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Red
Elvises, Starbugs, Electric Living
Berbati's Pan
231 SW
Ankeny St., 248-4579
10 pm Friday,
May 19.
Cover.
Yevstigneyev
on the musical diet once prescribed for young Russians:
"Always classical music or old-fashioned dance bands. Our
parents would give us tickets. We'd sell them and buy champagne
with the proceeds."
Temkin on
rock economics in the U.S.S.R.:
"My parents, who had good jobs, made 120 rubles a month.
A vinyl record cost 70. So on Sunday you'd go to the subway
stations and trade reel-to-reel tapes. You'd go home with
one and make a copy, then bring it back the next week and
get something else."
From the corner of the basement, it looks and sounds like
rock American-style. Two guitarists maul loud red-meat chords.
A brimming glass of wine teeters on the fresh-faced bassist's
amp. The drummer looks like he could vaporize his smallest
cymbal, no bigger than a milk saucer.
These four fill a Sellwood basement with a brand of rock
that's in no mood for excuses. There's a hint of something
"alternative," but this feels dirtier, like it was dragged
across a barroom floor for its own damn good. Pretty fun,
and after a couple of beers, even more fun.
One guitarist steps to the mic, uncorking a stream of foreign
vowels punctured by whipcrack consonants. Andre Temkin shrieks
in Russian, trilling and hissing like a house afire.
The Starbugs: two Russians and two Americans, a Molotov
cocktail of straight-on Yank rock (courtesy of guitarist
Dave Curtis and bassist Josh Paz) and earnest perestroika
pop. With only a few party gigs and one Berbati's showcase
on their résumé, they're still a little rough.
At their best, though, they stampede like a well-oiled offensive
line, guitars bristling, Paz and drummer Alexei Yevstigneyev
plowing with plenty of force behind.
Finally. Superpower cooperation that works.
"We have beer and wine only, sorry."
Temkin apologizes on behalf of his friends Sergei and Grigori,
just back from a liquor run, who have opted not to add to
the mausoleum of empty vodka bottles upstairs. Instead,
they break out Bridgeport and refresh Paz's red wine. Another
spectator (another Alexei, a musician pal of Temkin's from
St. Petersburg days) springs around the basement barefoot,
proclaiming the band "absolutely fabulous," even seizing
the mic for a verse.
This exuberant atmosphere plays well with the Starbugs'
music, especially the cheerfully bloody free-for-all between
Curtis' throaty English and Temkin's acid Russian.
"It's really interesting when he sings," says Curtis, a
veteran of Portland bands Nymph 9 and Thistle. "It's definitely
something completely different from what you hear on 94.7."
"I don't even know what the lyrics are, or what they mean,"
adds Paz. "If I had to guess, I'd say that it's like the
blues. He's definitely working something out."
Although Temkin spits words like a punk, his singing holds
more melancholy than simple teen angst. He and Yevstigneyev--both
in the States for around five years--grew up in a passionately
musical culture. Although Communists demonized rock as Western
depravity, they found their way to sounds that spoke to
restless kids in an unraveling country.
"There was always lots of music in St. Petersburg," says
Temkin, who grew up in that elegant city when it was still
called Leningrad. "But pop music...well, you were searching
for something that was hidden. So, yes, we did bad things
back in 1982. You'd get a friend with a hundredth-generation
tape of Lou Reed or the Beatles and copy that."
"I remember the first time I saw Led Zeppelin," says Yevstigneyev,
who's from Khabarovsk, 11 time zones from St. Petersburg.
"A three-second clip in a propaganda film about the 'destruction
of capitalist Europe.' I was like, wow, I have to see more
of that.
"And KISS, well, we never heard them. But there were these
stories of them killing chickens on stage. These guys would
try to sell you photocopies of pictures that were so bad,
you couldn't tell what was in them. They'd say, 'Oh, that's
KISS.' And you'd go, 'Hm, OK.'"
For most of American rock's self-appointed prophets of
rage, "oppression" means a girl broke up with them once
and they hated their high-school principal. This Soviet
stifling made slightly more potent fuel for rebellion.
"Rock was a form of social protest," Temkin says. "Music
wasn't the first thing. The lyrics are the biggest deal."
"God, man," Paz chimes in. "My mom cut me off from MTV
when I was a kid, and I thought that was bad."
While Temkin honed his lyrical tastes, Yevstigneyev hammered
away on borrowed drums for a band called Prosto, which visited
Portland in 1992 on Lewis & Clark College's invitation.
"I figured here I might be able to at least buy a drum set,"
he says.
After the typical formative period of jamming, partying
and hanging out, Starbugs became a more serious endeavor
late last year. Paz joined up a few months ago, filling
out the lineup.
"Now that we've got a solid bass player and we've been
writing some more songs, we're ready to go," says Curtis.
"We're ready to play out, ready to record, ready for all
of that."
While nuances may occasionally disappear in translation--
"They try to teach us Russian when we're all drunk, which
never works," Curtis says--the Starbugs seem intent on pushing
and pummeling their way through Portland's music scene.
It would also seem that the hardest part is already behind
them.
"You had to do everything," Temkin, who now works as a
sound engineer, says of the old struggle to rock back home.
"There were no distortion pedals for sale. If you wanted
a distortion pedal, you had to build one.
"Lack of rock made us love these things even more."
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
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