I WANT A FRY UP
29 September 2006

We were met outside St Petersburg station, not by the promoter but by a man in a grey beret with a greying ponytail and friendly face. Russian railway stations seem to be the place where the city’s alcoholics and life’s losers congregate. Many sport threatening-looking scars. I don’t think a session in the Priory awaits any of this lot, just cold winters, bitter times and early graves. Was it like this here in the Soviet era? I don’t ask.

Maybe I should write a score to be done with 17 street drinkers. I mean, that one I’ve written for prisoners is all very well in a politically correct way. Every artist who wants to display they have a conscience does something with prisoners. Doing a performance with 17 park bench alkies would really be attempting something. What I would get from it, let alone what they would get from it, I’ve no fuckin’ clue. But it’s a thought. One I am afraid I may be returning to.

The man with the grey beret introduces himself as Seva, which is short for something long and, for me, unpronounceable. We load our stuff into the boot of his battered car and climb in. he tells us it is only ten minutes or so to the theatre where the festival is. I make some polite chit chat with him and then he starts. He tells us how St Petersburg is 100% better than Moscow in every way.
‘Moscow is all surface, St Petersburg has depth. Moscow is only interested in money, St Petersburg in soul.’
He tells us he used to be a musician, played the cello.
‘There used to be a large underground scene in Russia. I was in a rock band and played cello in the band. It was different to have a cello in a rock band. It made me famous on the underground scene. The man with the cello. It was fun and we enjoyed it and we were interesting. But then perestroika happened and we became heroes. Heroes of the perestroika and from playing underground clubs in the 1980s we were playing stadiums with thousands of screaming girls in the early 1990s. I hated it so I stopped. The singer and main songwriter in the band carried on with the name. He is still very famous. He writes very good words but the music is always the same.’
‘So what do you do now?’
‘I like to put concerts on. Promote shows. I wanted to open a club for experimental music. Do you know the Knitting Factory in New York?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wanted it to be like that but it became like CBGB’s, just a rock ‘n’ roll club. I didn’t own the bar, just used it some nights a week and nobody wanted the experimental music, they just wanted rock ‘n’ roll bands with leather jackets. I wanted it to be better than The Dom in Moscow. But people are so conservative. There is hardly any underground now. The underground used to be deep and connected in every city in the Soviet Union but now it is thin and stretched out. We thought with perestroika we would at least be free to make the music we wanted but it has now been killed by MTV.’
‘So don’t you play at all now?’
‘Well, tonight I have been asked to play cello as part of somebody else’s band. I look forward to that, but my fingers are … how you say?’
‘Rusty?’
‘Yes. Rusty. Very rusty. I used to practice six hours a day. But now I hardly ever play.’
‘I hope you enjoy it.’
‘I will but I have to look after you as well today and some of the other musicians and composers at the festival.’

We fall silent. I stare out of the window at the passing buildings of St Petersburg. It looks pretty much as I remembered it from this Welsh language film that I once saw that was set in St Petersburg. Don’t ask me why. My mind began wandering back to thoughts of writing a score to be performed by a 17 made up of street drinkers, but before these thoughts took any distinct form Seva was saying, ‘Ah, here we are. This is the theatre and here is your hotel for the day. I come in with you. See if your room is okay and sort out breakfast.’

Things are looking up. I never knew there was to be a day room in a hotel. I will leave thoughts of singing cider heads until later. What I want is a deep bath and whatever the Russians can do that is closest to a full breakfast fry-up.