KINO

1980's... back in the USSR. (All photos from Last.fm)





The guy with the eyebrows on the far right is Yuri Kasparian, currently guitarist in the band U-Piter (Ю-Питер).




We need more Viktor Tsoi. But let's give the other guys in the band a chance, too...



Random Kino facts:
- they started as Garin i giperboloidy in 1981 (named after a 1920's science fiction novel)
- all songs were written by Tsoi, including "Mother Anarchy"
- the band was so popular that after Tsoi's death in 1990, the words “Цой жив!” ("Tsoi is alive!") and “КИНО” spread as graffitti throughout the crumbling Soviet Union
- they were inspired by The Smiths, The Clash, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Duran Duran, and Vladimir Vysotsky (what, you can see that yourself?!)

Here's an interview with journalist Artem Troitsky about the underground rock scene in the last decades before the fall of the Soviet Union, and what went wrong in the 1990's (in German).
I also found a nice blog about Soviet and post-Soviet underground rock and punk bands: Soveticus. Here's an interview with the guy who keeps the blog. He plays in a punk band himself, tells about anti-fa activism in Russia (almost never mentioned in Western media), and even mentions Swedish "proggare"!