"In those days all the Arkhangelsk rock fighters were very friendly," Bogaev recalled in chapter 7 of his memoir. "Of course everyone rooted first of all for their own band, but nobody ever refused to help the others — free of charge, naturally, without any money or fees: it never even crossed anyone's mind. Everything was done from the heart, out of a great and, it seemed, eternal and indestructible love of rock and roll." We write here only about the bands whose history is entwined with that of Oblachny Kray; about the others let those who know them better tell.
When people in Arkhangelsk played without equipment and without posters, the help of friends was real currency. On his "rusty tape recorders" Bogaev recorded not only Oblachny Kray: by his account they also hold albums by Scena, Autodafe, Svyataya Luiza, Blues Inspector and the metal band TOR. The covers of "Selkhozrok", "Khudozhestvennaya samodeyatelnost", "Ublyuzhya Dolya" and "Stremya i Lyudi" were drawn by Alexey Bulygin of Autodafe, who also made the computer design of "Ygyatta". The drummers of Oblachny Kray included Dmitry Leontyev and Yury Korablev (Autodafe), the bass players Andrey Ilyichev (Svyataya Luiza) and Andrey Lukin (Zapasny Vykhod, Scena, Autodafe). The saxophonist Konstantin Lapshin and the drummer Vladimir Abroskin of Scena played on "Vershina idiotizma", and the Svyataya Luiza vocalist Vladimir Budnik sang "Velikaya Garmoniya" and most of "Ublyuzhya Dolya". Andrey Korelsky of Autodafe later made the orchestrations for "Lyubov k zhizni" and "Patriot".
All of this had a setting. From the mid-1970s the city had a rock association ("Ritmy veka", later "Nord") that grew into a rock club, the samizdat magazine "Severok" came out, and the informal living room was the spot by the café "Pod Tankom" (more about it). In 1984, after a scandalous concert at the Communications College, the authorities pressed harder, and in 1985 friends organised an away "session" at Permilovo — with Autodafe and Svyataya Luiza — instead of a banned festival. Nikolai Kharitonov filmed it; Igor Koshkin and Scena did not make it into the film: according to "Podtankovskaya Gvardiya", the authorities would have liked Scena to disband.
How it unfolded
- January 1984. Lapshin and Abroskin are invited to "Vershina idiotizma"; the same year Bogaev and the future author of the festival memoir work out how to record two Scena concerts.
- Autumn 1984. Bogaev takes Budnik to Leningrad to sing on "Ublyuzhya Dolya".
- 28 February – 1 March 1987. The V rock festival: Bogaev at the desk and, in the finale of Zapasny Vykhod (Sukhanov, Pastukhov, Lukin), playing a guest guitar part. More: about the festival and the sound assistant's memoir.
- Spring – autumn 1987. Ilyichev and Leontyev play with Oblachny Kray (Moscow, 25 April), then Lukin; the "Pomorye" channel shows clips of Oblachny Kray, Autodafe and Kamera; Oblachny Kray and Autodafe go to Leningrad at Alisa's invitation.
- January 1988. The whole of Autodafe and friends gather in Leontyev's flat converted into a studio.
- Winter 1988–89. A return visit of Oblachny Kray and Autodafe to Leningrad.
- 1989–1991. Korablev of Autodafe is the drummer; in May 1989 Supalov photographs friends outside Pod Tankom.
- 1998. Bulygin and Leontyev revive Autodafe and record "Na beregu reki Agdam" at Tropillo's studio in St Petersburg, with Bogaev taking part.
- 1999 and 2003. Leontyev plays on "Lyubov k zhizni" and "Patriot", Korelsky makes the orchestrations.
- 2012. The "Arkhangelsk team" records "Arkhangelsky rok-n-roll" for the Oblachny Kray tribute.
- 2018. The "Pod Tankom v 6" gathering at the club "Koleso": Svyataya Luiza, the "Combined Orchestra of Rear Tankmen" with Bulygin, Koshkin, Leontyev and Korelsky, and others.
More in the series: who was friends with whom, Autodafe, Svyataya Luiza, Scena, Blues Inspector on TV, Pod Tankom.
Used here: Bogaev's memoir (chapters 7, part 1, 7, part 2 and 9); Troitsky's "Rock in the USSR"; publications of "Podtankovskaya Gvardiya"; the members' pages on this site.
