«Vladivostok rock» — Boston Herald (Boston)

Vladivostok rock
Russian band Trolls for American fans

Like any `80s kid, Ilya Lagutenko wanted his MTV. But in the `80s in Vladivostok, Russia, Comcast wasn`t around to plug kids into an endless stream of mind-blowing, Western-style agitprop. So little Ilya had to settle for what he could get his hands on: black-market bootlegs and contraband cassettes smuggled into the isolated Pacific coast city on cargo ships.

“Growing up in Vladivostok, in this far east port that was even closed off to other citizens during Soviet times, it was very hard to find rock music,■ said Lagutenko, who now fronts one of Russia`s biggest rock bands, Mumiy Troll. “Rock `n` roll was never on television because rock music was bad in Russia. Everything we got came from sailors coming off the ships with these foreign tapes and vinyls.

“I still have no idea how the sailors got the music in,■ continued Lagutenko, whose band headlines a show at the Middle East in Cambridge tomorrow. “But I was listening to everything from AC/DC to Pink Floyd, Blondie and Duran Duran. Sometimes we would buy black-market albums just based on the covers because we`d never even heard of the groups.■

Now, 25 years later, Mumiy Troll has become Russia`s Pink Floyd. OK, maybe not quite.

But Lagutenko is absolutely as hot as Simon Le Bon to the ladies of the Eastern Bloc. And the four-piece Mumiy Troll does mix big rock riff with dance pop that`s not totally unlike “Seven and the Ragged Tiger■ with a little “Highway to Hell■ and “The Wall■ sprinkled in.

After spending the last decade conquering Eastern Europe with KGB-like efficiency, Mumiy Troll (pronounced MOO-me troll) is about to embark on its first stateside tour and its first U.S. release drops in March. While Lagutenko and his comrades have played one-off gigs in New York and Los Angeles, they`ve never pioneered their perestroika in middle America.

“We`ve played some really exotic places from Greenland to China, places where they don`t know where Russia is on a map or what rock `n` roll is,■ Lagutenko said from a hotel room in Los Angeles. “But we have never actually been to the Midwest, so this time we said, ▒Let`s see the country.` We call it musical tourism. Unlike siting on the beach and doing nothing, it`s a trip where we get to see lots of America.■

While there are large pockets of Russian immigrants spread across the United States, Mumiy Troll won`t be able to rely on transplanted fans to make it in America. The band will have to win the hearts and minds of meat-and-potatoes rock fans from Cambridge to Cleveland to Colorado if they`re going to be a stateside success.

Which is fine with Lagutenko. He`s used to selling out arenas in Latvia, but still loves taking on a crowd of 50 at a dive bar.

“That`s actually what we like to do,■ he said. “Playing to the audience that does not know us is our favorite thing. For them, it`s like getting in contact with an extraterrestrial. But somehow we get to know each other through the music.■

Lagutenko knows how to work a tiny room. He cut his teeth entertaining tiny crowds of skeptics for years before the Soviet collapse.

“We didn`t have any audience back then,■ he said. “So when we first got together, it was only our friends we were playing for. But we had a dream and couldn`t give up on it.

“I remember a major part of propaganda was just showing rock bands in the papers. They would show pictures of the band KISS and say, ▒Look at them, they`re not even human.` For the kids like us, it was like, ▒Wow, they`re not even human?` They were like dragons and starmen, and it made me want to create my own world like theirs, my own rock galaxy.■

Jed Gottlieb

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