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"Of course, it's BG"
Jun. 26th, 2023 10:06 pmI was fully intending to post about this weeks ago and didn't get around to it because... I don't know. Typing is hard and I don't think this is the kind of content anyone follows me for. I end up putting a lot of my music thoughts on here because my media reviews I can get published somewhere but I'm not trained to talk about music in any capacity so I feel less confident pitching it around. But I do like music and think about it and experience it a lot. Weird music most of my friends don't care about. Anyway.
So, a few weeks ago, I went to-- wait no let's back up a bit more.
A few weeks before a few weeks ago, my mom picked me up from my last day at work on our way to the Alexei Ivaschenko concert in Philly and asked me if I wanted to see BG in concert in June.
"Of course, it's BG," I said immediately. "The father of Russian Rock music and all that." BG, of course, meaning Boris Grebenshchikov, Russian rock legend, the only founding member of Aquarium still in Aquarium at the ripe old age of 69 (nice.)
Then I said, "wait, I don't actually know any of his songs. Besides the drinking song, even though I don't really drink. I mean I'll still go but."
"I'm not really familiar with his music either," my mom said. "We can think about it."
So we get to the Jewish cultural center hosting the Ivaschenko concert and as we were milling around before the start we run into our neighbors across the street, who immediately ask us if we're going to the BG concert.
"Well now I guess we have to," my mom said.
(Sidenote: the Ivaschenko concert was very fun, very chill, Ivaschenko took requests if you passed him a note on stage and he played a deep cut I requested because no one ever asks him for it and said nice things about my sketchbook doodles of him afterwards and I was extremely pleased).
We got tickets as close to where our neighbors were sitting and made plans to carpool with my mom's friend who is also named Masha but is a married woman a year older than my own mother with four children. But when we tried listening to some BG/Aquarium to prepare, my mother and I were equally unimpressed. We both prefer fun, upbeat, exciting music to mopey ballads, and BG's best of lists on YouTube autoplay seemed to lean more to the mopey side.
"Well, maybe he'll play the fun stuff at the concert," I said hopefully.
The concert gets rescheduled to an hour later than it was originally supposed to be. We show up fifteen minutes past that time because parking in Manhattan is a hellscape and find our seats-- my mom's friend Masha is a few rows below, our neighbors directly diagonal to us, and right next to us by complete coincidence is my ex-stepdad's third cousin and her friends, who stand up to let us through and recognize my mother in shock.
That's the thing about this concert, the thing I wanted to write about almost as much as the music-- fucking everyone is here.
Every Russian in the Northeast between the ages of 30 and 50. My mom's friends from when we lived in North Jersey, people who haven't seen me since I was five. My mom's theater groupmates and people we hang out with at слёты, the music festival things we do. During the intermission, my mom runs into Psoy Korolenko while getting a beer from concessions. My mom's friend who lives in Boston had come down from Boston for this. Of course she did, it's BG.
The concert starts half an hour after the rescheduled later time. BG is in the center of the stage in front of a large hanging portrait of the goddess Saraswati (he's Buddhist), dressed like the late Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU) in a wide-brimmed black hat, sunglasses, long gray beard, leather jacket. He's sitting on a stool holding an acoustic guitar. His band, including his son on the drums, an Irish tin whistle player and a keyboardist who doubles as an accordionist depending on the song, surrounds him. There are also some potted plants for some reason. The lights dim so the portrait is the only thing clearly visible. And then the music starts.
It slaps. No other word for it. The very same songs that sounded dull and mopey in my mom's car are all encompassing in the concert hall, each beat hammering into my bones, reverberating through my very soul. The fun songs give the tin whistle and accordion lengthy solos to show off. The serious songs sink into me like stones.
BG doesn't really do any MCing, just going from song to song with no chatter in between. He says "thank you for coming" before he starts and "thank you for coming back" after the intermission and "thanks" before the encore, but he keeps it simple. He plays for three hours and does five songs for the encore, including the drinking song I knew (which is a cover of an English drinking song apparently, but so catchy and fun. Digging into his youtube music profile I also found a Russian cover of What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor, which is very wild to me). He doesn't stand up except to stretch, doesn't dance (he's 69, after all. Nice.) I try to take notes on what the fun songs he plays are, but when I look them up later they seem faded, lacking the vibrancy they had in person.
We walk back to the overpriced garage we'd left my mom's car in with another guy from our town my mom ran into coincidentally at the concert who'd also parked in a different garage on that street, discussing the concert, BG, the upcoming festival BG was going to perform at (a festival that happened last weekend as of me writing this, and my mom went and said it was cool even though the acoustics were worse than in the concert hall).
My mom sighed and said, "I wish he'd played Masala Dosa. My friend said he played Masala Dosa at his LA show. Why didn't we get that one?"
Anyway, it was wild.
So, a few weeks ago, I went to-- wait no let's back up a bit more.
A few weeks before a few weeks ago, my mom picked me up from my last day at work on our way to the Alexei Ivaschenko concert in Philly and asked me if I wanted to see BG in concert in June.
"Of course, it's BG," I said immediately. "The father of Russian Rock music and all that." BG, of course, meaning Boris Grebenshchikov, Russian rock legend, the only founding member of Aquarium still in Aquarium at the ripe old age of 69 (nice.)
Then I said, "wait, I don't actually know any of his songs. Besides the drinking song, even though I don't really drink. I mean I'll still go but."
"I'm not really familiar with his music either," my mom said. "We can think about it."
So we get to the Jewish cultural center hosting the Ivaschenko concert and as we were milling around before the start we run into our neighbors across the street, who immediately ask us if we're going to the BG concert.
"Well now I guess we have to," my mom said.
(Sidenote: the Ivaschenko concert was very fun, very chill, Ivaschenko took requests if you passed him a note on stage and he played a deep cut I requested because no one ever asks him for it and said nice things about my sketchbook doodles of him afterwards and I was extremely pleased).
We got tickets as close to where our neighbors were sitting and made plans to carpool with my mom's friend who is also named Masha but is a married woman a year older than my own mother with four children. But when we tried listening to some BG/Aquarium to prepare, my mother and I were equally unimpressed. We both prefer fun, upbeat, exciting music to mopey ballads, and BG's best of lists on YouTube autoplay seemed to lean more to the mopey side.
"Well, maybe he'll play the fun stuff at the concert," I said hopefully.
The concert gets rescheduled to an hour later than it was originally supposed to be. We show up fifteen minutes past that time because parking in Manhattan is a hellscape and find our seats-- my mom's friend Masha is a few rows below, our neighbors directly diagonal to us, and right next to us by complete coincidence is my ex-stepdad's third cousin and her friends, who stand up to let us through and recognize my mother in shock.
That's the thing about this concert, the thing I wanted to write about almost as much as the music-- fucking everyone is here.
Every Russian in the Northeast between the ages of 30 and 50. My mom's friends from when we lived in North Jersey, people who haven't seen me since I was five. My mom's theater groupmates and people we hang out with at слёты, the music festival things we do. During the intermission, my mom runs into Psoy Korolenko while getting a beer from concessions. My mom's friend who lives in Boston had come down from Boston for this. Of course she did, it's BG.
The concert starts half an hour after the rescheduled later time. BG is in the center of the stage in front of a large hanging portrait of the goddess Saraswati (he's Buddhist), dressed like the late Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU) in a wide-brimmed black hat, sunglasses, long gray beard, leather jacket. He's sitting on a stool holding an acoustic guitar. His band, including his son on the drums, an Irish tin whistle player and a keyboardist who doubles as an accordionist depending on the song, surrounds him. There are also some potted plants for some reason. The lights dim so the portrait is the only thing clearly visible. And then the music starts.
It slaps. No other word for it. The very same songs that sounded dull and mopey in my mom's car are all encompassing in the concert hall, each beat hammering into my bones, reverberating through my very soul. The fun songs give the tin whistle and accordion lengthy solos to show off. The serious songs sink into me like stones.
BG doesn't really do any MCing, just going from song to song with no chatter in between. He says "thank you for coming" before he starts and "thank you for coming back" after the intermission and "thanks" before the encore, but he keeps it simple. He plays for three hours and does five songs for the encore, including the drinking song I knew (which is a cover of an English drinking song apparently, but so catchy and fun. Digging into his youtube music profile I also found a Russian cover of What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor, which is very wild to me). He doesn't stand up except to stretch, doesn't dance (he's 69, after all. Nice.) I try to take notes on what the fun songs he plays are, but when I look them up later they seem faded, lacking the vibrancy they had in person.
We walk back to the overpriced garage we'd left my mom's car in with another guy from our town my mom ran into coincidentally at the concert who'd also parked in a different garage on that street, discussing the concert, BG, the upcoming festival BG was going to perform at (a festival that happened last weekend as of me writing this, and my mom went and said it was cool even though the acoustics were worse than in the concert hall).
My mom sighed and said, "I wish he'd played Masala Dosa. My friend said he played Masala Dosa at his LA show. Why didn't we get that one?"
Anyway, it was wild.
