For those of you I never complained to, this year I took a Russian class to fulfill my foreign language requirement. I sucked at it, and it beat the crap out of me. But it’s over now, and as a gift my professor, who was great, burnt the class a collection of random Russian songs.

For purposes of this blog entry, I’d like to talk about the first rock band to be allowed by the Soviet gov’t into mainstream culture: браво (… Bravo.)

Consider the milieu: three or four years before this, rock bands were forced to stay underground. The Soviet government considered this subversive stuff, and by non-god it wasn’t going to get out and corrupt the youth.

But a few years later, the landscape had changed. This formerly terrifying musical force was to be allowed into the rapidly-reforming culture. Among the most popular of these early bands was браво, led by young frontwoman Zanna Aguzarova. Founded in 1983 and arrested once for playing their music, when rock was allowed to blossom in Russia they immediately became one of the scene’s biggest hits.

What was this subversive entity that had, just a few short years before, been worthy of arrest? It was… uh, early 90s No Doubt?:

They would later run into some hard times–the lead singer left the band, tried unsuccessfully to become an American pop star, and had some drug problems–but I love that clip because they’re so optimistic about things finally turning around, and being able to play the kind of music they loved. On that note, here’s what was apparently one of the first music videos to ever appear on Russian television. Ladies and gentleman, presenting Bravo with “the Leningrad Rock and Roll”:

Awesome? Awesome.