This is Truth.

A Band, A Place, and The Russian Mafia

I realize you can only technically have the strangest night of your life once, but when your memory is as shoddy as mine, you end up declaring several nights to be superlative. Thus, it shall henceforth for a day or two be known that Saturday night was the strangest night of my life.

Glancing through the events listings in the English-language Moscow Times during the day, I noticed that my favorite modern jazz band, Soulive, would be playing in the city the Satruday night. I was later told that the fact that this obscure jazz/fusion/soul outfit would be playing in a city which has played host to only the likes of Patti Smith, Kelly Osborne and Korn in terms of American 'artists' since I've been here is a sure sign that God loves me and wants me to be in Moscow. I am an agnostic, so "Thank you person/supernatural being/extraterrestrial/vague theoretical outline that I may or may not believe in for giving me the gift of stupidly random fortune/devine premonition."

Laura and I went down (thankfully, I would not be going to concerts in Moscow alone on successive nights, more on this later) to the place, and found a glistening silver monstrosity of garish metalic post-moderndom. Kuznetsky Hall was not the scummy rock club where I saw Soulive play last June. No, this by New Russians, for New Russians.

New Russians = the newly rich, ultra elite. The ‘Elitny.’ Most of them made their money between the years 1991 and 1997, when all the Soviet public businesses were essentially handed over to those who held the keys, leaving lower-level Communist Party peons with billions of dollars in capital overnight. They did not earn it, or work for it, in fact, some of them moved out of the country immediately to avoid fines or prosecution. Russians call New Russians 'empty people, and it suits them. They drive only Mercedes and BMWs. Which they use to run every traffic light. They dress expensively but usually poorly, and they are uncultured despite their best efforts at pretension. They exist to be hated; to drive up the price of restaurants, to own night clubs for six months and then skip town and the tax collectors, to wear obnoxious sunglasses, to be those asshole Russians that travel anywhere other than Egypt and Turkey, to threaten teachers who don’t give their kids top grades, to threaten everyone, really, and to be the kind of people whom it would be my utter pleasure to make life severely uncomfortable for if I had any ability to converse with them whatsoever. But I can’t, so I don’t. I am a portrait of a stifled brash manimal.

Kuznetsky Hall was perhaps the fakest building in the fakest neighborhood I have ever seen outside of the Virginia side of suburban DC where the fake politicians and their even faker lapdogs, yes men, lobbyists and lawyers live when they’re not at home with their ‘constituents’ faking listening to them. If you’ve ever been, you know precisely what I mean. If not, try to picture apartment buildings and condominium complexes towering above a tepid pseudo-natural landscape, each one the same, with those forged yellow brick pre-molded façades framing blindingly intense blue windows. Like the false blue contact lenses worn clandestinely by false women, they are reflective and strikingly beautiful, and are therefore perfectly contemptible.

Anyway, we showed up right when the playbill said, 8pm, and there was nothing but a lone Mercedes in the driveway. The place had plenty of room for a full-sized parking lot, but it had an underground garage, so the elitny would not have to their eyes spoiled by the sight of a tour bus or delivery van. There were about 20 spaces in the lot, and the place itself was surrounded by what might once have been a natural preserve (there are many in Moscow) which is being eaten away by progress. No laws apply to the New Russians, but there are a virtual cornucopia for the rest of us. Thus, I had no reason to believe that anything legitimate going on at Kuznetsky Hall or the surrounding urban Pleasantville. We should have known coming in that it would be like this, as the girl who answered the phone when we called for directions only knew how to get there by car.

I guarantee we were the only people who showed up by bus.

Ever.

Or ever will again.

We walked up the granite steps as the strategic lighting illuminated beneath our feet, as if we were being welcomed, one might think, if one weren’t me, and about as out of place at this venue as a non-Russian speaking American in Moscow. If one were thinking logicially, they would think: "This place just opened."

We passed a metal detector inside the door, and had to take off our coats for inspection by the door-goon. The chauffer confronted us immediately, asking what we were here for, and besides her flight-attendant posh demeanor, was quite pleasant. I assume. I had no clue what was going on. I just tried to look like a rich foreigner. And failed quite spectacularly.

The chauffer asked that present our passports to the woman behind the desk, who entered the information contained therein into their computer, and then took pictures of both of us using a webcam. For some reason, this didn't seem odd at all. Perhaps thats because I was too busy not looking like I had any money to my name, which I thought was far more interesting to everyone involved in the interaction. We had reservations, down to the seat and table numbers, under my name, ‘SMIT’. [There is no ‘th’ sound in Russian, and so ironically my official name has become a Russified bastardization of my high school nickname. The bastardization consists of an ‘i’ which sounds more like a brief and indifferent ‘eh’ than an exasperated and deterministic ‘ihh’; and a ‘t’ which spits out the tip of the lips as if it were a watermelon seed, the final production sounding altogether more like a brand of breath mints than the moniker of an Irish Manimal.]

After that, we were prompted to check our coats, which was the one part of the night I was wholly expecting. Coats are not worn inside in Russia. They exist for function, not form, and are to be gotten rid of immediately after entering a private establishment. Otherwise, snow, slush and water would make the inside of every restaurant or bar look like a high school locker room 8 months out of the year. Happily, they are safe, reliable, omnipresent and free, in addition to obligatory. A welcome service to cheap bastards such as myself, who would sooner freeze than pay $3 for a coat check at a bar in the states. The only time you wear a coat inside in public is in a store or a metro station. Most places of business have a separate changing room, often immediately upon entry and in the basement, for workers to leave their coats and outdoor shoes, and visitors to a place of business will also check their coats in the lobby for a meeting inside. It would be fine, if I showed up here with more than 1 pair of work shoes. Now I have to buy some of those ubiquitous Euro-shoes like the ones that I would wear if I wanted someone like me to want to kick my ass if they met me in the states.

The coat check was manned by an older fella, who stood in front of 17 well-lit rows of empty coat hangers. If it wasn’t already exceedingly obvious that we were the only people there, between the lights illuminating precisely at 8pm, or the fact that every employee in the place was standing at their assigned static position, the ladies in front of their assigned row of slot machines or behind their assigned card tables, the goons in front of this or that elevator or access point, the empty coat room was the red flag.

The bottom two levels were a casino, and had all of the erie trappings of a casino in Russia, with the gloss necessary to accommodate the New Russians in a pseudo-Western style decor. There were elevators that seemed to be unnecessary and that seemed to go no where. Everything was new, and I would not be surprised if the whole place arose from the dirt that very week. Since I failed to find any information about the it in the newspapers, or on the internet, and we drove past the it on the bus before finding it, it was quite impossible to know if the place even existed. At some point I recalled that there was no extraneous words anywhere inside; there were no words on the entry doors, the walls, the concierge desk, or in the bathrooms. No clocks and no windows, as in any casino worth half its salt. You were barely aware that you existed anymore.

We were escorted across the gambling floor and up two flights to the restaurant and to our reserved table, right in front of the stage, by the same woman who greeted us at the door. It was a fine event and dining hall - well apportioned, though disturbed by untimely pillars in the floor [Russian engineering and architecture at its most typical] - veiled in the aura of a jazz club. Portraits of Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gilespie lined the walls in a rather insincere manner. We were sat facing the wall and angled away from the stage, inexplicably, since if we called to make a day-of reservation and were put in the front row, one would assume that they are not anticipating a sell out, and that they could seat us facing the stage or sitting across from each other like normal people. We were either all too normal or too wholly abnormal for the place, I can’t decide which.

Moving on, the waiter approached us immediately, and we only really wanted water at the moment. You get parched in Moscow, perhaps its the debhilitating air pollution. The menus were just a rolled up piece of paper at the center of the table, which might have been classy if you didnt like things that were nice. Eventually we would look at the menu, for a laugh, and found the prices to be in that excessive to infinity range. But on the excessive side, you could get a glass of house Red for $11.

So we shot the breeze. For 2 hours. And drank our waters. As the only two people in a 300 seat dining room. Well, there were the 6 waiters, 9 bus boys, 4 chauffeurs, 5 goons, 3 bartenders and 1 Russian-mafia guy milling about the shadows, intermittently watching us and nothing, but otherwise we were the only ones there.

There was also one guy about our age, dressed in one of those old-time baseball shirts and jeans, reading a newspaper and looking uninterested. He was more out of place than we were, but sure enough, he went up to the stage and started checking the mics about 10 minutes later.

The sound check went on for about an hour and a half. If I wasn’t madly in love with my station and quite content to see a free show by my favorite jazz outfit, regardless of environment, then the several Berkeley School of Music dropouts who emerged to tune the guitars and drums would have made me feel quite at home.

In that time, about 6 people showed up, and were all seated fairly close to us for some unconscionable reason. The waiter decided to forget we existed, returning a honor we had committed to him about an hour and 26 minutes before. And all was right with the cosmos.

The band emerged to do a quick loop of the room, about a half hour before show time. Laura asked ‘is that was the band?;’ as if it were the first time in 4 years she had seen three black people at the same place at the same time. I think the sight of the 400 pound guy, the skinny guy with the 2.1 foot diameter afro and his twin brother sporting a dorag tied in a somewhat homosexual rather than ghetto fashion may have been a bit of a shock to anyone in this environment.

The show eventually started, at 10pm, for about 50 people. The crowd was of the type of people who would wear their suit coats out on a Saturday night. At one point, the band encouraged them to clap along to a song, forgetting even New Russians have no more rhythm than the 1984 LADA sedans driven by their less fortunate comrades. They were here to be entertained, and I was clearly the only one there to see the band, or perhaps even knew who they were. You felt like they were just there because that’s where they felt like ending up that night, and that they expected the venue to provide them with some filler. A few people left almost immediately, and more than a few stepped out in the middle of it to try and have cell phone conversations. [Which begs the following: if you get a call on your mobile and the place where you are at the moment is so loud that you have to physically move, why would you press the phone into your face, put your fingers in your opposite ear and squint as you strain to listen while you run from the room in an awkward, ugly and pathetic fashion? Why not say to the person: “I CAN’T HEAR YOU, HOLD ON A MOMENT”, then casually put the phone down to your side in your hand as you walk out of the room, sparing yourself such a ludicrous display. My impulse is to declare that this is a demonstration of a New Russian: moneyed but uncultured, however, I feel like everyone else does the same damn thing. Children.] They were loud and abrasive, and tried many new things. They certainly didn’t slow down or tone down for the ‘intimate’ setting. I mean, these guys can play low and intricate club jazz, but they were insistent on playing the same set for this show as they would for 1000 hippies, jazz beatniks, Berkley dropouts and black people as I have seen before, complete with the elements of funk, rock and soul. It was a strain to have to sit without dancing the whole show, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

The band seemed to be quite wierded out, so I also enjoyed watching someone else live my life for a couple hours. Passionate musicians can block anything out, however, and it seemed like after each song, it was as if they awoke from a coma, and realized: “Shit, I’m in Moscow in a room with 50 Russians, half of them are mafia and the other half merely stole more money than I know exists, and I’m wearing jeans, and my hair looks ridiculous to these people, and I don’t know how I’m getting home, and I don’t know why these people are here how the fuck I got here.”

Perhaps I've mistakenly quoted my inner monologue.

The road crew took dozens of pictures, obviously to croon on about the band’s first trip to Russia. They were all of the stage, and I don’t know if this is because the goons told them not to photograph anything else, or if they didn’t want to photograph a nearly empty room.

The crowed did as well, though it seemed to be tertiary to whatever else they were in for that night. Perhaps they just felt like spending their illicit money and having an excuse not to talk to their dates/wives/affairs/prostitutes for two hours. One guy in the front was quite amused, and said ‘gitt funkiee’ on one occasion in a thick Slavic slur. There was also a table of young New Russians in the back, the only other patrons under 35 besides ourselves in the room. At one point, the drummer alluded to the time they had last night, and the guys hollered ‘you is most best!’ in reply. They must have met these guys at an elitny place on Friday. They were probably sent by their elitny hosts to Propaganda or Night Flight, and being black, foreign and attractive, (unlike these guys) probably didn’t even have to pay for their prostitutes. America. Winning the Cold War, over and over again.

The waters, which were about 10 ounces, ended up being $4 each. We left a 110% tip and still paid less than I did to see them in New York City last year.

I wanted to buy their new CD, which came out this past week and, as you might imagine, obscure jazz/fusion releases are not readily available here. I found the band manager. He was chatting with a chauffer who was asking him what he was doing pacing around when I walked up to him. The conversation went thus:

Him, to woman: “Oh I just was going to see if anyone wanted CDs, but…”
Me: “I want one.”
Him: “The new one.”
Me: “Yeah, its not exactly available here.”
Him: “I guess probably not.”
Me: “So ... what the hell are you guys doing here?”
Him: “We don’t know. We got a call, someone wanted us to play a single show here, so we came out last night and we go back tomorrow. The money was good, so we did it. Its completely random.”
Me: “Welcome to Moscow. And my life. Will you take Rubles?”
Him: “Ummm. Yeah,…how much do you think…”
Me: “500. I don’t have change.”

No one will ever know why the hell they were here. Clearly they were paid enough to spend an entire weekend in Moscow to only play a single show, on the first weekend after their new album was released. They brought their entire setup across an ocean and a continent to play 2 hour

posted by Майлз Г. Смит @ 1:28 AM