covers almost all corners of the socialist camp, including the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland and the Caucasus. The Tbilisi ensemble "Iveria" is represented by the early composition "Song of Georgia". And how great it is to remind everyone that, in addition to the song from Argonauts, this group has other recordings.
It is impossible to adjust an entire era to a certain cliché, to limit ideas about it to a dozen or two musical hits. "Soviet Psychedelic" reminds us that it is almost impossible to try to fit a whole layer of culture and life of the country into one record.
The collection was compiled by the leading radio station "Silver Rain" Lucy Green
01. Gennady Trofimov, Felix Ivanov & Arax - Epilogue (From the musical "The Star and Death of Joaquin Murieta")
02. VIA "Singing guitars" - Evening city
03. Nina Urbano & Typhoons - Ciganeria
04. Orchestra of the State Committee for Cinematography of the USSR - Fashionable Dance (From the film "Office Romance")
05. Arnica - Spring
06. Gunnar Graps & Magnetic Bend - Troubadour on the Highway
07. Arunas Dikčius & Large Orchestra of Light Music conducted by Juozas Domarkas - Boy from Kražante
08. Taskhan Narbayeva & Dos-Mukasan - Betpak Dala
09. Gunesh - Tuni River
10. Iveria - Song about Georgia
11. Ensemble led by Jaan Kuman - Play guys
12. Lucy Green - Soviet Psychedelic (Continuous Mix)
Duration: 00:55:17 + 00:48:39 (mix)
Media: Digital Album
Year of release: 2016
Publisher: Melodiya
Catalog No.:
Format: MP3 320 kbps
File size: 211 Mb
In reality, of course, there was no Soviet psychedelia, just as there were no sexual, hallucinogenic and esoteric revolutions in the USSR that inspired rock musicians to escape beyond real sensations and search for a sound corresponding to this experience. "Soviet psychedelia" is a virtual style, a deliberately constructed genre tag; however, as, for example, and minimal wave, which now has thousands of young followers. The main and only principled psychedelic rock band in Russia was Yegor Letov's Civil Defense, which appeared already in the 1980s, when the whole world experienced an experience of expanding consciousness and returned to music of restrictions (post-punk, synth-pop, electronica). By the way, Yegor Letov recognized as close in spirit not only the music of the bandsLoveandTomorrow, but also the strange Soviet song heritage of the 1960s and 1970s, which he interpreted on the Starfall album. It seems that Letov would also approve of this attempt to build bridges between the Soviet and Western musical worlds that existed in two non-contiguous realities. Now in Russia, many young bands are trying to play psychedelic rock like in 1969, imitating the English and American classics of the genre. Why don't they find out that we also had our own precursors of the psychedelic sound and that between the first Soviet rock bands andThe Pretty ThingsandJefferson Airplanemore in common than you think?
Tracklist with commentary
Dos Mukasan - Betpak Dala
"Betpak Dala" is the first track from the first album of the main Kazakhstani rock band, founded in 1967 by students of the Polytechnic Institute in Alma-Ata. Now "Dos-Mukasan" is like a Kazakh ABBA: a bronze monument was erected to the group in Pavlodar. Another detail that makes the Kazakhs related to the Swedes: the name of the group is made up of the initials of its four first members.
The instrumental composition "Betpak Dala" - a musical journey through the virgin lands of Kazakhstan with a sharply changing relief of rhythm - is an atypical song for "Dos-Mukasan", which mostly accurately replayed folk songs on electric guitars and performed, like all VIA, boring songs of Soviet composers. Neither they nor anyone else in the Soviet Union recorded such hurricane rock. It is not surprising that the melody album from Betpak Dala is one of the most wanted and expensive Soviet vinyl records.
Alexander Gradsky - "Nothing sways in the field"
On vinyl compilations of psychedelic rock from exotic countries, Soviet songs are sometimes found - for example, "Maneuvers", an instrumental composition from "Romance of the Lovers", played by the Melodiya ensemble. Her authorship is recorded for the honored rocker of the Soviet Union Alexander Gradsky, but in fact her cheeky groove, played on chords from the Lennon "Give Peace a Chance", - this is most likely the merit of the arranger of "Melody" Dmitry Atovmyan. The most psychedelic album of Alexander Gradsky (and in general the best record in his discography) is Russian Songs, in which baptized Russia and swinging London, a shepherd's pipe and a synthesizer meet Synthi-100. "Russian Songs" begins with "Nothing Moves in the Polushka", luring the listener on a magical journey into the Russian field of experimentation.
"Inspiration" - "Waterfall"
The vocal quartet "Inspiration" is known for the fact that it was founded (and soon collapsed) by the composer and pianist Levon Merabov, who led the pop orchestra of Azerbaijan, performed with Muslim Magomayev and recorded with Claudia Shulzhenko. And also by the fact that the singer from Baku Irina Allegrova began her Moscow career in it. It can be heard and not recognized in this surfy soul composition that could have been released in the midst of the first "summer of love" in Chicago Chess Records.
"Falcon" - "Where is that edge"
It is believed that “Where is that edge” is the first rock song in Russian, which appeared exactly 50 years ago - in 1965. And its authors - the quartet "Sokol" - one of the first groups that arose under the influence The Beatles in the Soviet Union (together with the Riga Revengers and Moscow "Brothers"). The Sokol group, named after the district of Moscow in which its creators lived, was assembled by major boys. Already in 1964, they had the opportunity to listen to the latest foreign records, rehearse in the basement of the general's "Stalin" and play enviable German guitars Musima. According to the memoirs of the founder and guitarist of the group Yuri Ermakov, "Where is that edge" was written under the influence of the debut album The Pretty Things- the loudest and most violent British rock band in 1965, who later recorded hymn "LSD". The words were chosen shorter - to match the English phonetics. "Sokol" kept pace with the times: the musicians composed their next song "Teremok" under the influence of their debut album Pink Floyd. If they appeared in Britain, they would certainly take a prominent place in rock encyclopedias, and if they continued their musical activity in the Union after the end of the thaw, rock in Russian would generally sound different. But, alas, despite the fact that Sokol became the first Russian rock band that managed to integrate into the state system (join the Tula Philharmonic Society and travel around many cities of the Soviet Union with official concerts, spreading the rock and roll virus across the country), in harsh by the rock of the 1970s, the group curtailed its activities, leaving no record behind them, except for the sound track for the cartoon “Film! Movie! Movie!". This version of "Where is the land" is a reconstruction that was made by Yuri Ermakov in the 1990s.
"Arnika" - "Sribni Ships"
The beat-group "Arnika" was organized in 1971 under the pharmacy administration of Lviv. A year later, Arnika won the All-Union television contest “Hello, we are looking for talents”, fell under the wing of the Philharmonic and therefore was able to release a gigantic debut disc on Melodiya in 1974, on which Ukrainian folk and author's songs were played in art fatal manner and with jazz skill. It seems that this was the first full-fledged rock album released in the USSR, which was ahead of David Tukhmanov's record "According to the Wave of My Memory".
"Singing Guitars" - "Seeing Off"
The Leningrad "Singing Guitars", organized by jazzman Anatoly Vasiliev, are considered the first VIA of the Soviet Union, which set the tone for everyone else. "Singing Guitars" began to perform surf and beats from television screens in the second half of the 1960s and thus earned incredible popularity. The group made cover versions of popular Western hits and tried to interpret the songs of Soviet composers in the fashionable Western trends. In "Seeings", composed by composer Alexander Kolker, one can almost hear the musicians attacking the author's musical text with fuzzy electric guitar, quick bass and organ, but the material shows incredible resistance.
"Marzany" - "Polyushko-field"
"Marzany" is one of the first Moscow beat-groups, in which Vladimir Fazylov, who became famous in the super-VIA "Merry Fellows", was the soloist. "Marzans" were collected in 1967 by students of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute (hence the typographical name) and at first they played instrumental surf in imitation Ventures and Shadows. It's funny that the first to play "Polyushko-pole" (considered folk, but composed by the Soviet composer Lev Knipper) in the surf style was invented by the Swedish group The Spotnicks, impressed by the flight of Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961. In their performance, "Polyushko-field" was called The Rocket Man and became a big international hit. After that, “Polyushko-field” was interpreted by everyone - including the giants of American psychedelia Jefferson Airplane on a revolutionary record "Volunteers"(1969). The version of "Marzanov" is almost as swift as that of JA, and even more psychedelic due to mysterious extraneous noises during re-recording.
If they appeared in Britain, they would certainly take a prominent place in rock encyclopedias, and if they continued their musical activity in the Union after the end of the thaw, rock in Russian would generally sound different.
"Vizerunki Shlyakhiv" - "Song of Shchors"
"Vizerunki Shlyakhiv" (i.e. "Road Patterns") - Kyiv VIA, which was directed by Taras Petrinenko and where Pavel Zhagun played the trumpet, the producer of the Moral Code, who is now engaged in electro-acoustic projects. "Vizerunki shlyakhiv", composed of conservative musicians, lasted only a year and released a single disc, on which they replayed samba, Ukrainian folk songs, and the cavalry "Song of Shchors" with intoxicating lightness and a brassy groove. Musicians Petrynenko, combining Ukrainian chant with cheerful Latin American percussion, performed a bloody song by Matvey Blanter in a jazz-rock style Chicago and Santana's drive at Woodstock '69.
"Ariel" - "The wolves chase the deer"
In soundtracks for Soviet cinema, you can find the most unpredictable music - the weirder the film, the more unexpected the find. "Between Heaven and Earth" (1975) - a lyrical comedy by the "Moldova-Film" studio about the peaceful life of paratroopers who gather the "Sineva" group in the barracks and scrub the floor to the guitar solo - opens with the metaphysical song "Wolves are chasing a deer", where under the galloping bass group "Ariel" runs into the starts with a variety orchestra. The music, which at the moments of the guitar solo reaches the scale of Japanese psychrock madness, was written by Alexander Zatsepin - Gioacchino Rossini from Soviet film music. But the strangest thing here is the text invented by Leonid Derbenev: about a wolf pack driving a deer - an unthinkable situation in the Soviet society of the triumph of humanism. What makes this song doubly phantasmagoric is that, according to the scenario, Soviet paratroopers play it peacefully in the post-Vietnamese mid-1970s, when the Soviet Union was actively helping to establish socialism in Laos and Cambodia. The surreal song, located somewhere between heaven and earth, cuts through at the very beginning of the picture for only a minute and a half, but it seems that this film was made only for the sake of it.
Yuri Antonov - “The current carries me”
“The current carries me” - one of the early singles of Yuri Antonov, on which his passion is heard as The Beatles, and The Eagles. Another masterpiece of Antonov's psychedelic period, which, unfortunately, did not last long, is At the Birches and Pines, recorded with the Sovremennik orchestra, in which the musician quoted the Beatles "A Day in the Life". Later, Antonov repeatedly re-recorded "At the Birches and Pines" and "The Current Carries Me", layer by layer destroying the transcendence of the sound.
Gulli Chokheli - "Summer Rain"
The song "Summer Rain" was written by Konstantin Nikolsky, a member of "Atlantes", "Flowers" and "Resurrection" - iconic Soviet rock bands. Just from the repertoire of the Atlantes, who awed their peers with black Beatle costumes and the Framus guitar, it was borrowed by the Georgian singer Gyulli Chokheli, one of the best jazz singers of the 1960s, who sang in the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra. She was able to record this song at the maximum of the then studio capabilities of the Melodiya company under the imaginary supervision of a producer The Beatles George Martin.
"Kobza" - "Check"
On the reverse side of the cover of the second album of the Ukrainian rock band Kobza, which, like Pesnyary and Ariel, fused folk tradition with trendy beat style, a truly psychedelic collage is depicted - a windmill lost among huge poppies and a soaring stork. This is incredible for the Soviet Union of the mid-1970s, in which phonograph records were laid out on standard sleeves with poor printing. The music on the cover matches: the progressive Kobza skillfully use flute and violin, unusual for rock bands, which makes their Zachekay look like an undeservedly forgotten San Francisco band It" s a Beautiful day- favorites of Californian hippies.
Oktava - Vaikinas nuo Kražantės
Kaunas Variety Orchestra Oktava, created by the composer Mindaugas Tamosiunas in 1964, is a very unusual musical group for the Soviet Union, which was soon filled with the same type of VIA. Tamosiunas brought together highly professional musicians in his multi-headed jazz-rock orchestra, who later laid the foundation of the Lithuanian jazz school, and recorded songs with them, in which he combined actual rock sound, orchestral power, psychedelic organ and Lithuanian melos. free flowing "Vaikinas nuo Kražantės"(i.e. "Guy from Krazhante"), which tells about the feat of a young Lithuanian sergeant during a flood in Riga, is the first composition from the first vinyl single Oktava, released in 1973, when the world was rocked by Pink Floyd « The Dark side of the Moon» , and in the Soviet Union, rock was actually banned. In their extremes, orchestrated rock ballads Oktava reminiscent of the famous psychedelic masterpiece The United States of america.
"Funny Guys" and Alla Pugacheva - "In the Middle of Winter"
Live performance of the song "In the middle of winter" at the Bulgarian festival "Golden Orpheus" - 76, where Alla Pugacheva first announced herself to the entire Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist bloc. The future all-Union diva here is least of all similar to the singer from whom: with black strength and black bitterness, she sings female blues, composed by the permanent producer of the super-VIA "Merry Fellows" Pavel Slobodkin to the verses of Naum Olev, and sounds like the Russian Janis Joplin, whom we have not purchased.
