Belyj sneg, siéryj liód
Na rasstraskavshieicya ziemlé
Adiyalom laskutym na niéi
Górad v darojnom piétlié
A nad góradom aplivut ablaka
Zakryvaya nebesnyj svet
A nad góradam jóltim dim
Górad dvie tisyachi let.
Projtih pod svetom zviezde po imeni solntse
I dvie tisyachi let vaina
Vaina biez asóbih prichin
Vaina diéla maladih
Lekarstvo prótiv marchin
Krasnaya krasnaya krov
Cherez chas ujé prosta ziemlya
Cherez dva na néi tsveti i trava
Cherez tri ana snóva jiiva
I sogreta luchami svezdi po imeni solntse.
I my znaem chto tak bylo vcegda
Chto sudbóiu byl ból'she lyubim
Kto jivíót pa znakomam druguim
I komu umirat molodim
On ne pomnit slóva da i slóva niet
On ne pómnit ni chinov ni imen
I spasóben dotyanutcya da zviezd
Ne schitaya chto eta són
I upast' apalennyj sviezdoj po imeni solntse.
The band was formed in the summer of 1981 in Leningrad, USSR (now St.
Petersburg, Russia) as rock band Garin i giperboloidy (after Aleksei
Nikolaevich Tolstoi's novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin)
consisting of Tsoi, Aleksei Rybin and Oleg Valinskiy. A year later, the
name of the band was changed to Kino. Since rock music was considered a
"bourgeois style" in Soviet Union, Kino, like the other rock bands,
performed only in semi-underground clubs and at musicians' apartments
(kvartirniks).
In the summer of 1982, Kino's first album 45
(named for its length in minutes) was recorded as a collaboration with
the band Aquarium. The album was slowly distributed through underground
channels and gave a new fame to the group.
The band's first real
hit was the album Night released in 1986; the six songs from the album
were included in the Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the USSR
compilation disc released in the U.S. in 1986.
At the beginning
of the Perestroika era, the band gained more prominence, and the 1988
album Blood Type, together with the film Needle (Игла, Igla), which
starred Tsoi, brought the band to the pinnacle of popularity.
During
the next two years, the band released another album and did shows in
the USSR and abroad, attracting enormous audiences, until August 15,
1990, when Tsoi died in a car accident near Riga. The tape with the
vocal track for the new album survived the accident. The album was
completed by the rest of the band and released in 1990 without a title,
though it is always cited as The Black Album since it has a wholly black
cover.
The band's popularity in the Soviet Union was so
extraordinarily high that after Tsoi's death, the words Цой жив! ("Tsoi
is alive!") and КИНО appeared on public surfaces throughout the country.
Writing these words became a kind of a memorial ritual among fans of
the band. Even today the slogan occasionally surfaces in urban graffiti.
All
Kino songs were written by Viktor Tsoi. His lyrics are characterized by
a poetic simplicity. The ideas of liberty were present (one song was
named "Mother Anarchy") but, on the whole, the band's message to the
public was not overly politically charged. Their songs largely focused
on life, freedom and love. Daily life is embedded in Kino's vocabulary
(for instance, there is a song about the elektrichka, a commuter train
many suburbanites use daily).
