Visa to Paradise

As part of a large European tour, Boris Grebenshchikov performed with the BG + group at the L’Alianca del Poble Nou theater in Barcelona. After February 2022, the Aquarium leader did not play in his homeland, his numerous concerts around the world are the only opportunity to hear his favorite songs. I took advantage of it Boris Barabanov.

Boris Grebenshchikov recently released the album “The House of All Saints” (see “Kommersant” of September 16), but the concerts feature songs from various periods. The first part of the program is a painful divination on the topic of a common, never-ending misfortune. The song of the same name opens the concert. At the heart of this department are three epic-apocalyptic canvases: “Fighter”, “Not Fate” and “Mahamaya”. It also includes songs that Boris Grebenshchikov recently posted in his series of telephone videos “Offerings to an Interesting Time”. Recently, the series is called “Offerings of Time” – time is now really wider than any epithets. The old song “8200” sounded – an example of an accurate thought, packed into a short and simple song form: “8200 miles of emptiness, but still we have nowhere to spend the night. I would be cheerful if not for you, if not for you, my motherland. Another novelty of the program is Bulat Okudzhava’s song “Omen”, one of the best works in Russian poetry about the nature of war. And again, a simple and capacious form.

Today’s ensemble, with which Boris Grebenshchikov travels around the cities of Europe, is not crowded, but you cannot call it truncated, because both the composition and even its name change depending not only on the goals of the group, but also on the possibilities of movement of the musicians.

Now there is no guitarist in the group that travels under the name “BG +”, therefore, for example, in the song “Not Fate”, which in the studio version is based on the flamenco guitar of Omar Torres, now there is no solo, you can say, instead of it magical electronic meditation of a young keyboardist Konstantin Tumanov. He has an important role in the group. At a concert in Barcelona, ​​he not only played, but also conducted stage lighting. Sometimes it seemed that only he knew when and what should glow and go out.

In the absence of a lead guitar, one could speak of some bias towards Brian Finnegan’s flutes. From this, the sound of “BG +” acquired more Irish features than the sound of the widescreen “Aquarium”.

The second half of the concert consisted of songs that were supposed to remind the audience that “Aquarium” has always been a joyful and prone to Dionysian group.

Boris Grebenshchikov separately mentioned a certain Internet comment regarding the song “Glasses”. Apparently, he did not seriously hurt him. In short, the leader of the group sees nothing wrong with singing such songs even in such dark times. On the contrary, they help those who are in trouble.

Like anywhere in the world, in the crowded L’Aliança del Poble Nou theater there were people who shouted the names of their favorite songs from the seats, brought flowers and gifts to the stage and sang along without even knowing the lyrics. During the performance of the aforementioned “Glasses”, the people rushed to dance, and the theater security was clearly not ready for this. Rock music rarely plays in this hall. So the concert “BG +” was an out of the ordinary phenomenon.

Amazing, penetrating to the depths of the soul was the picture during the performance of the song “Golden City”. Probably, this is still the most famous song in the repertoire of “Aquarium”, it is known even to those who do not listen to “Aquarium”, and even those who have never seen the film “Assa”. People rose from their seats as if the national anthem was being played. Grebenshchikov sang in complete silence. Many had tears in their eyes. In this mise-en-scène there was love, and a dream of paradise (under this name it was once composed by Alexei Khvostenko), and bitterness from the loss of the world, in which both love and an unattainable dream happened to this song. It seemed that the song had now become something even more than what it had been in the last 35 years.

From the crowd gathered at the stage, Grebenshchikov began to receive items for autographs. Someone gave the cover of the first “Melodievsky” collection of “Aquarium” with a foreword by Andrei Voznesensky for signature. They didn’t give money, as in the old days, but suddenly someone held out a “red-skinned” Russian passport – a page next to a Schengen visa. Is an autograph on a passport a damage to the document, will it be valid? BG also doubted this and looked inquiringly at the fan: “Really?” He was confident in his decision, and the musician immediately issued him a visa to his beautiful and joyful world.