How Soviet Rock Failed In The West Part 1 (Introduction, Va-Bank, Radio Silence)
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- čas přidán 28. 03. 2024
- During Perestroika, quite a few Soviet artists tried their luck in Western countries. The success of these artists differed, but the common consensus is that the Red Wave rockers failed to generate the needed buzz in order to be taken seriously abroad. In today's episode of The Eastern Archives, I will be going over two different stories concerning Soviet Rockstars and their new Western-friendly output.
Hopefully I didn't come off super condescending in the video and you enjoyed the experience. Part two will be even more interesting than the first in my opinion as we will be looking at the story of Zvuki Mu, Kino, Secret and other talented Soviet bands.
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Discord link for those who want to join: / discord
I do not own the footage or music used. This video is done for educational purposes. - Hudba
I had trouble with copyright so If the audio cuts in places, that's probably why.
I think the algorithm brought me to your channel because I was watching a lot of Kino -- and I am very happy it did! Really love your content and the new music I have been introduced to. I appreciate all the research you do, and how it's presented in such an easy way to understand -- even for someone like me with really no context or knowledge of the subject.
You also have a really lovely speaking voice.
Thank you for this video! I became fascinated with all the new music i discovered on your channel. Greetings from Greece.
My guess is, at that time, Mike Oldfield would be the best bet for Boris new album - he would probably understand folk and prog elements of it, and would also find a way to make it BIG.
Nice to see that someone is covering this topic, especially a non-Russian. It's a very interesting to think about,because there are a bunch of artists, rock and metal alike,that tried to break through due to interest from US and Europe,but very quickly found out that the market for their music there was very small and short-lived in terms of commercial success. And when they returned home,a lot of them didn't survive for long,cause they lost sizable amount of following at home.
Grebenshikov's case was an outlier, because when he properly returned after the failure of Radio Silence,he broke up the Aquarium (for now) that wasn't really going anywhere stylistically, made a solo group called BG Band and recorded Russian Album,which was a folky album with a lot of Slavic imagery and very resonating lyrics about the state of things. It was successful and so he got together a new Aquarium line-up and made a bunch of albums in sorta similar style for almost entirety of 90s. I can say whatever I want about the man and his music,but he did a right move there. If you haven't listened to Russian Album, absolutely do so, it's a masterpiece in my opinion
Fully agreed, I love the Russian Album btw. I am hoping to make a video on it at some point. It's one of the best Contemporary Folk releases I have heard. The story behind it is just as fascinating as Radio Silence in my opinion.
As for Radio Silence itself, yeah,I would definitely keep more elements from Aquarium. Cause when you get down to it,a lot of ballads on here would work great,if instead of those dated sounds you had more folksy instrumentation. Doing mellow rootsy music at the end of the 80s would probably get you more fans than a cliche pop ballad sound everyone was tiring of.
And maybe add some more uptempo numbers,give it more life
I hope you will add the story of Estonian punk rocker Villu Tamme, his band JMKE, the hit song "Tere, Perestroika" and it's success in both Estonia and Finland with album "Külmale maale" to the second part. It's an acutal small scale success story and Villu is beloved punk hero to this day in Estonia and Finland. Altough in Estonia he is more like something between Bruce Springsteen and Jello Biafra...
I'm saving that story for a full-length video about JMKE. He deserves a separate video in my opinion.
Thank you so much for such a detailed trip to the past, some of the mentioned facts are still completely obscure to the majority of post-soviet music fans. Can't imagine what it took to source that data for a (presumably) non-native speaker, what a hell of a job!
P.S.: Can't wait for some coverage of the mid-to-late 90s and 00s post-soviet DIY scenes - HC punk, hip hop and underground electronic music that were huuuuge back then and made a sizable chunk of progressive youth culture's daily content agenda during almost complete absence of the Internet coverage. The artists and scene actors involved were very true to their DIY ethos (including the launch of another wave of Samizdat craze) and made some very authentic and original material spanning way beyond music as a medium.
Also, 70s and 80s soviet jazz fusion/avant-garde jazz acts definitely require more disclosure due to incorporation of their own unique take on local folklore and music tradition (e.g. Dos Mukasan, Gunesh and Medeo from Central Asia and a multitude of genius musicians from the Baltics like Lembit Saarsalu, Uno Naisoo, Jaan Kuman and many many more).
Words can describe how important your work is, hats off and the best of luck to you!
Thank you for the words of encouragement and suggestions. Videos on the underground Hip-Hop, HC, Jazz and Electronic scenes are all planned for the channel. It will take some time to make but they will be documented here for sure.
Let's gooo
Awesome work!Can I translate your video into Chinese?
Yes of course