h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So you go to this concert to celebrate the life of Victor Tzoi, the lead singer of Kino, and suddenly discover that this country is indeed progressing in leaps and bounds towards commercialism. Forget the fact that the countryside is a monetary wasteland of subsistance farming for a minute, forget Vladivostok (surely the unluckyest city in the former soviet block), and forget industry...well. The capitalist spirit is alive and scalping teenagers in Moscow.

Having had the nous to get himself killed in a car crash in 1990, Tsoi's band was immediately imortalised as the greatest underground band of them all, mainly cos he never had a chance to sell out and make rock videos in tastefully-knit jumpers and a Sting haircut (Kinchev) or turn into my Dad (Uri-from-DDT). They have a wall on the Arbat. And everything. So it is ironic, isn't it, that not only have some cheesy dance act released a truly terrible affair where his voice soars over perhaps the worst dance anthum I have ever heard, but that the Kinoproby concert was a blatant rip off, designed merely as a puff to get people to buy the damm album of covers, most of which are a bit limp in the first place.

But hey. You want a review, you got one. Three hours of bands who come on and play one song each unless they are Zemfira or the Mumin Trolls who get two. Or Tansi Minus who inexplicably get four and drag on and on, each song played at a slower speed than the last, until you want to charge up there and push. Then, of course, a ten minute wait whilst they rearrange the stage, and during this time we are entertained variously by bits of a documentry of Tszoi's life; the guy from Assa; and the frontman from Auction whose job description in in the band is performance art. Sure enough, we got exerpts from his book of poetry, and so essentially the best thing about the concert was Auction, who didn't play. And Zdub si Zdub. But then I'm biased.