Journalist Alexander Kushnir published the book Aquarium. Geometry of Chaos»

Journalist Alexander Kushnir published the book Aquarium. Geometry of Chaos”, in which he described the metamorphoses of the group from its foundation to the end of the 1990s. I was looking for new information about my favorite musicians in it Igor Gavrilov.

At first glance, “Aquarium”. Geometry of Chaos” is a kind of the best of, a collection of quotes, comments and remarks that have long been familiar to fans of the Aquarium group, which have popped up here and there over the course of 50 years of the band’s history. They can be found in the classic work of Alexander Kushnir “100 Soviet rock magnetic albums” and in his own texts on the tabs of the group’s albums reissued in 2002 on CD. They are memorable from the texts of Artemy Troitsky and Boris Grebenshchikov himself (both recognized as foreign agents in the Russian Federation): the leader of Aquarium in the 1970s and early 1980s was also one of the founders of underground domestic rock journalism. The main milestones in the history of the group are set out repeatedly and in detail.

“I have a huge number of interviews on cassettes at home, of which, for example, 8–12 percent were used in “100 magnetic albums of Soviet rock,” explains Alexander Kushnir, the motives that prompted him to take up a new book about Aquarium.— Then in the midst of a pandemic, I rummaged through the archives of the Roxy magazine that Borya Mazin gave me, and found untold riches in them – handwritten interviews of BG in 1983 with myself and much more.

The most interesting in the “Geometry of Chaos” is the first third of the text, which tells about the “prehistoric” “Aquarium”, about the times before the mid-1980s. The stories that make up this third are not as widely disseminated as the later apocrypha about the group, and the characters are not as hyped as Mike, Choi and other media people. These are stories about carefree hippies living from hand to mouth, but in a high, about naive writers who are just touching the stormy waters of rock with their bare feet. In these chapters, Boris Grebenshchikov appears not as a lump that grew up out of the blue and immediately with all the baggage of knowledge about music, literature and religion, but as a young man who still only plays rock and happily succumbs to other people’s influences.

The slang that Alexander Kushnir actively uses in the story about the early Aquarium, of course, needs to be deciphered, similar to the one that Sergei Solovyov came up with for his Assa. Remember: “Washcloth” is a young girl, of a cheerful disposition, not burdened with mental activity” … Otherwise, it turns out that the “Geometry of Chaos” is a book written from the point of view of the initiates, and the initiates are already aware of it. They do not need to be explained what “riveting with a crutch” and “chorus at the exit” are.

“”Aquarium”. The Geometry of Chaos” is a summary of the past. Each of the storylines, whether it is the relationship of musicians with girls, service in the army or the “guardianship” of the KGB, could be developed and developed. But it would be most interesting if the author gave the book a subtitle like “A look into the future.” The fact that only 10-15 years seemed like an irrevocably gone texture, today, when the heroes of the book Grebenshchikov, Makarevich and Troitsky are declared foreign agents, looks like a logical prospect. And quotes from the essay of the young BG are read as materials on the topic of the day.

“There was a gap before our eyes. Fathers live in one time, and children live in another,” the musician wrote in the Roxy magazine. But to disfigure a person completely, it takes time. One is more, and the other is less.” And in one of the interviews with the author of the book, he commented on the “partisan culture” of the 1970s as follows: “After the so-called thaw, everyone who could, dumped from the country, and those who understood that they couldn’t be dumped anywhere, broke away and organized their own state in the state…” Or here are some more remarks that absolutely resonate with today. “It’s scary when you get kicked out of your job in Soviet times and you end up on the ‘black list’… For the time being, we were allowed to play. I don’t know how long such a heavenly period will last … I think not for long. We will play until we are banned again.” Kushnir’s new book is, it seems, not only a historical opus, but also a visual aid for young heroes of the rock underground. Senior colleagues can share their experience.