Yuri Shevchuk of Petersburg's DDT producing some real rock music.
Some new groups appeared in 1994 on the local scene.
They were mostly off-white imitations of fashionable Western musical styles.
Singing in Russian but drawing their inspiration from foreign springs.
Performers who made waves rather than ripples in St Petersburg's rock'n'roll pool last year were musicians who first became famous in the Great Russian Rock Revo-lution of the 1980s.
Sergei Kuryokhin was definitely Man of the Year.
A media favorite -- his every step, utterly innovative or no, was headline material during the last 12 months.
He wrote music for several important films, including Sergei Solovyev's "Three Sisters," which premiered in October.
For the soundtrack of Dmitry Meskhiyev's "Over the Dark Water," Kuryokhin received the newly created national prize "The Green Apple."
The award was intended for young movie-makers. He received it in late November.
But at 40 does Sergei qualify as young?
Well, anyway, the mature prize, "Nika," (Russia's Oscar) was received by 63-year composer Mikayel Tariverdiyev, famous for his music for the Soviet super-spy TV series "Seventeen Moments of Spring," in December. The concept of "young" Russia perhaps differs from the rest of the world.
And it was Kuryokhin who "finished" the year with a performance on December 27.
Among other things, it featured an avant-garde, virtuoso percussionist playing on different-sized pieces of metal, a score of soldiers and two tigers.
Alas, there was no partridge in a pear tree and the tigers were behind the bars.
If even half of his projects for 1995 (described in last week's St Petersburg Press) come to fruition, he will undoubtedly be next year's star turn as well.
Starting mid-January you can see him every week on television in his own program on St Petersburg's Channel 5.
Boris Grebenshchikov, founder of Aquarium -- which once featured Kuryokhin on keyboards -- said farewell to Christianity this year and turned to Buddhism.
During 1994, he and the reformed Aquarium recorded an exciting new album, "Kostroma Mon Amour."
The album included songs like "Russian Nirvana," and re-issued two of Russian rock's seminal "underground tape albums" on the Moscow-based, Triary label.
One of these, "Treugolnik," (Triangle) was a 'clandestine' pop-art sensation in 1981.
Aquarium were ages ahead of their time, producing a series of incredible absurdist pop and rock vignettes, that changed the conscience of an unsuspecting, dissident rock audience.
The CD is not great, lacking some important pieces and incorporating several audio reproduction flaws.
So far there is nothing to compare with the original home-made tape, its amateur photo art-work glued to the box of an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape.
"Taboo," an equally strong tape album from 1992, which -- under other circumstances -- could have been produced by Brian Eno. Instead, Kuryokhin was the producer.
"Taboo" was also re-released on Triary label.
It sounds very different from Aquarium's current groove, but is still one of the best products of Russian rock music up to the 1990s.
DDT, the band who try hardest to be Russia's top rock band, still play that same old sound.
They recorded a new CD, based on their tour "That's All," and insist that they still play "not pop music, but real rock."
Tequilajazzz were probably the most interesting and innovative of the new bands.
A completely new combo, they play mostly at the TaMtaM Club and Fish Fabrique.
There style is a happening mix of jazz and hardcore punk, but they have yet to produce anything to compete with Russia's truly innovative 1980s' rock music.