Very few people in the world know it, but the most progressive Russian rock band of all time were Leningrad/Petersburg’s Virtuosi of the Universe (Virtuozy vselennoi).
This record (“Beauty Queen”) was produced by Sergei “Shaggy” Vasilyev at his studio on Nevsky Prospect in 1990. It features the late, unforgettable Vladimir Sorokin on vocals, Mr. Vasilyev himself on guitar, Andrei “Slim” Vasilyev of DDT, the late Ovchinnikov brothers (Vadim and Alexander), and Igor Rjatov, among others.
The film that accompanies the song was shot by the incomparably brilliant filmmaker Yevgeny Kondratiev, long resident in Berlin, and edited by the lovely sound wizard Georgy Baranov, who fortunately has not gone anywhere and is very much alive and well.
Thanks to our friend Ksenia Astafiyeva for the heads-up and so much else.
Ms. Astafiyeva dedicated her original social media posting of the song to our friend Yuri “Compass” Krasev, who died on January 28. An actor, artist, and showman, Mr. Krasev played a key role in musician, composer and band leader Sergei Kuryokhin’s legendary Pop Mechanics performances and in the parallel cinema and necrorealist film movements, especially the films of the late Yevgeny Yufit, as well as in nearly everything else that happened in the endlessly various, continuously unfolding and intermingling of art and life known collectively as the New Artists (Novye khudozhniki), whose aftershocks continued to define the Petersburg art scene well into the nineteen-nineties and beyond.
In the mid-nineties, Mr. Krasev and I once gave a performance at Gallery 103, in the old artists’ squat аt Pushkinskaya 10 in downtown Petersburg. The performance featured me dressed in a old Soviet men’s dress suit which I found in the rented flat on Italyanskaya where I was living. Mr. Krasev helped me picked out my outfit.
During the performance itself, Mr. Krasev picked me up off the ground and literally held me above his head for several minutes while reciting a poem or text of some kind. He was such a strong man that at no time did I fear he would drop me. And indeed he did not drop me, gently lowering me to the floor when he had finished his recitation.
Mr. Krasev will be sorely missed by his many friends and acquaintances. Without absolutely unique artists, musicians and eccentrics like him, Mr. Yufit, Mr. Sorokin, the Messieurs Ovchinnikov, and many others, Petersburg has turned into a place that seems alien to those of us who still remember what a joyous, free and truly creative city it was not so long ago, a city that belonged to people who dared to imagine that it was the center of universe and a place where literally everyone was—or should have been—a virtuoso. ||| TRR
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