The V rock festival took place on 28 February – 1 March 1987 at the culture palace of the Krasnaya Kuznitsa plant (Solombala; today "Solombala-ART"), the new home of the revived Arkhangelsk rock club. It was the first truly official festival in the city, run by the Solombala district Komsomol committee. According to Artemy Troitsky ("Rock in the USSR", the Arkhangelsk chapter) it was a real celebration for local rockers, and for Oblachny Kray "the first and perhaps the most successful performance in its whole history".
The programme
- Blues-Inspector, a jazz-rock band formed by the Stsena musicians Igor Koshkin and Konstantin Lapshin, opened the festival. Its bass player was Andrey Ilyichev; Lapshin played saxophone and flute.
- Autodafe played as Alexey Bulygin (lead guitar), Dmitry Leontyev (drums, now vocals), Andrey Korelsky (second lead guitar) and Andrey Lukin (bass): the band's heavy show was remembered by many.
- Also on stage were Mystic Union of Sergey Khokhryakov (acoustic), the art-rock band Zapasnoy Vykhod of pianist Alexander Sukhanov (with Alexander Pastukhov on drums and Lukin on bass) and Thermometer ("Termometr") of Oleg Sigov, one of the bands that took the stage for the first time.
- Oblachny Kray and Alisa formed the strongest block. For Oblachny Kray it was the public debut: until then the band had been a studio project. The set drew on the two latest albums, "Ublyuzhya Dolya" and "Stremya i Lyudi" ("Soyuz Kompozitorov", "Moy Afganistan", "Napadenie monstra na dvupalyy individuum" and others), plus "Russkaya narodnaya" from the 1983 album; "Mat Poryadka" at the end was played twice as fast and shorter. On stage were Sergey Bogaev, Oleg Rautkin, Nikolai Lyskovsky, drummer Dmitry Leontyev and bass player Andrey Ilyichev.
Behind the scenes
Sergey Bogaev ran the sound on a 12-channel "Elektronika" desk; for some sets he asked an acquaintance to help, whose memoir of the festival survives. For the art-rock trio Zapasnoy Vykhod Bogaev played a guest guitar part in the closing number. The musicians of Alisa (the headliners) stayed overnight in Oblachny Kray's studio in the annex of the culture palace, on pushed-together speaker cabinets, while bass player Pyotr Samoylov and trumpeter Andrey Vasiliev stayed with Lukin; Samoylov lent him his Yamaha bass for his sets. Konstantin Kinchev and Pyotr Samoylov praised the sound, and the saxophonist of Stsena and Blues-Inspector was invited to play a solo in the song "Vozdukh".
What came next
After the V festival the Arkhangelsk rock club entered its "golden days", writes Troitsky. For Oblachny Kray the year was only beginning: on 25 April 1987 the band played in Moscow (more), followed by the festivals at Chernogolovka and Podolsk. Bogaev's own detailed account of the Arkhangelsk festival is in chapter 7 of his memoirs (part 1, part 2).
Sources
- A. Troitsky. "Rock in the USSR", the Arkhangelsk chapter.
- S. Bogaev. "From the history of the band", chapter 7 (on this site).
- The memoir "How I was a sound assistant at the rock festival at Krasnaya Kuznitsa, 1 March 1987" (the community "Podtankovskaya Gvardiya", 5 September 2020).
- E. Bogucharsky. "They got their 1987 back: Arkhangelsk rock veterans gathered again 'Pod Tankom v 6'" (2018).
