The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)

The Loony guys were in the business for years. They had an electric organ played by Sasha Basha, who had graduated from the Music School in the piano class. He was not only the leader of The Kristall but also the Captain of the CJR team from the prestigious School 11 who beat us that year.

Besides participation in the concerts at Loony, they were also "playing trash", that is providing live music at weddings, birthdays and all sorts of parties with their 1 organ, 2 guitars, and the drum set. On the opposite side, there were 4 of us. We didn't know a damn thing about the music theory (except for Chuba who had attended the Music School for 4 years in the class of button-accordion) , but we were backed by Club, the unalienable part of the Settlement.

While our khutta served the base for technical empowering of The Orpheuses, Club provided means for our musical education. (Once again leaving aside Chuba and his button-accordion which let him easily master the bass guitar parts, because they, generally, coincide with those played by the musician with his left hand in the bass section of the accordion.)

That’s why, the concert of Classical Guitar in Club, advertised by a modest poster about the classical guitar performer Zverev from the Kiev Philharmonic, was attended by only two Orpheuses – Vladya and me because Skully did not feel like attending as long as he was the drummer at our VIA, not a guitar-player…

The lobby of Club was unusually crowded, and so was the landing at the auditorium entrance, young guys for the most part. Who would have thought that the Settlement youth were so much fond of the guitar classics, eh?

So, we stood up there in the crowd when from below, along the wide steps of the stair as well as from among the dudes around us, there rose the rustle of the low-voiced announcement to each other, like a gust of wind rushing in front of the thunderstorm: "Wafflisters! Wafflisters are coming!"

From the first floor, 2 girls were ascending the wide stairs. On their reaching the stairhead, the stares of all present were riveted to them in tense deafening silence. I was struck with the purity of the milk-white skin in the girls’ faces. Encapsulated with the wall of goggling silence, they turned right, to the mirrored gym of the Ballet Studio where that evening the seminarians from GPTU-4 had their party…

And we, Vladya and I, split from the crowd on the landing and turned to the left, to join a handful of those who attended the concert of the Guitarist Laureate in his classic three-piece black suit and thick-lensed black-rimmed glasses.

A couple of front rows were more than enough to accommodate the listeners who were seated giving a wide berth to each other. He sat above us in a chair at the edge of the feebly illuminated stage, announced the music pieces and then played them on his acoustic guitar. But that was more than what we considered guitar playing! Something unimaginable! Unattainable…

After the concert, Vladya and I knocked on the door of the room in the first floor, where he was folding his black suit to pack it into the hard black case of his guitar. We introduced ourselves as guys willing to learn the guitar playing. What’s to be done? How to begin?

And he gave us a free consultation. He took out his instrument from under the suit in his case and showed some tricky picks. Then he packed everything back and went to the Station to go elsewhere thru the dark of night. Yet, before leaving the room, he advised us to get some Polish music magazines where they were printing a lot of music with tablature above the lyrics. However, at the newsstands of Konotop, they never heard of such magazines…

After applying for the VIA contest, we came to the Club Director, Pavel Mitrofanovich. We made it clear that for holding aloft the honor of Club at the City Contest we wanted a mere trifle, really, those couple of black speakers from the portable movie projector, together with their amplifier, because we had no place for rehearsals, nor a single item of the drum set.

Flaring his already flushed face under the crisp curls of a natural merchant, Pavel Mitrofanovich blared out that for the guys from the Settlement, Club would do all and everything and then everything and all over again. That is the meaning of slotting negotiations in the appropriate moment of a person's daily schedule.

Director ordered Club House Manager, Stepan, to pass us the room of the Variety Ensemble until after the contest. The Ensemble musicians led by their Head, Aksyonov, moved their instruments from the room, including the double bass and saxophone, to an unknown destination. For an indefinite interval, Aksyonov stopped appearing in Club at all. In the room, there remained only a giant desk, a piano and "the kitchen"—a drum set made up of a kicker, a snare, a hat, and two tom-toms under a wide crash. The clickety-clak, taps, dubs, bangs, clangs of the kitchen filled the room and the outside corridor for hours because Skully was practicing to give out the rock beat with all of his hands and feet.

The technique of beating the beat was shown to him by Anatoly Melai, a Settlement dude recently demobilized from the army who, before he was drafted, played the horn at the Variety Ensemble. Besides, he showed us the chords to "The Yellow River" by the rock group Christie. That song topped most of the European music charts then. We knew about the fact from the station "The Radio-Sweden" who were broadcasting in Russian one hour a week, on Sundays, and the ours did not block it with the usual static noise because they talked exclusively about rock music omitting any anti-Soviet propaganda.

Anatoly even knew the Russian adaptation of the lyrics in "The Yellow River":

"We roamed at the Yellow River
The flowers blossomed all 'round us
By the river of my dream –
Alloverida!"

And then there followed the chorus which oddly enough avoided rendering into Russian:

"Alloverida! Alloverida!
Yuza mom-ma! Yuza mom-ma!"

We started to rehearse it as the number for the contest. At some point, it dawned on me that if the song was called "The Yellow River" then the chorus also should sound "Yellow River!" but not like that fuzzy "Alloverida". So, it was not in vain that Alla Iosifovna at her English classes was driving it home to me that "London is the capital of Great Britain". Anatoly peevishly wrinkled his nose but had no trumps to ward off my stock of knowledge. To reward my linguistic feat, Chuba let me sing the backup in the chorus:

"Yellow River! Yellow River!
is in my mind and in my eyes."

That immensely inspired me, because in our VIA I had the very necessary but so inconspicuous role of the rhythm guitarist.

For the second number, we chose "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones. We knew the chords to the song and even its true title, but we did not know the lyrics and just were using dummy "doo-wop" like some seasoned scat singers:

"Doo-wop doo-wop doo-wop doo-wop
Doo-wop doo-wop pа-ba-baа

Yet, knowing the name, you could guess what the song was about and if you know the lines meter then – full ahead!

"Black clouds towered in the sky over the city
The drops of falling rain are black as coal tar
No stars reflected in the puddles: nor big, nor bitty
Black fog has stolen them and hidden way too far…"

(… in the film "The Devil's Advocate" with Al Pacino as Prince of Dark this song sounds at the concluding credits, the original, of course. But at that time it was too early for Hollywood to shoot that movie. And, by the by, performing "The Yellow River" in Russian, our garage VIA had outstripped The Jolly Guys of Alexander Booynov who released it a couple of years later, substituting Karlsson-on-the-Roof for the original river:

"Now we hear,
Now we hear,
The motor buzz,
The cheerful buzz.
High in the air
Straight from the roof
Our dear friend
Is flying to us…"

Thus a love song was mutated into the RepBase anthem…)

Before the VIA competition, we rehearsed for days on end leaving Club only to have a midday meal at the pavilion "Meeting" by the Station square where we ate dumplings, flushed them down with gulps of beer from a bottle of Zhigulyovsky shared between the 4 of us and considered ourselves cool dudes who could play rock.

Precisely one day before the contest, our rivals—VIA "The Kristall" from Loony—dealt us a preemptive blow. They came to our school to play the trash at the graduation party of our class. Earlier, we offered the school management our music services for the pram dance free of charge, however, the proposal was turned down and they hired The Kristall instead. In our native school, we did not pass for musicians! Like prophets never heeded in their native lands, indeed…

Of course, The Kristall had a well-established reputation. Sasha Basha, educated at the piano class of Music School, played his organ very competently – both "seven-forty", and waltz, and rock'n'roll, but it, still, hurt.

The revenge took place at the contest because we had hidden reserves. Firstly, Pavel Mitrofanovich let us grab for the occasion the 50-watt amp. And secondly, we carried the day even before making any music, our looks when appearing on the stage showed at once who were predestined winners.

Okay, suppose you've got an electric organ and music education plus a team of musicians trained at "playing trash", but who would care a damn about all that crap the moment when:

"…And now in this cozy Central Park Summer Cinema, we invite on stage the vocal-instrumental ensemble… The Orpheuses!!."

At which moment, there came out four dudes with three (!) horned (!!) guitars!!!

And, on top of everything else, each of them, all the 4 rigged…

…IN WHITE PANTS!!!..

Oh, my! There is no way to bring over the meaning of white pants in Konotop of 1971, kinda divine trappings and you can’t put it any clearer because our triumph came to pass before the world-wide rise of the denim civilization.

Where had so snazzy outfit come from? In Department Store opposite Main Post, they were selling the so-called "canvas for household needs", 1 ruble 20 kopecks a meter. After the very first wash, the fabric turned into gray saggy burlap, however, we appeared on stage in pants in their pristinely virgin, unwashed, state.

Mother made them—all the four—with her sewing machine, two days before the performance. The ongoing pants fashion of the day rejected the wide waist belt in favor of no belt at all, the stylish dude's pants then started at the middle of the hips. One meter and ten centimeters of "canvas" were more than enough for a pair of trousers.

The only bad news was that I screwed up my part in the "Yellow River" vocals.