There is no mata in Moscow

The blockade of Leningrad continues. While the mayor of Moscow will be Yuri Luzhkov, the Leningrad group will not appear on any large concert venue of the city. The fighting against Sergei Shnurov and his gang began last fall. On November 2, a group of the group in Luzhniki was canceled. A letter from the city hall signed by Luzhkov and Vice-mayor Lyudmila Shevtsova came to the concert agency “Mill”. It said that the performance of Leningrad in Luzhniki is impossible, since the group sings obscene songs. There was no need for this letter to cancel the performance without the intervention of the city hall. But the mayor was important to publicly demonstrate that he cares about Muscovites morality. The second blow to the "Leningrad" Matu was inflicted on January 29, when a concert was canceled in the village of Gorbunov. The last incident occurred on February 8 of this year, when the group did not allow the group to take part in the Chart Dyuzhin festival, which was the leaders of the 2002 Radio Heat Parade. Leningrad took the first place with the song www in this hit parade. There is not a single swear word in her text. It was she who was supposed to sound at the concert.

Mikhail Kozyrev, the head of our Radio and the host of the program of Chart Dyuzhin, understood that it would be difficult to release the group on the stage of Luzhnikov, and therefore tried to enlist the consent of all possible instances. But the Luzhnikov administration stated that since the stadium is city property, the corresponding paper from the city hall is needed. Luzhkov categorically refused.

The figures of the show industry, who have to organize stadium concerts, are increasingly faced with the opposition of local authorities. In most cities, including in Moscow, all large sites belong to the city. Thus, the city hall has every right to prohibit, or rather, not to allow for one reason or another any concert that takes place in the territory subordinate to her. Theoretically, the power of bureaucrats does not apply to private platforms. Therefore, in Moscow, “Leningrad” only club basements are available, but they are also unreliable shelter.

The municipal authorities have many ways to influence the club repertoire policy. You can use the Ministry of Emergencies, a sanitary and epidemiological station, firefighters. Each of these services can at any time make a claim to the organizers. The police authorities, for example, have the most reliable argument: the event is fraught with riots.

The reasons for the prohibitions are very different. Concert agencies depend on the personal tastes of the city authorities, on the vigilance of moralists, on the political and economic interests of the authorities. Moreover, Moscow in this sense is far from the most difficult city. Here, at least the logic of the authorities is clear, it is known in advance what and how to fight. In the provinces, they can simply send without explanation.

However, the story of Leningrad is not typical of Russian show business. Until now, prohibitions and obstacles in organizing concerts have little depended on music and texts. As a rule, the speeches of the musicians are becoming a way of clarifying relations between bosses, for example, prefecture and city. Let's say a prefect can sabotage a concert, profitable city hall. The reasons may be political (a certain party is interested in the concert), economic (the distribution of profit in the area). Censorship prohibitions are also not news, although they still rarely happened. So, for example, the city hall did not allow the Love Parade electronic music festival in Moscow. Last summer, Rammstein was not able to play in Tushin - after football pogrom on Manezhnaya Square, skinhead provocations were afraid of.

But these were private cases. Leningrad became the first “forbidden” group since the time of the USSR. But the persecution, as in the Soviet past, does not interfere, but on the contrary, increase the popularity of the group. When instead of the performance of Leningrad in Luzhniki, their video was launched on large screens, the stadium sang along and rained as if the group played alive. Militia-nilly cords becomes heroic in the eyes of fans, and the singing of “Leningrad” songs-a form of protest against returning to the soviet methods of supervision of public morality.