Perhaps I should have split the scene when I spied the tuba on-stage….
If I had to name the most lugubrious song that I can think of then it would have to be The House of the Rising Son by The Animals which they released in Britain in the sixties.
This soul-sapping song was the one being played by a warm up DJ as I made my way into the Glav Club in south Moscow to find out about AUKTYON.
As I shuffled through the security checkpoint, having had to divest myself of all my valuables and then graduated to the garderobe area were the process was repeated, I was, for some reason, reminded of a time I had gone to visit an inmate at Strangeways prison many years ago. Perhaps it was just that baleful ballad, with its sense of entrapment, that had put me in this frame of mind. Yet it was fitting.
Tuba.
The DJ responsible for this soundtrack, however, was something of a discrepancy. As the 800 or so audience of hipsters of all, ages piled into the auditorium he span a string of sixties Western classics – all of which were in contrast to what was to ensue.
After treating us to The Doors he exited to polite applause and then we had a chance to look at the stage. The backdrop was an old-fashioned curtain rather than the now mandatory projection. Nor was there any evidence of dry ice to get us ready. Then I spied a tuba on the stage among other brass instruments. A tuba! Hmmm…
The Munsters.
I counted about nine members of AUKTYON including three brass horn worriers, a willowy keyboardist, the bassist, the lead guitarist and the man leading the parade…who, well we’ll come to that.
None of these personnel were screen idol material – unless you include the likes of Lon Chaney in that definition.
Leonid Fyodorov, a shapeless and bespectacled man, could have been a software developer as he crouched over his guitar facing sideways to the audience.
Oleg Garkusha, a thick-set hunchback in a spangled jacket and white gloves,put me in mind of Barry Humphries’s alter ego Les Patterson. He functioned as the frontman and I kept expecting him to burst into song. Instead he tottered about the stage shaking some kind of tubular rattle like a man in the grip of delirium tremens. Once in a while bark something into the microphone or declaim something between sets.
It seems that Garkusha constitutes one of those band members who, like Andrew Ridgeley from Wham, just `provide a presence`. But at least Ridgeley was beach-body ready….
Their own creation.
AUKTYON began in 1978 after being initiated by two college kids in St Petersburg – Fyodorov and Garkusha. They soon became a fixture of the influential Leningrad Rock club with their brand of art rock.
After all these years they can still draw an audience even though their sound has mutated from theatrical post-punk to central Asian tinged big band quasi-Jazz compositions, albeit retaining the thread of theatricality.
Mindless boogie.
Tonight they churned out a series of horn-heavy rhythmical numbers, most of which were quite long and many of which displayed false endings. At best they resembled some of the early excursions of Talking Heads and at other times I was reminded of the ska-punk of Distemper who I had seen live in Kazan a few years back. Their song `Doroga`, which I recognised, is an obvious classic but many others seemed indistinguishable from each other.
The Fyodorov’s crooning, whilst it may have been the blues voice of the perestroika era, only succeeded in reminding me that I would soon be on the screeching metro going home alone to an empty flat and with nothing but duties facing me the next wet day….
Mixed reception.
After each piece Garkusha did one of those circus performer bows where you cross and uncross your hands in front of your chest while bowing three times. The applause came, but the audience seemed to have divided into three camps. The true believers were the ones engaging in some energetic jiving. Then some looked just bored and the third camp was more tolerant and expectant yet a bit lost.
I do appreciate that AUKTYON have their very own late Soviet/post-Soviet jazz-ska-folk-dance-soundtrack which is by no means a copycat of anything Western that I can think of.
However, I was in the latter two camps. Call me superficial but I could have liked them more had they not been so unprepossessing in appearance; nor, as much as I embrace a lot of `dark` music, could I relate to their doleful tone.
Perhaps I just needed to knock back more of the 350 roubles a throw Tuborg’s, or become more of a jazzer….
They continued to honk and jitter about as I took my leave at quarter to eleven. On the way out I noticed that pamphlets by Colonel Gaddafi were being sold alongside tha band’s merchandise and then I became enveloped in the sleet of the October night….
Auktyon: `Moya Lyubov` (Live in St Petersburg, 2011
I quite like Auction, although I probably haven’t listened to anything new by them for a while. They were on the Russian NY Hootenany thing, along with all the other old rockers, and it took me a while to recognise Garkusha, and then I spent the rest of the show in a haze of (somewhat inebriated) horror at just. How. Old. He’s gotten. The 90s were a long time ago, and the 80s even further. Hey ho.
Yes, I did feel a bit guilty at my gut response to this one – but you have to be honest. Even the music didn’t do much for me – and I’m into a lot of `avant garde` type material. I just found it depressing – in a uniquely Russian kind of way.