This is a quick post to highlight, for the statisticians among you, two tails of fame.

My pictures below show an informal but nervous event in which a few hundred people fought and crammed their way in to see Viktor Tsoi and Yuri Kasparyan play a few songs. Their fame was clandestine. The video at the end shows what had happened to them (as Kino) in four short but tumultuous years in the late stages of the Soviet empire. It’s the difference between The Cavern and Shea Stadium, Russian style.

Things used to take a long time to set up in the Soviet Union. And that was as true of an underground concert as anything else. As I recall, there were a few technical problems before and during that 1986 concert; had there not been, I doubt I would have felt comfortable getting up and snapping. The artist is on the stage getting the unreliable equipment working, while the audience mills around after a very un-Soviet crush to get in. I don’t know if anybody had to pay – I certainly didn’t because Viktor and Yuri had invited me and the language-course crowd along as their guests.

The contrast with the later footage could not be more stark. There was a distinct absence of anything official in spring 1986, given how many people there were congregating in such an enclosed space. There’s a polite restraint amongst the audience, as if they’ve come to a favourite author’s signing session at the local bookstore. Nobody wants to embarrass themselves by looking too enthusiastic once through the door! But by 1990 a real hysteria has set in. As Viktor arrives for his last concert at Moscow’s huge Luzhniki Grand Sports Arena*, just a couple of months prior to his death, the streets leading up to the Olympic stadium are lined with scores of Russian police.

A little translation for the video: the titles about halfway through, as a hand menacingly covers the lens, read “Luzhniki Grand Sports Arena 24 June 1990″ and then “The Last Concert of Viktor Tsoi”.

Boy, would I fight to get into a room with them now!

*For soccer fans, the stadium is due to host the 2008 UEFA Champions League Final on May 21.