USSR Rock 'n' Roll History 1980: 'Aquarium's Finest Hour'

Aquarium won no laurels at the Tbilisi-80 Festival, but their participation made it arguably the most important event in Soviet rock history, as the group managed to create their own scandal in the concert hall.

The Russian rock critic and impressario Artemy Troitsky recounted the event as follows:

AQUARIUM'S FINEST HOUR

Aquarium played one of the best concerts of their career; there was more electric rock than in their Moscow concert, and several excellent new songs appeared:

Give me my piece of life,
Before I get the hell outta here!

--"Piece of Life"

Sometimes I think we're heroes,
Backs to the wall,
Afraid of no one --
Sometimes I think we're just scum.

-- "Heroes"

And "Minus 30," probably my favorite from Aquarium's repertoire, a mid-tempo number built on a hypnotic riff and ritualistic vocal build up influenced perhaps by the work of Jim Morrison and Patti Smith:

Today there's snow on the street.
It's minus 30, if the announcer's not lying.
My bed is cold as ice,

But this is not the time to sleep.
Only the dead could sleep in this place.
Forward, forward!

I don't ask for good, and don't seek evil.
Today I'm among you again,
In search of warmth.

The girlfriend I was with at Tbilisi at the time knew little about rock music but was knowledgeable about theater. The concerts were fairly boring for her, poor thing, but Aquarium caught her eye. "This is almost Brecht," she said approvingly.

And when I stand in the Saigon*
People come in on their own two wheels.
The big shots come in big cars
But I don't want to be one of them.

(* Nickname of a popular café and hangout in Leningrad.)

Against the background of our relatively respectable rockers, Aquarium looked like a real band of rebels. When Boris began stroking his guitar against the microphone stand and then lay down on the stage holding his (borrowed) Telecaster on his stomach and clanging on the strings, the entire judging committee stood up and demonstratively left the hall, as if to say, "We bear no responsibility for the performance of such hooligans."

The concert, meanwhile, carried on. The cellist Seva hoisted his instrument atop the still supine Boris and began hacking with his bow while the bassoonist circled them, gesturing with his sinister-looking instrument as if shooting the entire outrageous deformity. Georgia hadn't seen the likes of this before; half the audience applauded furiously, while the other half whistled in indignation.

All this, though, was nothing compared to the goings-on in the lobby. For some reason, the Philharmonic's directors were calling the scene on the stage a homosexual demonstration.

"Why did you bring those faggots here?" a despondent Gayoz asked. Their complaint was completely unexpected.

"Why faggots? They're normal guys. That's just their stage show. A bit eccentric ..."

"Normal guys?! One lies down on the stage, the other gets on top of him, the third joins in too. They're degenerates, not musicians."

The next point in the indictment against Aquarium concerned the song, "Marina," which has these lines:

Marina told me
That it's clear to her;
She is beautiful,
But life is useless,
And it's time for her to marry a Finn.

Grebenshchikov decided that the last line was a bit too bold [it suggested she was marrying a foreigner in order to get out of the USSR], so instead of "to marry a Finn" (Finna) he sang, "to marry Eno" (Ena), which preserved the cadence and rhyme. But the judges, naturally, didn't know who Brian Eno was, and to them it sounded like "to marry her son" (sina), which, naturally, was taken as another manifestation of sexual perversion.

At first the organizers wanted to expel Aquarium from the festival on the spot, but they softened after lengthy "clarifications" by Boris and myself. The group even played a second concert, in the town of Gori in a spacious, freezing circus hall located 100 meters from the birthplace of J.V. Stalin. This show was filmed by a Finnish TV crew and segments were included in their 40-minute film of the Tbilisi festival called "Soviet Rock," which likewise included clips of Time Machine, Magnetic Band, Autograph, Integral and a jazz rock group from Turkmenistan called Ganesh.

The real problems began for Aquarium on their return to Leningrad, where their rivals in the local rock Mafia had already rushed to brief leaders of the city's cultural establishment on the Tbilisi epic, suitably embellishing the details. After which Aquarium lost its rehearsal space and Grebenshchikov lost his laboratory job.

The legend began to grow.

[Excerpted From "Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia" by Artemy Troitsky (1988).]

http://www.aquariumband.com/pub/doc_at1.html