"The American Marines from the embassy would come to us in formation"

The founder of Russia's first blues club, Arbat Blues Club, Alexander Tsarkov, talks about what Moscow's blues scene looked like in 1993, the emergence of the Blues Cousins band, and why in the early '90s Russians heard blues musicians more often than pop performers, even though they didn't realize it.

Opening

In nineteen ninety-two, the first music club opened in Moscow. I want to emphasize—not a restaurant, not a disco. There were plenty of those, and people sometimes get into arguments about it. But anyway, the first purely music club, where you could have a beer and listen to music. That was Sexton-First. It was a heavy metal club, aimed primarily at the motorcycle crowd. The not-unknown Alexander Zladostanov was running things there. Some blues bands also rushed to play there, but it wasn't really their audience.

And by that point, there was a real need for some kind of additional venue—for a more sophisticated audience, with softer music. And to be honest, I didn't have any preconceived plan to organize a blues club.

It turned out to be very spontaneous. Back then, my friends were in the Old Men Blues Band. At some point, an American named John Anderson joined them—he played harmonica and sang.

We met, talked, and John gave such a very good consultation.

"You know, in America we have these clubs where there's a little bit of Coca-Cola, a little bit of beer, a little bit of stage. But before the stage, you absolutely have to dance."

We decided to give it a try. Because at that time we had a base on the Arbat, in Filippovsky Lane. It was the building of the former Moscow Printing House No. 7 club, and it had six-meter ceilings, a proper stage—not like now, where everywhere you've got these tiny little bars where musicians are crammed in against the backdrop of beer bottles, practically elbowing each other.

And there was a decent human scene there, a normal venue. And since I was doing concert work, I had my own equipment—sound, lighting.

We decided to try putting on our first concert. It was this Old Man's Blues Band. And John put out a call to all the embassies in Moscow at that time.

It will work out — it will work out, or it won't — it won't.

At 7 p.m. was when it started, I walked up to the door, cracked it open, and I got this chill inside, because I saw there was a line stretching down the alley, like people were waiting for potatoes. A line that went almost all the way to the Arbatskaya metro station.

To be honest, I was blown away by it. The hall was absolutely packed, just packed. That was the very first concert. There was no advertising, no what they call rotation now. That simply didn't exist back then.

The hall was mostly filled with foreigners, there weren't many compatriots. Irina Surina came, there was Alik Mikoyan, the guitarist from the band "Silver Ruble," and other musicians.

In the bar everything sold out instantly, people were dancing in the hall. It was all great. It became clear that we needed to keep going.

Concept

The second concert wasn't as packed, but it went well too. To add variety to the program, the band "Staraya Gvardiya" (Old Guard) was invited. It's a blues band. Alik Sikorsky is the vocalist, a participant in numerous groups that appeared even before "Mashina Vremeni." On drums was Mikhail Petrovich Sokolov, or simply Petrovich. On bass guitar was Alexei Shachnev, better known from the bands "Samotsvety" and "Plamen." On keyboards, by the way, was the quite young Denis Mazhukov. And on guitar was Valery Gelyuta, a legendary guitarist who, unfortunately, left us quite recently.

At first, concerts happened once a week on Saturdays, then we decided to add Fridays too. After that came experiments: Thursday, Sunday, we'd add just one day at a time, then we moved to four days—Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Well, to be honest, both Thursday and Sunday were pretty unprofitable nights. We ended up cutting those out, and basically the club operated on Fridays and Saturdays.

We tried to diversify the bar offerings too. There were some salads, pizza, and so on, but it wasn't a restaurant with a full kitchen, and people didn't go there just to eat—they went for the concert. And gradually, the audience became more Russian.

Audience

It was a certain middle class.

Back then it was like this: businessmen who carried around these funny mobile phones that flipped open, and then out would pop an antenna about 60 centimeters long. That was really high class.

There were people who couldn't afford to go to a venue, to visit one somehow.

And the middle class, well, those were the people who could afford to buy a ticket—we charged admission. It was more of a creative intelligentsia, really.

But the audience was very mixed, and gradually the foreign audience started to thin out and naturally got replaced by our own domestic audience, which was very pleasing.

In the subsequent years we developed a system of club passes. For example, musicians who played regularly had membership cards and could enter free of charge any day.

There were VIPs — these were mainly journalists who covered us in the press and on television. They also had free membership cards, beautiful ones with photographs.

For example, the director of a Moscow bank came to us. That bank doesn't even exist anymore now. It was kind of an unofficial Luzhkov-era bank back then. But he really loved blues music and was happy to come, and he'd get offended if you called him by his first name and patronymic.

Musicians

Around 1980 I was leading a band called "Pilgrim"—not the famous one that exists now, just a band with the same name. And we needed a guitarist. And a bassist, a now very well-known jazz double bass player, brought along his friend.

A friend—forgive me, Lord—I have a lot of respect for Borya Bulkin, but still, he could barely squeeze through the door. I was somewhat surprised: "How are you supposed to play?" Normal, though. He showed up with this briefcase, and the briefcase was completely stuffed with radio parts. Just soldered, soldered little wires with no circuit boards. He picks up a guitar—which looked tiny compared to him—plugs it into all that electronics. And starts playing extremely virtuously and extremely, extremely interestingly.

He was very narrowly focused on blues back then. My ensemble didn't have that kind of narrow specialization, so we didn't end up working together, but at least we got to know each other and became friends.

And so in 1993 we invited him to us with his new ensemble. To the Soviet, well, Soviet-perestroika-era audience, Borya Bulkin was known for two songs that were constantly broadcast on television.

An ad: there's this cartoon little lemon walking across the screen singing: "Make it a sweet dream." That's it, that's exactly the collective of Borya Bulkin. And there was another song too, it was shown somewhere during football coverage about rock and roll.

I even joked back then that our blues musicians were actually much more popular than pop singers, because their compositions were constantly playing on television. Like the Beeline-GSM advertisement. Or "What Could Be Better" by Kolya Arutyunov.

Almost all the leaders of blues groups, they got their sound featured in television advertising—it's just that it wasn't publicized.

There was a stellar collective called Stainless Blues Band, which was invited everywhere.

But the two leaders of the blues scene — "Liga Blyuza" and Crossroadz — they stood somewhat apart back then, and their concerts on our stage happened less frequently.

In the club's early years, we tried to stay within rather narrow blues boundaries that we wanted to maintain.

At first we didn't allow Russian-language blues at all… Then those boundaries started to expand and we began adding a little country, a little jazz.

The now well-known Sergey Zhilin with "Fonograf," they played here a few times too. The band "Kukuruza," I didn't let them play for a long time…

A lot of people think that running clubs is profitable. No, I can tell you quite honestly, hand on heart: if you do everything properly, it's a money-loser. And I covered the losses from my touring income.

They'd take us somewhere to Ivanovo Oblast, to Rostov: we'd earn some money, and we'd plug the holes with that money, fortunately there were plenty of tours in those days.

There were groups that were more popular and others less so. And I wouldn't want to offend anyone, God forbid — all the musicians were good, all the guys were great — but you had to pay attention to that as well.

There was a band called Sky Stranger — that's Zhenya Badanov, who unfortunately suffered a stroke at 37 and essentially withdrew from the stage.

When that happened, that evening my whole shirt was just soaked through. Because our girls, the staff, the performers, they all cried all over me, because they were all in love with Zhenya Badanov. Zhenya Badanov was a handsome guy, with an excellent voice, moved beautifully on stage, had gymnastics training, could do the splits, walk on his hands across the stage right there.

Sasha Nikishin's band Cry Baby, one of our regular performers, became a sponsor and even released an album for them.

Petrovich's ensemble didn't conquer the stage here right away. I'm smiling a bit remembering this now, but we actually had two sessions: before midnight and after midnight. The more well-known bands played before midnight. After midnight, part of the audience would leave.

But some people would stay until 5:30, when the club closed and the metro opened. So it was that middle class crowd that came by metro and left by metro. There were fewer people at that hour, so we'd book bands that weren't as in demand for those slots.

There was also this band White Spirit, just kids, basically yesterday's amateur performers. They weren't even twenty years old, but they played blues, they played The Rolling Stones, the real deal. And literally columns of U.S. Marine guards from the American embassy would come to see them. You'd look out at the audience and there'd be about twenty identical guys in white t-shirts that could barely fit over their biceps. And they'd show up, sit down very neatly in this military fashion, and listen—really listen intently—to this band.

Here's a funny story for you. Back when everything was just starting out, two young guys came in—a couple of Georgian lads—and they said, "Look, we play blues, sign us up, we're a guitar duo." I told them, "You know, I'd be happy to, but we have full bands playing here with bass, drums, and all that." Those were the years when we were still pretty strict about staying within those narrow blues frameworks. But these two just wouldn't leave us alone—they were literally on our heels the whole time.

And we suggested they join forces with another band that was playing at our place. They rehearsed right on our stage. Put together a program, and it went over brilliantly. The band was called Blues Cousins. In a different lineup, but with the steadfast Levan Lomidze, it exists to this day. Levan is undoubtedly a virtuoso performer.