CHILDREN MINUTES

CULTURAL LAYER

When in the winter of 1984 my friends from Aquarium once again moved in with me at Karetny, taking an American girl, I was not particularly delighted, since I had already received an official warning from the district prosecutor "for keeping ...

When in the winter of 1984 my friends from the Aquarium once again moved in with me at Karetny, taking an American girl, I was not particularly delighted, since I had already received an official warning from the district prosecutor "for maintaining a brothel." But this girl, like Mikhail Gorbachev, already then had her own plans to destroy the Iron Curtain, and in the field of rock music she achieved no less success.

The absence of a museum of domestic rock and roll contributes to the immersion of the memory of the ringing 80s into oblivion, so today it is appropriate to recall the adventures of a brave American in the country of the Bolsheviks.

First, the taste. Joanna and her younger half-sister Judy Fields never missed a beat: they only worked with the best. Everyone whom the sisters supported, who were filmed on their legendary Sony-video-8 in the first Soviet video clips, whose magnetic tapes in a pile of tights and makeup were secretly transported to the center of world show business - their native LA - became megastars: alas, only separately taken 1/6 of the globe.

Let's remember the choice of Joanna: on the main carrier, double vinyl Red Wave, there are hits from "Aquarium" and "Kino", "Alice" and "Strange Games". Hours of filming of rehearsals and concerts of the legendary "Pop Mechanics" (without these shots, Vladimir Nepevny's documentary "Sergei Kuryokhin" would have lost half of its intrigue and brilliance); The “new wilds” are now Moscow collectors paying $20,000 each for a portrait by Timur Novikov (who instilled “neoacademism” in modern art. - A. L.), and then the exhibition of her friends from Leningrad communal apartments delivered by Joanna to California opened a new page in Russian fine arts.

We can say that this many-sided rainbow, cemented by the most powerful PR of Stingray, simply fell into the hands of Sergei Solovyov: as a result, we got the film “Assa!” - a masterpiece of youth cinema. With the direct assistance of Stingray, an epoch-making meeting of Leningrad artists and musicians with Andy Warhol took place, and this is how his first author's works ended up in Russia - a can of Campbell soup for his brother: B.G., Timur, Africa, Oleg Kotelnikov, Tsoi and Kuryokhin.

Now all this is forgotten, and at the turn of the century, time manages to shrink so much that from the incredible carousel of events, memory chooses the most significant - the dry residue of products of the highest standard. The actual musical work of Joanna herself remained behind the scenes, and these were quite high-quality albums with songs both by the singer herself and by cult composers written for her beloved friend - B.G., Viktor Tsoi and Sergey Kuryokhin. The clips of beginners Mikhail Khleborodov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Dmitry Dibrov shot on these songs have long become classics of the music video - but they are also forgotten. How forgotten are Joanna's cultural activities on Russian television, and this is the first time we have shown concerts of almost all the big stars of Western rock and their interviews with Joanna's witty comments.

Ten years ago, Joanna left for California to give birth to a daughter from her second Russian husband: like the first, Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparyan, drummer Sasha Vasiliev played in a Russian rock band, in the Center with Vasily Shumov.

And so, on November 18, the B-2 Club throws a party in honor of Joanna and her friends. We went over with the club's managers possible participants in the concert: of course, these are the Sologub brothers from the Red Wave project, who retained their rock and roll enthusiasm and taste, and old friends from the S Brigade, Garik Sukachev and Sergey Galanin with Serga, an eternally fresh head our pop music Zhenya Khavtan, and ... they began to scratch their turnips on this.

Mamonov and Kinchev, who almost disappeared in the wilds of Orthodoxy, who lives between tours in Siberia and India, B.G., confused by family concerns, a recluse of a St. …

It can be stated with bitterness that under the conditions of the dictatorship of pirates in the audio products market, domestic producers could not take care of reproducing a high-quality musical product and the battlefield on which such giants of Soviet rock as Zoo and Pop Mechanics were cut down fell to marauders.

However, Joanna herself, having lost weight and inspired by the meeting with her beloved and partly native country (there are Odessa notes in her pedigree), is going to perform a block of new songs in B-2. Come - you won't regret it.

PS Maybe, just in case of a meeting with the past, Victor Tsoi, the closest of Joanna's Russian friends, left me a sheet with a sketch of his song. The song "Children of the Minutes" was performed on stage only once - at a concert in memory of the singer.

<...> Children of minutes will never understand

Clock cycle

And they will come to the threshold, and break the door,

And split the scales.

They do not believe in the victory of good over evil,

As in the victory of evil over good.

They know they only have a gray day

And they want to live this day.

And one keeps screaming, and the other is silent.

Well, the third sticks out, hammering bolts.

And the cops broke off the horns of the car that was heading east.

And I would like to ask why and why

Have you hung a gold medal on your chest?

Everyone in this room thinks the same way. How are you.

And you look into the distance, you look into the distance.

Also I would like to know why

So easily you exchanged the sea for a basin?

But others immediately answered me in chorus:

"You're not with us, so you're against us."

But if it's a problem, then it's so petty.

But if it's a task, then it's so easy.

These are the children of minutes breaking the door,

Not noticing that there is no lock on it. <...>