Aerostat on Russian popular music

Since May 22nd, 2005 Akvarium’s lead singer and front man Boris Grebenshchikov (BG) has hosted the weekly radio show Aerostat on Radio Rossii (these shows are also published and archived as podcasts at aerostat.rpod.ru).

While quite broad (and primarily about Western popular music) BG at times also talks about Russian popular music. Besides discussing and playing music from his recent albums (e.g. Loshad’ Belaia, Pushkinskaia 10) this also includes discussing aspects of Russian (rock) music based on his experience (and, of course, from his perspective). In episode 20 BG gives a good overview of Soviet Rock music from the 1980s focusing mainly on Leningrad, Moscow and Sverdlovsk. Episodes 103 and 156 are dedicated to respectively the late Il’ia Kormil’tsev (Nautilus Pompilius’ main lyricist) and Petr Mamonov (Zvuki Mu).

These podcasts offer a good introduction to Russian popular music of the 1980s and while limited both in length (e.g. a 45 minute radio show for 10 years of music is not quite representative) and perspective they offer a more personal and vivid approach to the music than academic texts do. It also opens for a different perspective to one of the most influential Soviet and Russian rock musicians (and one who still remains active as a musician as well – I am going to hear him perform tonight at BKZ Oktiabr’skii! :-D).

Here is a list of the mentioned podcasts with links to the mp3 files:

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.