The soul is simple

On January 15, in St. Petersburg , Sergey’s funeral “Sil” Selyunin , a pioneer of Russian Rock, the leader of the “Exit” group, in which he was the only indispensable participant, will be held. The “output ”’s debut magnetoalbus fell into the five best records of 1982 according to the Roxy Samizdaz-journal-along with the albums of Mike Naumenko, Aquarium and Kino. The last work of the steel was the record “crept up (gently)” , published in 2019 . For 37 years of chaotic creative life and demonstrative indifference to show business, Sergei Selyunin recorded almost two dozen original albums, which connect the dissident traditions of the Russian bard song, reggae-rhythms and panka attitude to music and life, gave many concerts at large festivals and apartments, issued an autobiographical book “How I have appeared” rock and roll . " The story of Oleg Koveryga’s “Exiting” , which became the chief propagandist of the music of the Stli and other domestic rock outsaders began with the “output” album.

In memory of Sergey Selyunin, we publish the chapter from the book of Alexander Kushnir “100 Magnitoalbums of Soviet Rock” about how the first album of “Exit” “Brother Isaiah” was created.

"Exit" - "Brother Isaiah" (1982)

According to the results of 1982, published in the Samizdat magazine Roxy, the debut album “Exit” fell into the top five of the best records of the season - on a par with LV, Mike, “Tabu” Aquarium and 45 group “Kino”. At the same time, the “output” could be considered a rock band rather conditionally. At the early stage, having pushed away from the bard tradition, the poet and composer Sergei “Silya” Selyunin composed spiritualized rock ballads, periodically jumping from the KSP to reggae, blues and impleased psychedelics. The acoustic ornament of his songs was due to two factors - the inability to play electric concerts in Leningrad and the low technical potential of the group. From a complete freebie, the “output” was saved by the violinist Andrei Zazudovsky, who soon became the leader of the “Secret” group. He brought to the ended species of the melody of the songs, being their main arranger.

The rhythm-section of the “output” was made up of Mikhail Brook (drums) and Alexander Andreev (BAS), about the musical skill of which the ironic wir in the spirit of “one thing is one thing is to love, and another thing to be able to play”. Be that as it may, it was Brooke and Andreev that planted Sile on Bob Marley's songs, bringing a whole pack of records with Jamaica music home.

The consequence of such a reggae-preparation was the title hit “Brother Isaiah”-a somewhat unexpected address to the biblical theme: “The door is locked, brother Isaiah, open it! / Dead or alive! " This reggae, written in a trip during a walk from home to the train, later turned out to be one of his most popular songs and gave rich food for all kinds of interpretations.

“In the ideological sense,“ Brother Isaiah ”is not inspired by anything,” Sil admitted in an exclusive interview for the book. -I joined the rhyme “Kaya-Isaia” , but then the word “kaya” went out of the song somewhere, and the rhyme “Simple soul” remained. Later, my friends found a deep meaning in this text - they say, it is written about Solzhenitsyn (since he is Isaevich), which was not in the song. ”

The main part of the compositions of the debut program “Exit” was written by Selyunin in 1979–1982 and was a mixture of hippic hymns and erotic revelations (“sticking out from your feet”, “drops of coutor dew”, etc.). These songs were balanced along the very edge of a sophisticated taste, without turning into an open lust and remaining somewhere in the territory of the kingdom of an eternal dream.

No matter how trite it sounds, Sil took plots for songs from his life. A physicist in education and the future candidate of sciences, he without false pathos saturated future compositions with stormy alcoholic memories with an aggravated sexual perception of reality and a witty stem - it seemed that everyone needed in the world. One of these songs was the “hippar” - a dazzling gouging manifesto, saturated with easily read by self -irony. Another of the compositions, the “drops of high dew”, was written in a stout in a fit of “hangover shame” after another white fever. In it, the melodies of his compositions “They crawl along the walls” and “Pap collector” were mixed in it. From the strongest Baudun, Sil took the refinement of the first song and the verse of the second and mechanically connected them into a single whole.

“We were looking for our sound with the help of Hanji,” Sil recalls with a smile. - Having recorded a new song on rehearsals, we smoked jambs and, listening to our own opuses, admired: “Oh, what a cool sound we have! This is Nishtyak! Directly a whole orchestra! "

In the presence of violent fantasy, the compositions of their compositions could be associated with students both with the bombed version of the acoustic opuses of the early Makarevich, and with the work of the musicians of the Aquarium, parody compositions from his own magneto -album “Acoustics”.

“I never realized my texts as the main detail,” says Silya. - After all, it began all why? “Hey-hee-hee”-both the rhythm and the texts as a filling ... We must be able to notice that if the text is too smart, it is not clear why it is to sing under the drums. And if the text is stupid, then it will go under the drums . ”

One of the strengths of the fortune as a creative person was not only an amazing sense of impromptu, but also the absence of any complexes about the sound of his own group.

“We were looking for our sound with the help of a Hanji,” he recalls with a smile. - Having recorded a new song on rehearsals, we smoked jambs and, listening to our own opuses, admired: “Oh, what a cool sound we have! This is a nishtyak! Just a whole orchestra!” ”

As history says, in electricity an early “output” played only two concerts. As a rule, they began with the fact that the beam of light outlined the silhouette of a man in a hood that threshed through drums. Then there was a slanting hard rick riff, after which Sil began to yell the “brother of Isaiy”. In general, among nine songs included in the album of the same name, only “hippar” and “brother of Isaiah” were performed in electricity. All other compositions were performed by a group in acoustics on numerous apartments. In the end, it was after such concerts that friends were tormented by friends who insisted on the record of a magneto -album as “quite meaningful work for eternity”.

The sound recording session took place in June 1982 at the apartment of Sasha Bavin, the owner of a household tape recorder and a dumpling mixer weighing about twenty kilograms. Microphones were connected to the remote control, two of which were at Sil (voice, guitar), one at Brook (Bongs) and one at Zazudovsky, who, depending on the situation, either played on the violin or sang along.

As the story says, the bassist Sasha Andreev did not have his own microphone. He sat in the depths of the room and thoughtfully picked on the acoustic six -string. At the right moment, he sneaked to one of the microphones and, in the expression of their own, "made small solo-puffs." At least one of them, penetratedly performed by Andreev in the composition “sticking from your feet”, still takes by the soul. Selyunin himself played on the ancient guitar of the production of the Leningrad factory named after Lunacharsky, who belonged to the house of a medical worker. By the time of recording an album of twelve strings, only eight remained alive.

“Everything turned out measuredly and in high - not in the sense of arranging, but in the sense of mood,” his verdict Selyunin took his verdict after a decade and a half.

Despite the fact that the microphones were uninterruptedly capricious, the atmosphere during the session was elevated. The songs were corresponded only if the silverly forgot the words. Fake notes, rhythmic shotus and clumsy parties were not taken into account.

On the first day, nine songs were recorded - more than three quarters of the alleged material. After that, the delighted Sil went to visit, where he prosaily got drunk to pink elephants and the ending of the recording stupidly arousal. As a result, one of his main hits remained unfinished-the Blue Blues “Masha, I am your boyfriend”-perhaps one of the most compassionate concert compositions of the Leningrad Rock of the early 80s .

So, the album "Brother Isaiah" went to the people unfinished-with a total length of about 35 minutes. Despite a number of musical finds, a kind of guitar-scricid sound and sophisticated irony of most songs, “Brother Isaiah” was a classic example of a freely done work. Another thing is that partly this circumstance added an element of considerable charm and attractiveness to the opus. Indeed, at that time, the “exit” by definition could not have another album.

“What we recorded,” Silya recalls, “was not the ultimate form of the album. The film itself was planned for use as a matrix cut and glued in the right order. But everything remained in its original form. ”

Since then, a lot of water has flowed, which the “output” was bating as he wanted and when he wanted. For several years, the group did not give concerts at all - under the plausible pretext "We have been working mourning in the new bassist." When, after an unpretentious creative time-out, Sil tried to sign up in electricity (album “Ugrozia”), he still worked the first half of the session, and the second one “absolutely no longer”.

“On this album, the transition from conscious to the unconscious was especially important to me,” he frankly frankly with me a few years later.

In the early 90s, Sil temporarily stabilized the composition of the group (with the participation of Oleg Sakmarov (Flate), Peter Akimov (cello) and Vanya Voropaev (Alt)), but not his relaxed attitude to life. Perhaps it was precisely because of this that he was not subjected to a brutal test of purchase and sale and promotion in mass media. Why is it alive, although not famous. His best concert militants are “traffic police inspector”, “women like horses”, “city of castrated poets”, “my best friend”, “invite me to Anasha” - are loved by many and in different cities. And the cover version of the Nautilus “walks in water”, turned from the “exit” from a touching philosophical parable into a stack music comic, should be considered as an infrequent case when a copy is not inferior to the original.

As for the “brother of Isaiah”, this album was never published on a compact disc [1] . The original album for a long time was stored by the bassist Sasha Andreev, who, not without reason, believed that the matrix would still disappear. The illogicality of the situation was that when Silya nevertheless matured to release the “brother Isaiy” on the CD, Andreev actively protested. As an argument, he gave arguments that the group has no guarantee that the company producing this album in Russia will produce a qualified restoration of the original.

“I’ll go better with our album to the city of San Francisco ,” Andreev reasoned slowly. - I have a familiar sound engineer there, who has been restoring the DOORS concert boots in his home studio for many years. Now they sound even better than official albums. Here we have a “brother Isaiyu” and to clean up. ”

Andreev is going to San Francisco to this day. Otherwise, it would simply not be a “output”.

[1] When the book was preparing for the press, the album "Brother Isaiah" was published on the licensed cassette "Departure of the exit".