In Luzhniki, Cord sang hits, cursed and earned more than a hundred million

An hour before appearing on stage in front of a crowd of about seventy thousand people, Sergei Vladimirovich goes to the press. Cord has long become like a well-groomed top manager and is clearly not shy about such a not quite rock and roll image. Black leather jacket, black shirt, light trousers, professorial glasses. From a rock star, only impressive figs in his pockets, which by now is already a lot.

Recently, Sergei Shnurov has mainly realized himself as the author of caustic musical epigrams on the topic of the day. His caustic pamphlets about runaway intellectuals and other news agendas are causing a storm of controversy on social media and curses from the liberal public. True, the author himself claims that he has not used the Internet for a long time and therefore he is not very aware of who and what curses there. Cord explains his pamphlets calmly simply.

“It’s convenient for me to write like that, songs are born by themselves,” says the leader of Leningrad. – I don’t know how long it will last, but in a year that has not yet ended, I wrote about twenty-five tracks. That’s enough, you can already do something else. “

In a situation where the indignant public calls Shrovo’s writings a cynical state order and screams about the final loss of conscience and the author’s venality, it’s probably better to really think only about the good. For example, about the economy of the first big concert in three years. A few days before the event, exciting rumors were circulating in the musical backstage about the financial part of the show. It was rumored that the organizers of the action offered Cord one hundred million rubles, he asked for one hundred and thirty and eventually agreed on one hundred and twenty. At the request of “ZD” to comment on this alignment, the artist indifferently shrugged his shoulders and said that the order of numbers was approximately the same.

It remained only to take a place in the arena to count hits and millions.

How it looked

Quite familiar by the standards of local stadium concerts. Here, probably, it may seem that the journalist is a little capricious from an overabundance of impressions, but in comparison with what happened in Luzhniki at the show of Basta, Leps and the Hands Up! group, the stadium frenzy from Leningrad looked quite in the tradition of how we present a concert at the football arena.

However, against the backdrop of the props of his other colleagues, the video wall at Cord’s show was the most impressive, fireworks and confetti were stocked beyond measure and, of course, the orchestra. Initially, the show was announced as a concert with an orchestra, from which the question immediately arose: why would an orchestra be in a stadium, where the nuances of sound, for which the symphony line-up is going, still will not sound like it could happen in a concert hall?

But in Shnurov’s version, the orchestra was more for beauty, because the audience was offered the traditional for Leningrad noisy electric concert with obscenities, fraternization with the people and dancing, appropriate for a village wedding. Everything quickly started and raced with some mind-blowing speed. As Cord himself noted, hits alone would be enough for three hours, which is tiring and no one needs, and therefore a careful selection was made, which allowed throwing trump cards from the very beginning of the action.

A bunch of “Drink in St. Petersburg” and “Exhibit” brought the audience almost to hysterics. “Moscow, for whom your bells ring” sounded like a sophisticated irony exactly on the day of the city, “Cabriolet” and “Voyage” brought the stadium turbo-rocker frenzy to a frightening volume.

Musically, Leningrad is not a monolithic construction, and at different stages of its 25-year history, the group has repeatedly changed both in sound and in mood. Within the framework of one concert, all these subtleties were almost erased, but in fact, compositions were performed count from a past life. “Summer Residents” and “Birthday” probably caused an attack of nostalgia for many, and “Ch.P.Kh.” probably pleased the guests from St. Petersburg who came to the show, because in their hometown, Shnurov, it seems, is not allowed to perform due to the fact that Governor Alexander Beglov is not enthusiastic about the artist’s musical epigrams addressed to him. “I survived Luzhkov and I will definitely survive Beglov,” Sergei Vladimirovich noted in an interview with reporters, but the musician’s remark still did not interrupt the feeling of artificiality of this conflict.

The concerts of “Leningrad” usually include an intermission, and the musicians decided not to deviate from this tradition. For a while, while the main characters of the action took a breath, the Globalis orchestra took all the attention. In fifteen minutes, the musicians played several symphonic adaptations of Leningrad’s hits, and in combination with the video sequence, the most solemn and somewhat dramatic moment of the show turned out.

The screens showed a specially edited video sequence on the conditional theme “It’s a crazy, crazy world.” Hunger strikes of teachers in the nineties, the first currency exchange points, the English queen with Yeltsin, Trump with Putin, devastation, luxury, social networks, like Pandora’s box, and all to the very disturbing music that Shnurov’s folk hits suddenly turned into. Against this background, a timid hope arose that the second part of the action would also be special. But with the first chords of the “Terminator” it became clear: the village wedding will continue.

“If someone else’s phone hasn’t been stolen, turn on the flashlight, it will be beautiful,” says Shnur, the arena sparkles and is the perfect setting for “Just” as a fake finale. The bisovka starts with I_$uss. In the chorus, a photo from Philip Kirkorov’s Kremlin show appears on the screens, in which the pop king is captured at the moment of not the most virtuoso defile on a huge cross. If the directors had trolling in their plans, then it turned out to be very bright. By all indications, the folk show ends with “Dear long.” Pompously, symbolically, with a fig in his pocket.

pros

It was fun, sometimes devoid of any shame and very energetic. Cord sometimes hid behind powerful backing vocalists, but in fact he spent the whole two hours like a clown in the arena, showing no signs of fatigue. In general, the folk hero is in excellent shape, which, probably, pleased everyone.

Minuses

Despite the announced greatest hits, several modern songs on the topic of the day still penetrated the set list, which did not serve as a good advertisement for these compositions. It would not be entirely correct to call Sergei Shnurov an author whose breadth of talent gives goosebumps, but mixed with hits of many years of exposure, sharply social pamphlets sound like an amateur and completely unfunny banter. It was from such songs and from the enthusiastic reaction of the audience to them that the general musical comedy turned into something terrible to eerily. We hope for the best and we are confident that people simply cannot like this. But it turns out how it can.

Party Phrase

“We wave our hands, depict the wind of change, but not much!” – Cord proclaimed at the beginning of the action. Cool said. Few people know how to describe in one phrase what our collective mind, honor and conscience have become.