It all began in a student hostel. The student "AGMI-sektsiya" (1979–1981: Ivan Averkiev on guitar, Igor Koshkin on bass, Vladimir Abroskin on drums, Sergey Podyakov on vocals) gradually turned into Scena, a chamber-acoustic band built around Podyakov's songs. Oblachny Kray knew it well, and not only because some musicians played in both bands.
In January 1984 Bogaev asked Konstantin Lapshin to play on "Vershina idiotizma": saxophone and flutes. "From the songs he played in you could tell what kind of specialist he was," Bogaev recalled. Abroskin, "Uncle Vova", also took the drums in some of the compositions — it is the last Arkhangelsk recording of Oblachny Kray, after which Bogaev left for Tropillo's in Leningrad. And Andrey Lukin, Scena's bass player, later became the bass player of Oblachny Kray.
But Bogaev himself was needed by Scena as well. In 1984, within the modest means of those years, he and the future author of the memoir about the 1987 festival devised a scheme for recording two Scena concerts and carried it out. By then the band had already recorded "Pod'polye" (1981) and "Sezon dozhdey" (1982), and Bogaev was regarded in the city as the undisputed authority in sound recording.
He spoke of Scena itself with admiration: they played "music not at all in our style", but were "wonderful", the music "very interesting even by today's standards". Sergey Babkin in the newspaper "Arkhangelsk" (1995) went further still: Scena was "the best band of all times and peoples", "a band of the level of Voskresenye". Among the older authors he singled out "the early Bogaev" — "not the social things but such as 'Drug moy vernyi Mikhail'". At the V rock festival of 1987 Lukin also played with Scena.
Scena's fate was harder than its neighbours'. At Permilovo in 1985, according to the description of Nikolai Kharitonov's film, it played but did not make it into the film: as a condition for the authorities not to use repressions, Scena was strongly advised (no joking, "Podtankovskaya Gvardiya" remarks) to disband. The band lasted until 1988.
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 and 9); "The line-up of the band Scena 1981–1988" and "Igor Koshkin's service record" ("Podtankovskaya Gvardiya"); the newspaper "Arkhangelsk", 16 May 1995; the pages of Lapshin, Abroskin and Lukin on this site.
