Word: grouped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Through 2 1/2 hours and ten opening bands, the kids have stood shoulder to shoulder waiting for their favorite group. Finally, a short, well-built young man, his hair shaved severely around the sides, appears onstage. He grins demonically and defiantly surveys the crowd. Behind him a swarm of guitarists, horn players, a keyboardist and a drummer troop onto the stage. A drumbeat clears the air, and suddenly the band is cruising through the infectious opening rhythm of The Man in the Hat. The lead singer grabs the microphone and shrieks, "Heading for a meeting/ Across the frozen intersection...
...Union. After a history of often bitter confrontations with police and schoolteachers, Brigada S (or the S Brigade, christened by lead singer Igor Sukachev because he liked the letter S) has become one of the most popular of the new generation of rock bands. Although the four-year-old group has yet to produce an album, the self-described "Proletarian Jazz Orchestra" enjoys a tremendous following. Teens from Tallinn to Vladivostok spray-paint the band's name, with the Russian equivalent of S drawn like a Communist hammer and sickle, on walls of public buildings...
...State Concert Agency relaxed its regulations in 1986, rock bands suddenly could play their music in big halls, with thousands of screaming fans in attendance. The effect was electrifying, and the kids knew whom to thank for the lighter touch. One of the new bands, a Moscow-based group called Grand Prix, introduced a song last year called simply Gorbachev. The haunting chorus ("I understand! Gorbachev!") is less a tribute to the man in power than a defiant youth anthem, undoubtedly the first to use a Soviet leader as an emblem of teenage aspirations...
Brigada S has an unusual sound that draws on several sources. As a child, Sukachev listened to black-market Glenn Miller and Andrews Sisters albums, and their influence can be heard in the group's Big Band tinge. In style, the group also owes a tremendous debt to the futurist poets of the 1920s, whose revolutionary verse inspired a generation with its early Communist iconography...
Like it or not, things are moving quickly for Brigada S. This summer the group will release its first two albums, following the top-selling unauthorized concert disk put out last year by Melodiya, the country's sole record label. There is talk of a U.S. tour as well, possibly in June. "We're hoping to sign a few small contracts," Sukachev admits. Still, he says he wouldn't give up the band's underground years for anything. "Those years are our strength," he says. "We'd be nothing without them...