The site already has the recording of Oblachny Kray’s performance at the festival "Podolsk-87" (11–13 September 1987, the Green Theatre of Talalikhin Park) — the album "Concert in Podolsk". Here is what two other recordings say about it: the video montage "Oblachny Kray at the festival Podolsk-87" (the channel "Podolsk 87 — Chronicles of the Rock Revolution", 2017; the speakers are not named in the recording) and a radio programme about the festival whose guests were the organizers — Pyotr (Pit) Kolupaev and Mark Rudinstein (on YouTube it is titled "Seva Novgorodtsev on Podolsk-87"; the host is not named in the recording, and by his words "18 years" have passed since the festival, so the programme dates from about 2005). We transcribed both recordings by ear; the quotes below are as they sound, without guesswork.
Eyewitnesses (the 2017 video montage)
The speakers do not give names, so we do not attribute the words to particular people either.
The video montage "Oblachny Kray at the festival Podolsk-87" (the channel "Podolsk 87 — Chronicles of the Rock Revolution", 5 min 38 s).
- The band, one of them says, "looked quite like a Western rock band"; "a powerful dense sound despite rather mediocre equipment". They played, in his words, on "Urals" "very fiercely, revolutionarily".
- The one who filmed the performance recalls a "modest, tense lad" coming on stage, and when the music began "he was entirely transformed": "a flow of energy", "furious gesticulation". These are, he adds, the shots he is proud of. He cares more for "verse than placards", and the "really amazing lyrics" surprised him.
- Another recalls: at first the audience sat on benches — "in a Soviet, dreary way", and by Oblachny Kray’s set "it was already a kind of local Armageddon": "everybody was shouting and jumping". He calls the musicians "roots guys": they had "absolute honesty" and "puppy-like naivety".
- About the guitar: "Sergey, with his Russian-peasant directness, smashed that guitar on the stage of the Podolsk festival. The guitar was intact, by the way, and Sergey went on playing it for some time. There was not even a crack on it." The speaker remarks that Soviet guitars were remarkably sturdy.
- The montage’s conclusion: it is good that the video survived, "otherwise nobody would even know" that such a band existed — "some call it metal, some hard rock", "quite original, coming from who knows where in Arkhangelsk". Podolsk is called there "the highest point" — the speaker’s opinion on the band’s concert history.
Organizers (the radio programme, about 2005)
Over the photographs of the festival participants one of the guests calls Oblachny Kray "hard rock, a rather interesting, popular band" and tells: "they decided to make themselves remembered and tried to break the 'Ural' guitar — we had the sturdiest guitars in the world, and so for about ten minutes they could not break it. The band is very well known for the albums they released; the Podolsk festival was their first appearance on stage, that is, a studio band." Later, reading out the list of the festival’s bands, the host names "Oblachny Kray, Arkhangelsk".
A radio programme about the festival with the organizers Kolupaev and Rudinstein (51 min). Oblachny Kray is discussed from 31:46 to 32:30.
The "Ural" guitar: five accounts
- Oleg Kovriga (Zvuki.Ru), on the page of "Concert in Podolsk": Sergey Bogaev struck the stage with the "Ural"; the guitar withstood the first blow, at the second the neck almost broke off, after the third it broke off completely; later the neck was glued back and he played it for several more years.
- The description of the release (same page): having broken two strings, Bogaev began smashing the guitar "to pieces".
- The 2017 montage: he smashed it on the stage; the guitar stayed intact, "not even a crack", and he went on playing it.
- The organizers (radio): for about ten minutes they could not break it.
- In Bogaev’s biography on this site (from the description of the Podolsk performance): in the finale of "Mat poryadka" he tore off the "Ural" guitar and hurled it across the stage.
The narrators differ in details: how many blows there were, whether the neck cracked, whether it was glued. The main thing coincides — the "Ural" proved surprisingly sturdy: in three accounts out of five the guitar survived the concert. We do not choose a version; the video of the performance is on the album page.
What is inaccurate here
An organizer calls Podolsk "the first appearance on stage" — by our materials this is not so: by September 1987 the band had already performed, for instance at the V Rock Festival in Arkhangelsk (28 February – 1 March 1987), and the description of the Podolsk concert says it was its fifth concert in the band’s history. The band was a "studio band" in the sense that its Arkhangelsk albums of the 1980s were recorded at home and in a studio, but it also rehearsed and performed.
From the organizers’ programme about the festival itself
We retell what the programme says, unchecked: over 40 thousand tickets were officially sold; interior troops were brought into the town; the festival, they say, was closed by DDT "under lightning and streams of water"; later, as the organizers say, the festival was declared an "ideological sabotage" and the town’s party and Komsomol officials were punished. More about the festival itself — in the article "Podolsk 87. DVD box set for the 25th anniversary".
Sources: the video montage "Oblachny Kray at the festival Podolsk-87" (YouTube, 5I8Nmb94dbs); the radio programme "Seva Novgorodtsev on Podolsk-87" (YouTube, KT5HwqOoDtI); speech recognition by ear, words may be distorted; the speakers in the montage are not named. In the eight other videos about the festival (a chronology, Borzykin, the organizers’ story of the preparation, Brigada S, Khronop, Cement, Televizor, Kalinov Most) Oblachny Kray is not mentioned.
