Theater-rock group AVIA, back in action after a two-year hiatus.
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Summer reigns in the city. Those who haven't left St Petersburg for some distant resort tend to spend weekends at their dachas.
Clubs face a hard time in this scorching period. Because of a lack of customers, local venues close their doors, one after another.
Art Clinic -- the extravagant venue launched by painter Kirill Miller last April -- tried in vain to experiment successfully with changing its working days to catch the vanishing public. Finally, after an especially painful week, the club's owner surrendered and took a break until mid-August -- a good excuse to have the club's rooms in the shabby building at 10 Pushkinskaya repaired.
The management of the Archwall Club followed Art Clinic's example, but they have gone in for more serious reconstruction. They hope to reopen the place in mid-September, but in a new and expanded form.
Even the ever-insistent TaMtAm Club will refrain from organizing anything on Thursdays, switching instead to a two-days-per-week schedule.
Still, there's a way to get out from the stifling rooms and into the open spaces of the city's parks and gardens to hear music. That's exactly what the Wild Side Club is planning to do as it organizes its second annual open-air festival in the Yekaterinhof Park on Sunday.
The event, which last year took its name -- Goodwill Music --from the Goodwill Games, is called Rock Side Festival this year. This event can't be compared to last month's Radio Fuzz Festival in terms of size and media coverage, but it has its own compensations.
Despite the proximity of the Kirov Plant and other noxious enterprises, the audience will have a chance to enjoy a tiny piece of nature in the Yekaterinhof Park, just a five-minute walk from the Narvskaya Metro station. Also, the festival's organizers guarantee unlimited supplies of cheap beer, both Russian and imported. And finally, the whole event is free.
As for the music, one of the major attractions will be AVIA, a very popular band during the Russian rock explosion in the 1980s. Representatives of "theater rock," AVIA have in the past included a dozen actors and staged enormous and impressive performances at big venues.
The band's situation is sadly changed today. After a two-year hiatus, AVIA has played only a couple of low-profile club dates as a trio. Still, they have a new full-length recording and, even if there's nothing new in that, they will definitely bring back a feeling of nostalgia.
Two current AVIA members used to play with the Strange Games -- an eccentric ska-based band from the mid-1980s. At this festival the two reformed bands will meet.