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- This is an exotic view of a world Americans could not imagine, an insider/outsider perspective on the Leningrad underground music scene, which American Joanna Stingray witnessed, documented through photos, videos, and interviews, and in which she was also a protagonist.
- Red Wave presents the power of youth culture to unite people across the world in the quest for freedom and rights. Rock is a universal music of liberation that carries the winds of change.
- Red Wave documents the "Golden Age" of Russian rock, which is a critical part of the history of art triumphing over repressive state control in the 1980s.
- In the first part of the book, the author tells of her adventures relating to the conception, realization, and consequences of the historic split double album "Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the USSR," which she produced with the Big Time label in Los Angeles after smuggling the "unofficial" music out of the country in nine successive trips over 1985-1986.
- The album and scandal it provoked spurred the process of rock music's recognition and legitimization in the USSR, expanded the boundaries of glasnost and heralded the downfall of communism.
- The book is an easy, captivating and fascinating read; a page-turner full of seamless dialog, filmic scenes, and powerful imagery that reveals a neophyte's curious, passionate, inquisitive glance into a hitherto unknown magic world. Stingray writes in a genuine way about being star-struck, about falling in love (with the lead guitarist of the band Kino), about the amazing cast of characters with whom she spent her life in Russia, and about her own development as a musician.
- Coauthor and daughter Madison Stingray, a songwriter and musician in her own right, captures her mother's admirable and enthralling adventures and conveys them in a language that is accessible but full of genuine passion and genuine poetry. Joanna's archive has dozens of interviews with musicians, artists, producers, journalists -- all leading figures in the underground movement -- and the authors have used these to round out Joanna's recollections and give authentic voice to the characters in the book.
- The second part of the book details how the Red Wave album not only revealed Russian rock to the world, but how it was a powerful catalyst for rock's evolution within Russia as a flood of black market dubs made their way around the country after the album's release, launching the four bands to instant stardom, and complicating Joanna's life, her marriage, her friendships, but also boosting her own career and notoriety.
- Enlightening observations are made about attitudes toward money, work, and art in Soviet society as well as how Russia's transition in the 1990s to a capitalist system forever changed a society long insulated from money's corrupting influence.
- Through the profound, exhaustive, thoughtful answers of musicians to Joanna's simplest questions comes an elaboration of deeply hidden truths about Soviet life, not only about music.
- Cultivating her power among the male rockers, Stingray accumulates a fan base of young women and becomes an important female role model, launching her public career in Russia by standing up for the environment and working with Greenpeace. A funny episode is how she becomes famous overnight for her humorous anti-littering campaign/music video.
- The book is full of inspiration for young rebels but is moderated by Stingray's heartbreak: after many of her closest companions die from substances, suicide, a tragic accident (Victor Tsoi), and AIDS, she realizes she carries their mantle in her memories and extensive archives, and it is for their legacy that she must write the book. It's a real rock 'n' roll ride, ful
About the AuthorJoanna Stingray is an author and musician from Los Angeles, California, who lived for many years in Russia. She became the first American producer of underground Russian rock n' roll when she released the double album Red Wave -- 4 Underground Bands from the USSR -- a compilation of music smuggled out of the USSR by Joanna in 1985. A frequent traveler in and out of Russia, Joanna was interrogated by the KGB and FBI (both thought she was a spy) and in 1987, she became an enemy of the State -- her visa blocked to keep her from entering the Soviet Union to marry Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparyan. After months of intervention by the U.S. State Department, she returned to Russia, married Yuri and in the early '90s became a television host, a recording artist, and well known rock personality throughout Russia. She has published several books in Russia about her time in the music scene as well as much of her photo collection. Her video diaries and interviews of bands and their musicians is the only archive of this clandestine, bygone world.
"FREE TO ROCK," the 2017 documentary exposé directed by Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, features interviews with Joanna Stingray, prominent American musicians who toured the Soviet Union, and several important Russian musicians. It reveals to the world the dismantling socio-political effect of "soft power," and discovers how American rock n' roll and the release of Red Wave during glasnost contributed to the ending of the Cold War.
Madison Stingray is the author of two books as well as songs, poems, and short stories, the common theme of all being a strong female narrative and an attempt at human solidarity. She graduated from Georgetown University magna cum laude and received her Master's degree in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge in England. Growing up, the Leningrad Underground Rock days were stories that became her fairytales, and her contribution to putting those adventures in print is to inspire others that extraordinary things can happen to anyone who fights for something.
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