Big Iron

And that's how it all began! Around 1976, a friend of Sergei's named Alexander Sorokin gave him an acoustic guitar and showed him how to play a few riffs from Sergei's beloved "Deep Purple". The very young Sergei, along with his friends, having listened to recordings of Western rock bands and seen blurry photos re-photographed from posters and record sleeves of these groups, decided to form their own band to play "Wild Jazz & Rock-n-Roll".

The young prodigies built their guitars from scrap materials. As Sergei recounted, by sawing and carving one out of a birch log, and cutting another out of plywood, he hung 3 piano strings on it, and a bass guitar dubbed the "Superbass" was born. They used a keyboard called "Mickey" — battery-powered children's toy keys. Since there were serious issues with finding drums, they used literally anything that could produce a sound.

They utilized stacks of newspapers, tin cans, pot lids, and the pots themselves. The strangest thing is that despite everything, over a couple of years, something resembling actual music slowly began to take shape. After attending a rehearsal, an older friend told them, "You guys could use slightly better instruments; who knows, maybe something would come of it." This gave them hope. One of the tapes from that period with recordings of these rehearsals miraculously survived at Sergei's house on top of a wardrobe.

He brought it to me and said: "Igor, I found this tape here, look, there's a photo and it says 1978, I don't even know what's on it myself. Take a look, maybe there's something interesting." I listened to it with enormous interest. It turned out to contain rehearsal recordings, recorded at 9-speed on 4 tracks, in mono, naturally. It was a 270-meter Slavich brand tape.

It contained all sorts of childish pranks and chatter, the TV was playing in the background, and Blackmore's "Rainbow" from '75 was playing along. But there were also musical numbers. I sifted through it all and selected the musical tracks. I restored the recording; Sergei listened to it, had a good laugh, and said, "Alright, let it be, it's become trendy nowadays to drag all these archival recordings out into the light."

I asked him to give titles to the tracks that were unnamed on the tape. He told me: "Listen, Igor, I don't even remember what we called things back then. You name them yourself, and I'll look them over later, listen, and add my thoughts." We sorted it all out, and that's how this album came to be. The photo from the tape was restored for me by Sergei Supalov and Valentin Nikitin; after that, I did the design, and the disc was ready.

Sergei approved it, correcting a couple of titles and naming the lineup. In 2009, we released the CD and published it on the internet for the first time. I. Plenov

Credits

• Sound Engineer: Sergei Bogaev