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Nash and Hugo start their mission to Russia at 6 am. At the Stockholm Airport security is very tight and there are two inspections. It is a two hour time difference to St. Petersburg and our fearless vampire killers arrive in St Pete's around 12:30 in the afternoon. The work papers are all in order, but the customs officers at the airport arrival make Nash re-write his equipment list on one of their official forms in Cyrillic and sign it. For all Nash knows he was donating his electric violins to The Hermitage! Everyone is wearing a very starched-looking uniform with cap and face to match. Nash imagines the emphatic signs in Russian all over the airport read "Do not feed the bears." When Nash and his equipment are allowed to enter Russia, he is met by a small group of kids barely 16 years old, who have volunteered to do errands for the organizers. The kids are holding a badly drawn sign saying SCIF6. Hugo nicely points out to them that it's a K not a C. They busily go about re-writing the sign. There is no transportation for the equipment, there is no English-speaking contact person to help Nash and Hugo with their visit. No, there are four kids who collectively speak ten words of English, the hotel is an hour drive away and the bus for the equipment will be arriving at the airport in two hours. Nash is informed that they are waiting the arrival of two more flights with other musicians on board. Nash and Hugo are very tired, but there is nothing to do but be humoured by the whole situation. They are in a very foreign land and they are in the hands of children. Hugo goes to get some money exchanged but returns shortly to tell Nash that the money kiosk has been closed for an hour's lunch. Can you imagine that at an international airport? It is apparent that few locals fly in Russia, they prefer to take the train. That explains why the airport at St. Petersburg, a city of four million people, is about the size of your average airport for a city of fifty thousand. The other flights finally arrive, and twelve people with all their luggage and equipment are loaded into a very small bus. The ride through the city is very revealing. There are no expressways, so all traffic goes directly into the city. It takes almost an hour for the bus full of tired musicians to travel from the airport to the other end of the city where the SKIF Music Festival is being held. On the way, it is easy to observe the lack of structural repair to things like roads and public transit. The buses and streetcars are rusted and battered and there is a lot of dust and diesel fumes due to all the heavy traffic right through the city centre. Standing out from this grime are the immaculately kept government buildings, cathedrals and palaces. So many buildings are old and interesting, but they suffer from years of neglect. As the bus passes one of many canals going through the city centre, Nash notices three dogs on the riverbank. These are not someone's pets. They are obviously feral dogs, wild creatures living on their own means. One female has full teats, so she has pups somewhere. This is in the downtown section of St. Petersburg. As a pampered pooch myself, I shudder at the thought of feral dogs because they are the barbarians of the canine world. They are willing and able to rip me apart. The family pooch is just another meal to them. Once at the hotel, Nash and Hugo are met with a scene from a Kinky Friedman novel. The lobby is under renovation but it looks more like demolition. There is dirt and plaster everywhere. One of the three elevators is not working so it is boarded up with ill-fitting planks. A metre-long two-by-four sits propped up against one wall for the entire three days of the festival. No one touches it, no one sees it as a potential weapon or even unsightly. It's just there. The girl at reception doesn't speak English so one of the young SKIF people volunteers to translate. Some musicians from Switzerland also get into the conversation. It seems at this convention, many of the European musicians are multi-lingual but the Russian hosts are struggling with it. After thirty minutes of translating and a lot of paperwork, Nash and Hugo finally get to relax, but not until they are checked in with their floor passes. These are cards that are handed to the floor maid who then gives them their key. These floor maids control who goes in and out of the floor. No card, no key. The double room is very small and furnished in a kind of old wooden dé:cor from the Fifties. The desk and beds have that same worn wooden patina found in the weekly rental rooms above old taverns in backwoods Canada. The carpets and curtains have absorbed years of heavy Russia tobacco smoke, creating an olfactory illusion that the maid was chain smoking when she made up the beds. The beds are small and hard. There is no tub, just a shower with the water running into a floor drain under the sink. The hot water is unreliable. The shower curtain is the size and texture of a Glad garbage bag. The water is a funny yellow brown and not fit to drink. Do not even brush your teeth in it. Nash finds out later that this is a three star hotel and the rooms normally rent for $140 US per night! Bureaucracy is everywhere. In the lobby there is a concrete bunker, a four-foot high wall surrounding a small area where three mean and burly men in dark suits sit and watch the world go by. Whoever they are, just remember, 'Do not feed the bears.' The hotel is connected to The Palace of Youth, a very impressive name that conjures up a vision of an old stone palace of 200 years ago with high wood beam ceilings and large ballrooms. The name also gives young people a sense of importance and a place to hang out. In reality the building is a Sixties-era concrete convention centre containing a large bowling alley, a large pool room, numerous video games, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a gymnasium, two restaurants, two nightclubs, a mini putt golf course, a small club for punk and hardcore bands, a 2oo seat multi-media room and a 1000 seat auditorium. SKIF6 is an avant-garde music festival held in the honour of Sergei Kuryokhin, an innovative pianist and artist from St. Petersburg. The promoter of the festival is his widow and the artistic director is Alexej. It is Alexej's job to book the talent and organize the event. With no budget, he has to make do with inexperienced volunteers to make the whole event work at all. It is also his job to organize all the artists in all the venues. This is a daunting task, but Alexej responds in Russian, English, German and Polish at the drop of a syllable. He is an ageing hippie with a love of music, and this event is his baby. There is no star status, and non of the artists are upset by delays or re-scheduling. It is amazing that any problems get solved considering the stage and language chaos. SKIF headquarters is Spinal Tap in the Tower of Babel. The admission to the festival is five rubles, or about twenty-five cents. The beer, which costs thirty rubles or $1.50 CDN, has an alcohol level of 12%. There appears to be no age limit for beer consumption and there are many young people under 16 who are getting rather plastered. However, there is no sense of rowdiness or aggressive behavior. Everyone is just having a really good time. Contrary to popular belief, the entire time Nash was in Russia he was never once offered a shot of Vodka nor did he see anyone consuming any. Either vodka is a drink for the very rich or, like everywhere else, young people in Russia prefer their beer. The young people Nash meets all have a variety of interests that they are eager to discuss. It also helps them with their English. Conversation jumps from punk bands to geography to Arthur Conan Doyle. There is no mention of video games or American pulp. These kids consume culture, new and old, and discuss it amongst themselves. There are no corporate logos on their clothing, there is no sense of peer competition. They have a desperate desire to connect with the outside world. One person says 'I'd like to visit Amsterdam one day. I understand they have some beautiful canals, but not as nice as St. Petersburg!' Steamboat Switzerland, a trio of progressive avant-core musicians have the best attitude. As the drummer Lucas put it so well 'This is like a Fellini movie without the budget.' The festival runs for four days, with music starting at 7 pm and going until 6 in the morning. The schedule keeps getting put off but no one seems to mind, after all, they've got all night! There are three main performance rooms with live music also happening in the large foyer area. There is a constant buzz of people and music coming from all the different rooms. The audience, as many as five thousand a night, are all from St. Petersburg and a vast mix of young and old. Couples bring their children to enjoy the folk groups playing and dancing in the lobby. A group of Goths sit in the mezzanine absorbing the display of photography and paintings. There's a lot of activity around the merchandise tables where one can buy t-shirts, CD's and other interesting items from all the groups at this year's festival. There's also a fashion show featuring some very outrageous apparel. On Saturday night, April 27, Nash prepares to perform Nosferatu to an all-Russian audience in the multi-media room. Are there vampire lovers in Russia? We shall see. The set-up goes well, as Nash and the young stagehands in the multi-media room work out their stage directions with bad linguistics and lots of pointing. Nash's attempt at Russian gets bemused stares. One of the stagehands stutters, so his attempts at English are all the more confusing. The eagerness of the young assistants is hampered by the fact that they are not as well versed in stage organization as Nash is. There is no gaffer tape, let alone a cable snake. Cables are everywhere and equipment is borrowed from other artists in order to do the show. The festival has no slide projectors of their own, but instead rely on other artists to lend theirs for the performance. The VCR provided for Nash was brought from someone's house. It is of the cheapest type, and probably has five years of tobacco stains stuck to the heads. Nash's set is planned for 8 pm but while the previous act is performing, Alexej the festival director sees Nash in the hallway and asks if he would mind if another group went on before he does Nosferatu. They are a local folk group and they need to catch a train to Moscow in two hours. Nash agrees only if he can be stage manager. The director agrees. Without a word of translation, Nash has the young stagehands winding up cables and the next group on stage in no time. No performer has a time limit to their set, so the St. Petersburg folk group goes on and on. With rousing applause from the local audience they are finally done and Nash gets to re-set the stage for Nosferatu. Nash returns to the hotel room and prepares himself for the long walk through the crowd. As he walks through the mezzanine, there is a stir and people follow him into the theatre. Nash starts the video of Nosferatu and the sound is terrible. After only a few minutes, he stops the tape and asks that someone find him another VCR. The young stagehands are all flustered, having done so well in the eyes of Nash the Stage Manager. As the lads are out scrounging for a better VCR, the audience remains seated and calm as Nash sits on the stage and poses for photos. Why not? He's got nothing better to do. A second VCR is delivered within 15 minutes and the movie begins again. This time, Nash can tell that the sound is perfect. The film is an hour long, and no one leaves the room. The story cards on the film are all in English, but simple enough for most of the Russian crowd to understand. The performance gets a standing ovation from the enthusiastic crowd. Nash gets mobbed in the mezzanine by people wanting to take pictures with him. He has no security but he is never in any danger. The audience just wants to have a souvenir. For the rest of the night, Nash takes in some of the other groups like Steamboat Switzerland (reminds Nash of early Soft Machine, very cool) The Finnish Shouting Male Choir (just like it sounds)and a lot of electronic weirdness. Nash retires before dawn, crawls into a bed made of earth and has the best sleep of the entire tour. Sunday starts out as another warm and clear day, so Nash and Hugo take the subway downtown for more sightseeing and souvenir hunting. A lot of the souvenir stalls are very commercial and overpriced, but Nash manages to find some smaller artist's stands with some interesting Soviet-era memorabilia. All of a sudden, an arctic front moves in and the temperature drops from 20 degrees to 10 degrees in a matter of minutes. It is now cold and rainy and Nash is wearing just a t-shirt. As Nash and Hugo hurry for the cover of a subway station, Nash is crammed into a doorway with two young thugs in front blocking the doorway while a third accomplice attempts to pick Nash's pocket. Nash spins around and goes back out the exit to gather his senses. The thugs have disappeared but everything is still intact. A close call. Even wearing bandages, Nash looks like a tourist. Nash returns to the hotel a little frazzled but none the worse for wear. The sound check for tonight's show goes well, with very few complications. Tonight's performance will be a set of Thrash in the main auditorium. The projectors are all working and Nash's weird collection of video images is sure to blow some Russian minds. The set starts late but there is a full house of over a thousand people eager to take in another performance of Nash. As the second song (Tension) is in full flight, Nash is moving about the stage playing his devilish violin solo when all of a sudden he twists his ankle on a loose cable at the front of the stage and he collapses on his back. Not stopping the solo, Nash continues to play, all the while pretending this is part of the act. It is not an easy thing to play violin while lying on your back with a sprained ankle and then somehow get up on your feet and continue performing. Nash hops about on one foot as he finishes the song. The audience breaks into wild applause for the theatrics of it all. The rest of the set goes down very well, in particular We Will Be The Leaders. Nash's new friends, Steamboat Switzerland, congratulate him after and say they want to do a cover version of Canadian Band. What would they call it? Nash leaves a pile of stickers and buttons in the SKIF office for people to help themselves. Two young girls around ten years old grab a bunch of stickers and proceed to plaster every pillar and wall in the Palace of Youth with "Nash the Slash Rises Again!" It has all been a strange experience. A lot of wonderful music presented in a palace that isn't one and organized like a bad Grateful Dead concert. The Russian converts to Nosferatu and 'Thrash' have very little access to the Internet or grasp of English to be part of the Nash fan base. They have no credit cards and a bent postal system. There is a sense of once-in-a-lifetime experience for everyone involved. On the last night Nash runs into an old friend, Philip Page, originally from Texas but now living in Finland and running a record label. It has been twenty years since they last met in New York City, but Nash and Philip have a great reunion. It's a very small world with the Internet, and becomes even smaller when one travels abroad for ten days to do a music festival of such diversity in such a unique location. Next year SKIF7 will be held in Berlin. Nash has already accepted the invitation. Digger |
