Friendly British Invasion: Press Review

Beyond some "self-sufficiency" in face of Ken Hyder's own article in both "Jazz Forum" (6/90, in English) and Soviet Jazz Federation's "Jazz" (naturally...) magazine (#1, in Russian) (both prints are represented here), one more only - and the remarkable one! - published response to SHAMS tour is known (to me at least): from Vladivostok ...

It came from rather rock than jazz (or improvised music) audience and from "province" rather than from a heart of the country. So even when I proudly estimate it as both the confirmation of success of both my marketing formula (look "Marketing ..." here) for the tour and the quality/potential of the music represented, it equally mirrors much more complex social events/ processes/ changes of the topics resided too far beyond our current interests.

Vladivostok, bay city indeed, some Russian Liverpool as we see it now ... - much more open to international music influences, much more "packed" in terms of an access to fresh music andinstruments, with the army of agitated/generally self-undetermined, and pretty energetic and romantic/ passionate young people. At the same time, this people generally possessed with perceptibly more high (than others met ...) educational level and the incredible practicism to make their dreams happen (in fact, sea port, Vladi enjoyed with immigration of very adventurous people from the heart of the country for generations)... - say, in late 90ies already to give rise to the commercially noticeable (in essense, enhanced post-punk...) music trend known as "Vlad-pop", and even some pan-Russian hysteria etc in face of their (post-punk...) headliner MUMY TROLL since '98-'99 (when it was born somewhere in '85 - yet!).

It is not surprising they had their own underground press, the best of all represented by "DVR"1 magazine, B&W A4, 100(?) pages, plain thick yellowing paper, (illegal...) xerox duplication of under 1,000, underground distribution ... It incorporated skilful illustrations, (advanced to that times) computer typesetting andpin- (even laser/offset?) printing, elements of computer pagemaking maybe etc details showcasing qualified, dedicated and the passionate work - as well as the evident signs of wider circles of "youth" (maybe even those slightly over their 30ies...) patience andrebellion (against socio/music restrictions) and the poetic gifts of its The Unknown Editors.

Small article on SHAMS here is so characteristic (or "better than all of the rest", unrelated ones, from the same issue) and is so - once more - amazingly poetic, I bring it in full below - word in word, with some requisite comments (rather wide one - for the original is poetically (andslang...) encoded far beyond Western cultural tradition) and accents (slants, French etc) only.

The article is surely marked with the literary gift (what I can not surely compete with), and I can't stop loving it tender for the (unknown) author have guessed, showcased and propheted a lot of the hidden things indeed - as a true poet (at least within Russian cultural tradition - what equally permits for a poet to be not fully transparent to contemporaries and have his speeches rather somewhere dark). It is more evident 10 years later ...

What is more, I'm touched andproud andthankful to him for I surely know the content could almost not be overcomed by some other writer there in USSR by the sense at least. I'm not kidding, and I confirm all the things below are real truth.

"DVR" magazine #11
Decade '90

Ken Hyder and Tim Hodgkinson :
"IN SEARCH FOR THE SOVIET SHAM(an)S"
20/4/1990, Young Audience Theatre, "Century XXI"

No doubts, the musical event of the year - ROLLING STONES will all the same do not reach here through Abakan and the city named with letter "H" 2.

"Shamans who are playing together are swinging usually"3 - as egg-headed4 Boris Podkosov have told, spreading his wee wings5 over elderly trustees (I was told long ago already this eminent representative of "H" 2 jazz movement is a mudak6 (look "DVR #4"7), and it is only now that I have understood what had they meant exactly).

Under-mowed8.1 with Podkosov's8.1 organization of all the tour, unlucky avant-gardists have reached the hungry and believing in nothing already audience with the two days delay. Organizers, "people of the future century", busy with the strife with OVIR9 and KGB9, have not even care for the regular interpreter (when candidates where submitted). The resulting podkos8.2 turned even more steep"10: free-of-charge circus (for the one-hour-long performance of the duo have repaid four roubles a hundredfold) reminded talks to Chris Cutler (look "ContrCultHurra"11, #1, p.90). It was only the third part of questions to sound like this: "Well you have played jazz before, so how, blya12, have you rolled over to t h i s ?

Parolle d'honneur, I have never thought it could exist so much of urla13 (to that the concert have gathered as if "folks" only) in the city where each second meloman consider himself an avant-gardist. The very "friends of Pink Floyd" and "unofficial self-printers14 from Recommended Records" (those were the figures of speech from the poster15), as it is properly to the big friends of Soviet Union, have been talking nonsense in a firm and prefabricated manner... The intercourse with a seaside beggars16 have not succeeded ...

Well, what to talk to them about indeed? What does music begins from? If they have found notorious17 shamans? If they experience the feel of a bitterness towards their former colleagues of HENRY COW and "... Opposition"? What for is it all? Thank goodness, I saw those ones leaving the hall right after the musical part - they had enough for them (in both senses).

Indeed, in this unchainness withstanded to the stupid aggression and appraisal of the audience (when "A style is an enemy", as Tim told, though), in the unchainness limited with the physical abilities of the very music instrument and the definitive concrete stage of the concrete Young Audience Theatre with "Juvenile Sea" 18 scenery, it was all told already in it. "Spirit is the thing a human may become", and "may" modality was not realized in this case - and nothing more. As for us, we have just witnessed and participated in the very birth of music, sadly. And what more of some other words are for? ...

N o t e s

¹ "DV Rock" (or maybe "DV Republic") where "DV" stands for Far East surely.
² "Khabarovsk. In Russian orthography, begins with hard [h] of Cyrillic letter "ha"("X"). Equally, "letter "ha" historically stands for widely used (rude) folk slang idiom as the impersonation of some other idea, i.e. penis, the word for what in rude Russian begins from the letter "ha" as well. Say "Let you go to (letter) "ha"" does mean a bit more than "go to hell"... So the author use the idiom brilliantly here.
³ My brief oral quotation from Ken Hyder's theory, in turn ... "they play with the irregularity of raindrops"...
⁴ Yes. And egg-shaved / skinhead at least since '86 as well, and moustashed/bearded long ago.
⁵ I've done my best ... - when it is not that "wee" with my 182 cms of heigh though ...
⁶ "Mudak"... - once more (rude) folk slang idiom, where the original idea of "something like not too good man", "not reliable enough man", "pretentious man" or so is expressed in some form as primary as "a man with THE big genitalia". As for me, I could only thank the author for (over)estimating my modest natural gifts and abilities here ...
To finish, I put here below the traditional Russian (new old) rude anecdote, absolutely wonderful illustration to the term and once more disclosure of " this mysterious Russian soul":
"Soviet Navy. Some cruiser. Morning falling in. A first sergeant walking along a rank of young sailors, in conducting a sort of (one-way, of course...) positive pedagogical talk:
- Gogol* was ... - impotent! - he wrote great novels meanwhile ...
- Tchaikovski was ... - pederast! - he wrote great operas instead ...
- ... and you, (private) sailor Ivanoff, a kind of great mudak, you can't write a letter to your mom for two months already !!!
* Great Russian writer of the first half of XIX.
⁷ I have surely never seen - as well as you readers of these Web-pages.
⁸ Words game - where, in Russian, "under-mowed" is almost both concordant to and in sense parallel to my family name. Negative mark etc. 8.2 Almost the same game, with the stronger negative emphasize. By irony - the article's author don't knows... - the (Russian) term means something opposite to the feel of instant destruction he is toying with: in construction terminology (where it originates from), "podkos" is a "bracket" (in English), kind of a wall support instead ...
⁹ Cult organizations of Soviet era indeed. When you don't know: OVIR issued permissions for both localandforeign citizens for entries anddepartures, solely. In was under KGB control certainly. The significant detail here is Vladivostok was the secret city for foreigners for years, there was no precedents of foreign articts coming to Vladi before - yet, and domestic organisers (it was their merit) have to sell their souls (for rock-n-roll, in fact, they were intelligent rockers) / to make their best to obtain the entry permission for SHAMS really. Well, they could hardly make it just few months before - so rapid were the temps of Perestroyka ...
¹⁰ Once more slang - you may accept is as "great", "big" or so. Its interesting, common term - of criminal use in the sense originally, the word have fully penetrated into common lexicon since. This is the common tendence that not only this text have predicted.
¹¹ Another underground/illegal magazine of the latest 80ies/early 90ies, the famous one, from Moscow. I have not seen the interview mentioned myself ...
¹² Once more rude folk slang term - or rather pretty customary general assignment idiom instead already. Original "blyad" stands for both a) Western "prostitute" and b) some its Russian other kind who does her "business" as the matter of - unpaid ... - love as well, for the sake of very love (sex). Spoken variants of the term are - softer sounding - "blyat" and "blya". Both of them have turned into the interjection factually.
¹³Have nothing to "URL" of course. Came from "urka" - i.e. 'thief", "criminal", in argo. Criminal term for "criminal surrounding", "gangsters". In the article, underlines sub-standards of the uninformity and (wild) behaviour of the part of audience here.
¹⁴ Or "sam-izdat" in Russian. Russia/USSR where historically "not too much loyal" to a liberal word and a chance for a personality/ citizen to express oneself freely. It is remarkable how the centuries old oppression had embedded itself in the mind of the rebelling author: "co-editor of independent musicians "Recommended Quarterly" magazine" phrase (with the core word for all "RIO" ideology, "independent" - but not illegal ...) transformed into generally illegal for USSR idiom of "sam-izdat" - i.e. the very idea of legal andfreethinking/free-self-expressing publishing was prohibitive in the mind of (not only this one ... - my own also!) the author.
¹⁵ Surely not. See above.
¹⁶ I've not found more close term, sorry. Something like literary slang for "poor people".
¹⁷ My word games have their weak sides alsow. It seems like too much was hung up the poor heads of listeners. I repeat ("Marketing ..."): not only shamans were searched for and rather congenial improvised musicians ("shams"), and rather all those at all able to accept an open music ... and myself, I was a kind of a "sham" - having not any readily available shaman "in my pocket", once more sense andside of a word ...
¹⁸ By Andrey Platonov. When the date was delayed one day, the theater hall was busy with the scheduled theater play - and the concert have began at almost 10 p.m., with all the scenery there (what was not that bad ...). Certainly, one could feel the feelings of the eager audience ...

P.S. There are several other transparent motifs in the article. Some (hidden) kind of an envy to the - generally ridiculous - neighbouring city "by letter "Ha" and its - no less ridiculous ... - natives, some regret that it is not (rock, and "DVR"-related ...) people from Vladi who have indeed managed to realize the tour/concert ("to make it") - and some other ridiculous egg-head figure with its both incompetent andunreliable nature and impudent inventions instead ... some regret for the quality of the native rock community, etc etc.

It all turns into nothing indeed when the author discovers the other world (i.e."real Western music" the late generations of Soviet youth have fighted for so eagerly ...), so material one in sounds andmedia, is different - and even negative! - to the author's deeply personal picture of the World/ expectations ...

Leaving him here with this personal tragedy, I don't revenge - for I rather grateful to him for this stream of feelings: so masterful, poetical (at least in Russian, beyond my ugly interpreting), so honest ones indeed - and maybe even akin to some music related - unrealized yet up to now ... - ones of my own ...