St Petersburg will host two Rock festivals featuring the city's top bands next week. One is organized by the St Petersburg Rock Club, the other by the Svobodnaya Kultura (Free Culture) Foundation, which owns the infamous building at 10 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa.
The contemporary St Petersburg Rock Club has little in common with what the Leningrad Rock Club was in the 1980s. At that time the club, which was opened under unclear circumstances, grew to be a spiritual center and semi-secret place for gatherings.
It drew not only rock fans, but artists, actors, directors and writers who were held together not so much by love for rock and roll, but by the new creative attitude -- untraditional, uncensored, non-commercial. The main attraction was the spirit of freedom which could be seen and felt in the audience and performers alike.
All of the interesting rock acts of the 1980s gathered around the Rock Club. Aquarium, Zoopark, Strange Games, Kino and others played there, creating the Russian rock movement between its walls.
Musicians had an opportunity to perform in public, though as "amateur artists," they were paid the equivalent of a bottle of vodka. But not everything was ideal. One could feel the control of the KGB and party authorities. Top musicians were under individual control, having their own personal KGB "curators."
Lyrics were subject to censorship, though of a much more liberal form than that applied to "official" pop performers of that time. But songwriters invented all sort of tricks to deceive the censors -- and in most cases they succeeded.
The most important event in the melee was the annual Leningrad Rock Club Festival. It was a competition with a jury, which apart from Rock Club activists included representatives of various creative organizations and -- absolutely necessary -- of the Komsomol (Young Communist League). The jury chose a number of "best groups," who were honored with diplomas.
Of late the Rock Club has gone through hard times. After organizing the huge Eighth Festival at the Yubileiny Sports Palace in March 1991, which coincided with the organization's 10th anniversary, the Rock Club got involved with business activities which had little to do with music. In the summer of 1994 it tried to bounce back by launching a regular venue, but the effort petered out after a while.
Now the St Petersburg Rock Club has decided to relaunch its famous festivals and has organized -- after an almost five-year pause -- its Ninth Festival. Even the organizers admit that the event has lost much of its former importance and will be more a matter of nostalgia. The festival will be more modest than in 1991, in a smaller hall, but the acoustics will be better.
When the Rock Club stumbled, it was the Pushkinskaya 10 artistic community which picked up and carried the torch of the avant-garde.
In 1991 Mayor Anatoly Sobchak gave the building to the Free Culture Foundation, which united every notable painter, musician and artist of the city's counter-culture. Even artists and musicians without studios in the building frequent it -- they come to hear the latest news, or to see or take part in the events.
Earlier this year the Foundation produced a compilation called "Severnaya Stolitsa" ("Northern Capital,") released on CD and cassette by Moscow-based record label Moroz Records. Top local acts who feel a part of Pushkinskaya 10 donated their tracks to the project. Many of them will take part in the concert on Thursday, which is officially intended to present the album to the public.
Many bands (which will perform for free) are taking part in both of the two events: in the former to pay tribute to the past, and in the latter to pay their respects to the building which became their home and is their present.