Boris Grebenshchikov
Encyclopedia
Boris Borisovich Grebenshchikov also known as Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov, is one of the most prominent members of the generation which is widely considered the "founding fathers" of Russian rock
music. Due as much to his personal contribution as to the undisputed and lasting success of his main effort, the band Aquarium
(active since 1972 until today), he is a household name in Russia. Grebenshchikov is colloquially known as BG after his initials.
. He co-founded Aquarium with a childhood friend, Anatoly "George" Gunitsky, in 1972 as a post-modernistic theater-centric effort that involved poetry and music. Gunitsky provided absurdist, highly symbolic lyrics to some of BG's earliest songs.
Despite an eventual graduate degree in Applied Mathematics, Grebenshchikov had always been a voracious consumer of culture, especially music. His school-years enamorment with The Beatles eventually extended to include a deep appreciation of Bob Dylan
, which slowly transformed Aquarium into a low-fi electric blues band that moonlighted in acoustic reggae. The first song he managed to play on guitar was The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride
"; his first public performance, in 1973, featured him performing songs by Cat Stevens
.
The first six years of Aquarium's history lacked cohesion as Grebenshchikov and his various bandmates followed the Soviet equivalent of the hippie lifestyle: playing apartment jams, drinking the low-quality port wine
available from the Soviet stores of the time, and intermittently travelling to remote gigs, even hitchhiking on rail freight cars.
Youthful philandering was heavily frowned upon by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
regime; decent recording facilities were out of reach because experiments in non-standardized self-expression were routinely suppressed as a matter of policy. The several homebrew 2-track recordings hacked out over those years (Temptation of St. Aquarium (Iskushenie Svyatogo Akvariuma), Count Diffusor's Fables (Pritchi grafa Diffuzora), Menuet for a Farmer (Menuet zemledel'tzu), and a motley crew of "singles") were of necessity extremely unprofessional, but already showcased the off-kilter wit, showy erudition, and a pervasive interest in Oriental thought and mysticism that eventually became BG's trademarks.
The year 1976 also saw the recording of BG's first solo album, On the Other Side of the Mirror Glass (S toy storony zerkal'nogo stekla), and a dual album with another prominent nascent Russian rock-n-roller, Mike Naumenko
, All Brothers are Sisters (Vse brat'ya - sestry).
, the first public Russian rock critic and the enabling figure in many a Russian rock musician's carrier, invited Aquarium to perform at the Tbilisi Rock Festival
.
The festival was a state-sanctioned attempt to channel the then-burgeoning Russian rock music movement into a controllable ideological vessel. It featured a laundered line-up of government-approved rock bands, but also Kraftwerk
, whose performance was accompanied by frisbees being launched into the public. Members of the jury (the occasion was officially an artistic contest) were not amused. A covert KGB-bound report pinned the shennanigans on Aquarium, which caused BG to lose his day job at a backwater design bureau (of a kind that employed the majority of technical specialty graduates in the Soviet Union; Russians called them P.O. Box (Pochtoviy yaschik) because their street addresses were never revealed), and membership in Komsomol
, the Young Communist League, which was a career kiss of death for a Soviet citizen in 1980.
The band's underground profile, however, had continued to rise sharply over the next 7 years, post-Leonid Brezhnev
KGB
-fueled reactionism and Mikhail Gorbachev
's perestroika
notwithstanding. This was both due to talent, and the scarcity of supply - Western rock music was still officially banned at the time. Over the first five albums, the band attracted guitarist Alexander Lyapin, considered to be among the best rock guitar players of Russian origin, the pianist Sergey Kuryokhin
, renowned for the impressive speed and virtuosity of his playing and boundless avant-garde experimentation, and Igor Butman
, a world-class jazz saxophone player and one of the reigning kings of Soviet jazz.
The first Aquarium music available in the "west" was in 1986 when a double album entitled "RED WAVE, 4 UNDERGROUND BANDS FROM THE USSR" appeared in record stores in the U.S. Besides Aquarium, three other bands, Kino, Strange Games and Alisa were recorded on a four track machine, smuggled out of the country and released by a small record label from Hollywood, California. During this time, bands in the USSR were either officially sanctioned or were not allowed to play in public or record in professional recording studios. In 1986, when the record was released in America, Aquarium was immensely popular throughout the Soviet Union, but were forced to play at underground clubs and private gatherings.
By the time Aquarium disbanded amid internal squabble in 1987, they had 11 "official" records under their belt and were considered a living legend of Russian rock. BG himself was likened to Bob Dylan, not least because of his borrowing amply from Dylan stylistically in his earlier years. Railway water (Zheleznodorozhnaya voda) off the 1981 Blue album (Siniy albom), for example, is a spitting image of Dylan's It takes a lot to laugh off the 1965 Highway 61 revisited.
(of Eurythmics
fame). Stewart-produced Radio Silence was released in 1989, featuring covers of Alexander Vertinsky
's China amid songs by BG, including a song written to Sir Thomas Malory
's Death of King Arthur. Annie Lennox
, Billy MacKenzie
and Chrissie Hynde
helped out, as did several of BG's bandmates from Aquarium.
The name of the album proved self-ironic in the extreme as it hasn't made so much as a dent in the charts. Part of the failure can be attributed to the fact that unlike the Anglo-American rock-n-roll culture, the Russian song tradition heavily emphasizes lyrical complexity over hooks or drive, which reinforces the not entirely fair comparisons between BG and Dylan.
BG issued another English-language album, Radio London, in 1990, which consisted of demos, but had some very appealing material to it.
No matter the defiance, the Aquarium brand was too strong to eschew and even the next two albums, one mostly filler (Favorite songs of Ramses the 4th (Lyubimye pesni Ramzesa IV)) and one all B-sides (Sands of St. Petersburg (Peski Peterburga)), were released under the name Aquarium. By the time of 1994's Kostroma Mon Amour BG's mastery of folk melody and lyric has grown to new heights, and a new band lineup was going full steam.
The band's next three albums (effectively BG's solo albums published under the band's brand) - Navigator, Snow lion (Snezhniy lev), and Hyperborea - also have a stylized Russian feel. Navigator especially is widely recognized as a classic example of Russian songwriting, albeit with notable touches of blues
and French chanson
. The songs are melancholic bordering on heart-rending; the lyrics are either drenched in Byronic
spleen, or full of BG-branded variant of Russian irony steeped in a sense of separation between self and the world.
former backup band, The Band
. In 1998 BG, who was by then settling into a cult classic status in Russia, played a one-man-and-his-guitar show of 1970s and 1980s songs to a small audience of fans in a San Francisco bar, and decided to return to reggae-n-rock-n-roll roots.
1999's Psi features just that, as interpreted through a post-modernistic lens with ample, highly inventive use of keyboard-triggered samplers. 2002's Sister Chaos (Sestra Haos), 2003's Fisherman's songs (Pesni rybaka), and 2005's ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM feature the same, painted by sparse touches of Armenia
n (Jivan Gasparyan on Northern Wind), India
n (the entire of Fisherman's songs) and Africa
n (some of ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM). Despite all of these having been issued under the Aquarium brand, it is recognized that by now Aquarium is "the people who play with Grebenshchikov".
In a very appealing touch of overcompensation, as technology and funds had begun to permit, sometime in the 1990s BG had become incredibly quality-conscious with his records. As the state of sound engineering in Russia left (still does) a lot to be desired , he had begun tracking in London's studios. Navigator, a predominantly acoustic album with a highly refined, "the-band-is-in-the-room" intimate soft of a mix saw BG sell his car and part of his guitar collection to cover tracking costs. The quality of his recent recordings may give the better of Western singer-songwriters a run for their money.
" titled Aerostat (Russian: Аэростат). It is presented as "author's program of Boris Grebenshchikov" and is created and spoken by him. His intention is to tell about the alternatives in music, about the music which nobody else plays in today's radio despite of its artistic value and originality. It is mostly independent music which, as Boris says, otherwise would not be played at all. The range of songs in Aerostat varies from 1960s and 1970s rock (The Beatles
, Bob Dylan
and many others) over reggae
, new wave
, alternative rock
, electronica
, and punk
, to world music
, jazz
, classical
and avant-garde
. As of December 2008, almost 200 shows were created and broadcast, each approximately 46 minutes long. The track lists and the scripts of all programs are available at official site of Aquarium and BG. The theme music
is "Prelude" by T. Rex from A Beard of Stars album.
BG also translated several Buddhist and Hinduist texts to Russian, including:
, Russian Orthodoxy
, and alcohol consumption in the same quatrain. The ability has only grown stronger over the years. 1999's Psi switches from detailed references to samurai
culture to mentions of a certain carpenter's son to data storage on hard drives, all the while maintaining tight lyrical cohesion.
He has a unique singing voice. A combination of his natural timbre with a specific vibrato with downward expansion of range and unusual resonation acquired through training make his voice immediately recognizable.
His output has been rather prolific. Over the 30+ years of his career he wrote 500+ songs, most of which were recorded and/or performed publicly. At this point Aquarium has 21 albums in the official discography, approximately 12 "unofficial ones", and about as many live records. Additionally, BG recorded cover albums on material from the two most prominent Russian-language songwriters (Alexander Vertinsky
(1994's Songs of A.Vertinsky (Pesni A.Vertinskogo)) and Bulat Okudzhava
(1999's Songs of B.Okudzhava (Pesni B.Okudzhavy))), two albums of mantra music with Gabrielle Roth
and the Mirrors, (1998's Refuge and 2002's Bardo), and an album of electronica versions of Aquarium songs from late 1970s – early 1980s with the Russian duo Deadushki. Which left him time to be credited on records by big-in-Russia bands Nautilus Pompilius, Mashina Vremeni
and Kino
, as well as the UK acts Shakespears Sister
and Kate St. John. This list is not exhaustive, either.
Russian rock
Russian rock refers to rock music made in Russia or in the Russian language. Rock and roll became known in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and quickly broke free from its western roots. According to many music critics, its "golden age" years were the 1980s , when the Soviet underground rock bands...
music. Due as much to his personal contribution as to the undisputed and lasting success of his main effort, the band Aquarium
Aquarium (group)
Aquarium or Akvarium is a Russian rock group, formed in Leningrad in 1972 by Boris Grebenshchikov, then a student of Applied Mathematics at Leningrad State University, and Anatoly Gunitsky, then a playwright and absurdist poet.-History:...
(active since 1972 until today), he is a household name in Russia. Grebenshchikov is colloquially known as BG after his initials.
Early years (1953-1979)
Boris Grebenshchikov was born on November 27, 1953 in LeningradSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. He co-founded Aquarium with a childhood friend, Anatoly "George" Gunitsky, in 1972 as a post-modernistic theater-centric effort that involved poetry and music. Gunitsky provided absurdist, highly symbolic lyrics to some of BG's earliest songs.
Despite an eventual graduate degree in Applied Mathematics, Grebenshchikov had always been a voracious consumer of culture, especially music. His school-years enamorment with The Beatles eventually extended to include a deep appreciation of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, which slowly transformed Aquarium into a low-fi electric blues band that moonlighted in acoustic reggae. The first song he managed to play on guitar was The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride
"Ticket to Ride" is a song by The Beatles from their 1965 album, Help!. It was recorded 15 February 1965 and released two months later. -Composition:...
"; his first public performance, in 1973, featured him performing songs by Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens
Yusuf Islam , commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, and prominent convert to Islam....
.
The first six years of Aquarium's history lacked cohesion as Grebenshchikov and his various bandmates followed the Soviet equivalent of the hippie lifestyle: playing apartment jams, drinking the low-quality port wine
Port wine
Port wine is a Portuguese fortified wine produced exclusively in the Douro Valley in the northern provinces of Portugal. It is typically a sweet, red wine, often served as a dessert wine, and comes in dry, semi-dry, and white varieties...
available from the Soviet stores of the time, and intermittently travelling to remote gigs, even hitchhiking on rail freight cars.
Youthful philandering was heavily frowned upon by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
regime; decent recording facilities were out of reach because experiments in non-standardized self-expression were routinely suppressed as a matter of policy. The several homebrew 2-track recordings hacked out over those years (Temptation of St. Aquarium (Iskushenie Svyatogo Akvariuma), Count Diffusor's Fables (Pritchi grafa Diffuzora), Menuet for a Farmer (Menuet zemledel'tzu), and a motley crew of "singles") were of necessity extremely unprofessional, but already showcased the off-kilter wit, showy erudition, and a pervasive interest in Oriental thought and mysticism that eventually became BG's trademarks.
The year 1976 also saw the recording of BG's first solo album, On the Other Side of the Mirror Glass (S toy storony zerkal'nogo stekla), and a dual album with another prominent nascent Russian rock-n-roller, Mike Naumenko
Mike Naumenko
Mike Naumenko was a Soviet rock and blues musician, the leader of Zoopark rock group.Born in Leningrad, in the 1970s he was a member of Akvarium Russian rock-group, and in 1981 he formed Zoopark, which became one of the most outstanding blues rock groups of USSR...
, All Brothers are Sisters (Vse brat'ya - sestry).
Classical years (1980-1988)
BG's big break (or, in retrospect, his and the band's "watershed" moment), however, came in 1980, when Artemy TroitskyArtemy Troitsky
Art, Artem, Artemiy or Artemy Troitsky is a Russian journalist, music critic, concert promoter, broadcaster, and an academic who has taught classes on music journalism at Moscow State University. He was born in Yaroslavl, then in the Soviet Union...
, the first public Russian rock critic and the enabling figure in many a Russian rock musician's carrier, invited Aquarium to perform at the Tbilisi Rock Festival
Tbilisi Rock Festival (1980)
The Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi-80 was a musical event held in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian SSR, Soviet Union, from March 8 to March 16, 1980. It was the first official rock festival in the Soviet Union and is frequently considered the turning point in the history of Soviet and Russian rock...
.
The festival was a state-sanctioned attempt to channel the then-burgeoning Russian rock music movement into a controllable ideological vessel. It featured a laundered line-up of government-approved rock bands, but also Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
, whose performance was accompanied by frisbees being launched into the public. Members of the jury (the occasion was officially an artistic contest) were not amused. A covert KGB-bound report pinned the shennanigans on Aquarium, which caused BG to lose his day job at a backwater design bureau (of a kind that employed the majority of technical specialty graduates in the Soviet Union; Russians called them P.O. Box (Pochtoviy yaschik) because their street addresses were never revealed), and membership in Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, the Young Communist League, which was a career kiss of death for a Soviet citizen in 1980.
The band's underground profile, however, had continued to rise sharply over the next 7 years, post-Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
-fueled reactionism and Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
's perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
notwithstanding. This was both due to talent, and the scarcity of supply - Western rock music was still officially banned at the time. Over the first five albums, the band attracted guitarist Alexander Lyapin, considered to be among the best rock guitar players of Russian origin, the pianist Sergey Kuryokhin
Sergey Kuryokhin
Sergey Kuryokhin was a Russian film actor, film composer, pianist, music director, experimental artist and writer, based in St. Petersburg, Russia.-Biography:Kuryokhin began his acting career as a piano and keyboard player with a school band in Leningrad...
, renowned for the impressive speed and virtuosity of his playing and boundless avant-garde experimentation, and Igor Butman
Igor Butman
Igor Butman is a jazz saxophonist born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1961. He is considered to be a virtuoso saxophonist, and a skilled bandleader. American saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr. was instrumental in introducing Igor Butman to American audiences by featuring the Russian saxophonist on...
, a world-class jazz saxophone player and one of the reigning kings of Soviet jazz.
The first Aquarium music available in the "west" was in 1986 when a double album entitled "RED WAVE, 4 UNDERGROUND BANDS FROM THE USSR" appeared in record stores in the U.S. Besides Aquarium, three other bands, Kino, Strange Games and Alisa were recorded on a four track machine, smuggled out of the country and released by a small record label from Hollywood, California. During this time, bands in the USSR were either officially sanctioned or were not allowed to play in public or record in professional recording studios. In 1986, when the record was released in America, Aquarium was immensely popular throughout the Soviet Union, but were forced to play at underground clubs and private gatherings.
By the time Aquarium disbanded amid internal squabble in 1987, they had 11 "official" records under their belt and were considered a living legend of Russian rock. BG himself was likened to Bob Dylan, not least because of his borrowing amply from Dylan stylistically in his earlier years. Railway water (Zheleznodorozhnaya voda) off the 1981 Blue album (Siniy albom), for example, is a spitting image of Dylan's It takes a lot to laugh off the 1965 Highway 61 revisited.
Going West (1989-1990)
Perestroika has ushered in a new era of opportunity for rock musicians; several of the more prominent ones got breaks in the West. BG's came from Dave StewartDavid A. Stewart
David Allan Stewart , often known as Dave Stewart, is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known for his work with Eurythmics. He is usually credited as David A. Stewart, to avoid confusion with other musicians named "Dave Stewart".-Early life:Stewart was born in Sunderland,...
(of Eurythmics
Eurythmics
Eurythmics were a British pop rock duo, formed in 1980, currently disbanded, but known to reunite from time to time. Consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A...
fame). Stewart-produced Radio Silence was released in 1989, featuring covers of Alexander Vertinsky
Alexander Vertinsky
Alexander Nikolayevich Vertinsky was a Russian and Soviet artist, poet, singer, composer, cabaret artist and actor who exerted seminal influence on the Russian tradition of artistic singing.-Early years:...
's China amid songs by BG, including a song written to Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...
's Death of King Arthur. Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox, OBE , born Ann Lennox, is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s with The Tourists, with fellow musician David A...
, Billy MacKenzie
Billy Mackenzie
William MacArthur "Billy" Mackenzie was a Scottish singer, with a distinctive falsetto voice best known as a member of The Associates.- Biography :...
and Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde
Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde is an US musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.-Early life and career:Hynde is the daughter of a part-time...
helped out, as did several of BG's bandmates from Aquarium.
The name of the album proved self-ironic in the extreme as it hasn't made so much as a dent in the charts. Part of the failure can be attributed to the fact that unlike the Anglo-American rock-n-roll culture, the Russian song tradition heavily emphasizes lyrical complexity over hooks or drive, which reinforces the not entirely fair comparisons between BG and Dylan.
BG issued another English-language album, Radio London, in 1990, which consisted of demos, but had some very appealing material to it.
Returning East (1991-1996)
Disillusioned in the possibility of exporting the Russian song-writing tradition to the West, BG returned to Russia and entered a phase of returning to his Russian roots. The year 1991 saw him come out with a Russian album (Russkiy al'bom), backed by an all-new, eponymous BG Band. The album featured a line-up of songs very "Russian" in both lyric and tune, and wasn't initially met with much public appreciation (in retrospect, however, it is considered by most critics one of his best records). BG was defiant, however, and went on record as having flipped a bird off the stage toward someone yelling demands for him to perform songs from the Classical period. His career since has proved time and again that he is not fond of rehashing the past, however glorious.No matter the defiance, the Aquarium brand was too strong to eschew and even the next two albums, one mostly filler (Favorite songs of Ramses the 4th (Lyubimye pesni Ramzesa IV)) and one all B-sides (Sands of St. Petersburg (Peski Peterburga)), were released under the name Aquarium. By the time of 1994's Kostroma Mon Amour BG's mastery of folk melody and lyric has grown to new heights, and a new band lineup was going full steam.
The band's next three albums (effectively BG's solo albums published under the band's brand) - Navigator, Snow lion (Snezhniy lev), and Hyperborea - also have a stylized Russian feel. Navigator especially is widely recognized as a classic example of Russian songwriting, albeit with notable touches of blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and French chanson
Chanson
A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specialising in chansons is known as a "chanteur" or "chanteuse" ; a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.-Chanson de geste:The...
. The songs are melancholic bordering on heart-rending; the lyrics are either drenched in Byronic
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
spleen, or full of BG-branded variant of Russian irony steeped in a sense of separation between self and the world.
And back to basics (1997-2008)
As of 1997, however, the Russian nationalism seems to have run its course for BG. His 1997 album Lilith is still mostly Russian in lyrical theme, but is recorded, by way of a chance meeting, with his idol Dylan'sBob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
former backup band, The Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...
. In 1998 BG, who was by then settling into a cult classic status in Russia, played a one-man-and-his-guitar show of 1970s and 1980s songs to a small audience of fans in a San Francisco bar, and decided to return to reggae-n-rock-n-roll roots.
1999's Psi features just that, as interpreted through a post-modernistic lens with ample, highly inventive use of keyboard-triggered samplers. 2002's Sister Chaos (Sestra Haos), 2003's Fisherman's songs (Pesni rybaka), and 2005's ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM feature the same, painted by sparse touches of Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n (Jivan Gasparyan on Northern Wind), India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n (the entire of Fisherman's songs) and Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n (some of ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM). Despite all of these having been issued under the Aquarium brand, it is recognized that by now Aquarium is "the people who play with Grebenshchikov".
In a very appealing touch of overcompensation, as technology and funds had begun to permit, sometime in the 1990s BG had become incredibly quality-conscious with his records. As the state of sound engineering in Russia left (still does) a lot to be desired , he had begun tracking in London's studios. Navigator, a predominantly acoustic album with a highly refined, "the-band-is-in-the-room" intimate soft of a mix saw BG sell his car and part of his guitar collection to cover tracking costs. The quality of his recent recordings may give the better of Western singer-songwriters a run for their money.
Radio "Aerostat"
Since 2005 Grebenshchikov has an own weekly radio program on Russian radio station "Radio RossiiRadio Rossii
- History :Radio Rossii began broadcasting in December 10, 1990. The radio station is part of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise VGTRK, which also includes television channels "Russia", "Sport", "Culture", "Vesti", and "Bibigon", as well as radio stations "Radio Yunost", "Mayak", "Culture" and...
" titled Aerostat (Russian: Аэростат). It is presented as "author's program of Boris Grebenshchikov" and is created and spoken by him. His intention is to tell about the alternatives in music, about the music which nobody else plays in today's radio despite of its artistic value and originality. It is mostly independent music which, as Boris says, otherwise would not be played at all. The range of songs in Aerostat varies from 1960s and 1970s rock (The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
and many others) over reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, new wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
, electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
, and punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, to world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
and avant-garde
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
. As of December 2008, almost 200 shows were created and broadcast, each approximately 46 minutes long. The track lists and the scripts of all programs are available at official site of Aquarium and BG. The theme music
Theme music
Theme music is a piece that is often written specifically for a radio program, television program, video game or movie, and usually played during the title sequence and/or end credits...
is "Prelude" by T. Rex from A Beard of Stars album.
Religion and mysticism
BG is also known as a student of religion and mysticism. He translated several Hinduist and Buddhist books for publication in Russian, travelled the Orient widely, and is friends with A-list spiritual celebrities. He is just as familiar with the Russian Orthodox tradition (Aquarium web site has had a call for discovery of Orthodox relics going for years), and used to mix them freely in his lyrics. Russian Nirvana (Russkaya Nirvana) off Kostroma Mon Amour, for example, is a dual-pointed send-up containing a reference to "sitting down in the lotus posture in the middle of Kremlin". His relentless promotion of Tibetan buddhism in the 1990s and his tendency to use buddhist-derived logic with touches of absurdism to avoid answering questions in interviews make him pretty distinct amongst other Russian artists.BG also translated several Buddhist and Hinduist texts to Russian, including:
- Chökyi Nyima RinpocheChökyi Nyima RinpocheTulku Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist lama.-Life:Born in 1951, in Nakchukha Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche is the son of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche who is considered one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of our time. When he was only eighteen months of age, Rinpoche was recognized as the seventh...
(son of Tulku Urgyen RinpocheTulku Urgyen RinpocheTulku Urgyen Rinpoche . A contemporary Buddhist master of the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages, who lived at Nagi Gompa hermitage in Nepal, Urgyen Rinpoche was considered one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of our time.-Life:...
) Bardo Guidebook - "source material for the Tibetan Book of Living & Dying also known as Tibetan Book of the Dead Bardo ThodolBardo ThodolThe Liberation Through Hearing During The Intermediate State , sometimes translated as Liberation Through Hearing or Bardo Thodol is a funerary text...
, in 1995; - Tulku Urgyen RinpocheTulku Urgyen RinpocheTulku Urgyen Rinpoche . A contemporary Buddhist master of the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages, who lived at Nagi Gompa hermitage in Nepal, Urgyen Rinpoche was considered one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of our time.-Life:...
Repeating Words of the Buddha - "the essential points of spiritual practice, inseparable from everyday life.", in 1997; - Tulku Urgyen RinpocheTulku Urgyen RinpocheTulku Urgyen Rinpoche . A contemporary Buddhist master of the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages, who lived at Nagi Gompa hermitage in Nepal, Urgyen Rinpoche was considered one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of our time.-Life:...
Rainbow Painting - "addressing the topics of practices of accumulating and purifying to facilitate unification of view and conduct", in 1999; - Shibendu Lahiri Kriya yogaKriya YogaKriya Yoga finds mention in the ancient spiritual texts of Patanjali Yogasutras "Tapah svadhyayeshvara pranidhani kriyayogah" . It was later revived by Yogiraj Sri Shyamacharan Lahiri in the 19th century. Subsequently Paramhansa Yogananda in his Autobiography of a Yogi reported the same for his...
- "authentic teachings and techniques of Kriya Yoga", in 2003; - The Katha Upanishad, UpanishadUpanishadThe Upanishads are philosophical texts considered to be an early source of Hindu religion. More than 200 are known, of which the first dozen or so, the oldest and most important, are variously referred to as the principal, main or old Upanishads...
belonging to the Yajur Veda, in 2005.
Worth noting
BG has virtually always been able to skilfully combine his interests into a cohesive, if highly eclectic, whole. His lyrics can and often do feature BuddhismBuddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Russian Orthodoxy
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
, and alcohol consumption in the same quatrain. The ability has only grown stronger over the years. 1999's Psi switches from detailed references to samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
culture to mentions of a certain carpenter's son to data storage on hard drives, all the while maintaining tight lyrical cohesion.
He has a unique singing voice. A combination of his natural timbre with a specific vibrato with downward expansion of range and unusual resonation acquired through training make his voice immediately recognizable.
His output has been rather prolific. Over the 30+ years of his career he wrote 500+ songs, most of which were recorded and/or performed publicly. At this point Aquarium has 21 albums in the official discography, approximately 12 "unofficial ones", and about as many live records. Additionally, BG recorded cover albums on material from the two most prominent Russian-language songwriters (Alexander Vertinsky
Alexander Vertinsky
Alexander Nikolayevich Vertinsky was a Russian and Soviet artist, poet, singer, composer, cabaret artist and actor who exerted seminal influence on the Russian tradition of artistic singing.-Early years:...
(1994's Songs of A.Vertinsky (Pesni A.Vertinskogo)) and Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musician, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song"...
(1999's Songs of B.Okudzhava (Pesni B.Okudzhavy))), two albums of mantra music with Gabrielle Roth
Gabrielle Roth
Gabrielle Roth is a musician, author, music director, dancer, philosopher and recording artist in the world music and trance dance genres, with a special interest in shamanism. Known as the "urban shaman", she is music director of the theatre company The Mirrors and has been a member of the...
and the Mirrors, (1998's Refuge and 2002's Bardo), and an album of electronica versions of Aquarium songs from late 1970s – early 1980s with the Russian duo Deadushki. Which left him time to be credited on records by big-in-Russia bands Nautilus Pompilius, Mashina Vremeni
Mashina Vremeni
Mashina Vremeni is a Russian rock band founded in 1969. Mashina Vremeni was a pioneer in Soviet rock music, and remains one of the oldest still active rock bands in Russia...
and Kino
Kino (band)
Kino was a Soviet rock band headed by Viktor Tsoi. It was one of the most famous Soviet rock groups of the 1980s.-History:The band was formed in the summer of 1981 in Leningrad, USSR Kino was a Soviet rock band headed by Viktor Tsoi. It was one of the most famous Soviet rock groups of the...
, as well as the UK acts Shakespears Sister
Shakespears Sister
Shakespears Sister/Shakespear's Sister is a British-based synth-pop-rock band formed by Irish-born singer–songwriter Siobhan Fahey in 1988, with plaudits including a BRIT Award and Ivor Novello Award. It was Fahey's first musical outing since leaving Bananarama, and initially a solo project...
and Kate St. John. This list is not exhaustive, either.
Singles
| Year | Title | Chart positions | Album | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday... |
US Modern Rock | US Mainstream Rock | UK UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
|||
| 1989 | "Radio Silence" | - | 7 | - | - | Radio Silence |
External links
- Tomi Huttunen: Russian rock: Boris Grebenschikov, Intertextualist
- Aquarium website
- This article borrows from the "Short history of Aquarium", which seems to be public domain.
- Boris Grebenshikov Concert - Site for Grebenshikov's concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
- Aquarium Bookshelf with Buddhist materials translated to Russian by BG
- The Bodhisattvas of Babylon, an English-language fan site