Joanna Stingray - Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground

RED WAVE

RED WAVE

An American in the Soviet Music Underground

By Joanna Stingray & Madison Stingray

Copyright 2020 J Stingray Inc.

All rights reserved, including the rights of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

All photographs taken by Joanna Stingray and Judy Fields, unless otherwise noted.

Book and cover design: Kourosh Biegpour

Typesetting and photo editing: Carrie Paterson

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stingray, Joanna, 1960-, author. | Stingray, Madison, 1996-, author.

Title: Red wave : an American in the Soviet music underground / Joanna Stingray and Madison Stingray.

Description: Los Angeles, CA: DoppelHouse Press, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN: 2020936483 | ISBN: 9781733957922 (pbk.) | 9781733957946 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH Stingray, Joanna, 1960-. | Rock musicians--Biography. | Sound recording executives and producers--Biography. | Subculture--Russia (Federation) | Subculture--Soviet Union. | Music and youth--Soviet Union. | Punk rock music--Russia (Federation) | Punk rock music--Soviet Union. | Popular music--Political aspects--Soviet Union. | Popular music--Social aspects--Soviet Union. | Rock music--1981-1990. | Rock music--1991-2000. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Music | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

Classification: LCC ML420.S8474 2020 | DDC 780.2/092--dc23

DEDICATIONS

I am forever grateful to Boris Grebenshchikov, for helping to make me who I am and for giving me a purpose at a very naive, young age. I was blessed to be taken under his wing and to have his warmth fuel my own work and love.

Viktor Tsoi, one of the truest friends one could hope to have in life. His honesty, his laughter, his kindness are always within me. His wings will forever hug the sun over St. Petersburg.

Sergey Kuryokhin, my Capitn, my papa, who inspired me to live life with a fire in my bones and to push boundaries. He taught me to not be afraid of the universe and the big dreams that come out of it.

All my cultural tovarishees, thank you for showing me true freedom and filling my heart and soul with the most magnificent colors. You surrounded me with fun, creativity and love that overwhelmed and inspired me. MIR and Rock n Roll!!

Contents

INTRODUCTION

I still remember the day I fell down the rabbit hole. It was April 1984, and I had just landed at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. Everywhere I looked, it was dark, cold, and lifeless, and walking through the concrete halls I felt empty and tense. It seemed like I was walking forever, farther and farther from home and the palm trees that had been the bookmarks to my life.

I arrived at the customs area with long lines of grim people waiting their turn silently. Everywhere I looked there were motionless soldiers, more like mannequins or stuffed bears than real people. Were they even breathing? Was I? I inhaled. On my tongue, the cigarette smoke mixed with the warm odor of a hundred bodies packed together.

The next three days that followed, I was still falling. Moscow out of the bus window was a grey and sullen ghost, yet full of life. People in black or dark blue raced through the city streets. I remember thinking that this was a place to which I would never come back, an evil empire of despair behind the Iron Curtain. My father, for what felt like the first time, was right.

On the fourth day, I arrived in Leningrad to more monotonous views of a drab country. The dirty glass of the bus made it feel like a moving prison, the rote history from the watchful guide like the morning prayers for a flock of fallen angels. During an afternoon break back at the tourist hotel I decided I had had enough, and through a maze of maneuvers I landed at the feet of the father of underground Russian rock n roll, the magical Boris Grebenshchikov. I remember being in his apartment, and he was this real person in front of me with color in his eyes and his cheeks. I was listening to Russian rock, this crazy soundtrack to life and love and loss, and I felt it I had finally arrived in my Wonderland.

From that moment, my whole life changed. I found myself in Leningrads underground rock music and art scene, a chaotic, captivating world a piece of the Soviet Union tucked away like a heart beneath the ribs. From the moment I met Boris and all the other creative pirates, I was hooked on this place that turned misery into music and suffering into song. The next four years of my life I spent continent-hopping across the Atlantic, alternating one week in that enchanted land of contradictions and fairy tales with three months in Los Angeles trying to claw my way back.

All that creative energy and powerful emotion drove me to want to share Leningrads beautiful music and art with the West. I smuggled out my friends music and released a double album titled Red Wave Four Underground Bands from the U.S.S.R. Music has no borders became my mantra.

As I fell head over heels into the crazy tea party, in love with the guys, the city, and the country as well, I found a way to warm the coldness on the streets of communist Russia, to peel back the masks to see expressions of individuality and life. It was clear to me that the reason these musicians could be so creative and artistic was because they had nothing else to do to distract them. The American dream had been abandoned for sitting in front of the television like a vegetable in a microwavable dinner, but in the Soviet Union these guys still had to make up their own dreams to entertain themselves.

By 1987, the U.S.S.R. was in the thick of glasnost and perestroika, and it was unclear what the final destination culturally would be. By that time, I had become a hero to the Russian youth and an enemy of the Russian state, had my visa blocked and my wedding missed, been questioned by both the FBI and the KGB. But by the end of that year, I had somehow managed to marry Yuri Kasparyan, and Gorbachev had managed to divorce himself from the chains of the old guard. The dramatic changes left everything and everyone, including me, waiting to see what would happen next.

What scared me was that in Mother Russia, the one thing that never changes is the unpredictability of whats to come.

For a dozen years, from April 1984 through April 1996, I was obsessed with Wonderland and its people, who infused the city with an electricity even when the power would inadvertently cut out. I tried to spend as much time as I could soaking it all in, until the rabbit hole would spit me out and close, seemingly forever. The following story is my own recollection of those experiences in Russia, occasionally supported by press articles and some of the many taped interviews I conducted during those times, and my memories of all the adventures that I got to share with the most wonderful cast of characters.

19841987

The Truth About Communism

I was six or seven years old when my dad turned to me and said, Dont ever, ever go behind the Iron Curtain.

I have vivid memories from the mid-60s of him sitting in his warm, woodsy office making a movie, a documentary called The Truth About Communism that he wrote, directed, and produced. It consumed his life for three or four years splicing and dicing reels and reels of film, cutting, taping, and throwing remnants on the floor like empty bags of potato chips. He was extremely passionate about the U.S.S.R., with Ronald Reagan at his back narrating the film and making one of his first public statements against the Evil Empire as then-Governor of California.