Word: popularity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...concern about health and fitness sweeps the country. Dozens of state-run and private aerobics centers have cropped up in large cities. A television station in Moscow runs a 15-min. program called Morning Gymnastics at 8 daily, and another show, Aerobics, appears several afternoons each week. Popular journals are carrying more articles about controlling that well-known artery clogger kholesterine. Perhaps not coincidentally, the slim, fashionable Raisa Gorbachev, who travels regularly with her husband, is projecting a new image for the Soviet woman...
Meet Brigada S, the hottest, hippest band in Gorbachev's Soviet 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...
...crest of this new wave is Brigada S. "It's almost an accident we became so popular," says Sukachev, 29, who worked in a factory before he could make it with his music. Only two years ago, Sukachev and fellow band members were routinely hauled into local police stations and asked to explain their hairstyles and unusual dress. When the band's photograph appeared in a French magazine in 1986, Sukachev was taken to KGB headquarters for questioning. These days, all that has changed. On a recent trip back to his high school, Sukachev was surprised to hear himself described...
...past, Soviet bands often shamelessly copied popular Western styles, but Sukachev set out to create a uniquely Soviet sound, something kids could dance to. Although a punk rocker at heart, Sukachev added a four-piece horn section to the driving rhythm-and-blues backup of lead guitarist Kirill Trusov and bass player Sergei Galanin. The result is a slick multi-generational hybrid, the Talking Heads meet Count Basie, the Andrews Sisters on acid...
...they learn to speak out more freely, Muslims are trying to regain some control of religious affairs. Popular pressures led to last month's installation, with great fanfare, of a new leader for the Central Asia board. The previous head, reputed to be more adept at drinking (forbidden by Islam) and politics than study of the Koran, was ousted after an unprecedented protest march in Tashkent. His successor is Mukhammadsadyk Mamayusupov, 36, a modest and dignified scholar. At the same time as Mamayusupov's elevation, the Uzbek Republic gave his board a precious Koran dictated by Caliph Osman...