HOME | BAND | MUSIC | HISTORY | REVIEWS | GALLERY | GIGS | GUESTBOOK | CONTACT
reviews index

Southbound Train going up North     russian version

      Andrey Burlaka
Founder of Leningrad Rock Club,
Publisher of legendary underground magazine "RIO",
Coauthor of most of the rock encyclopedias in Russia,

www.rock-n-roll.ru

In the frames of the “NevaDelta” Festival a unique international blues trio SOBO toured in St.Petersburg, Russia on July 13th-15th, 2002.

Frankly speaking, no one’s ever heard about the Israeli blues, though logically, there’s nothing incredible about it:
Israel as one of the heaviest melting cauldrons of today’s civilization throws together and intermixes in the grinders thousands of people from different parts of the world, so it’s likely to meet someone with the similar feeling of taste and blues in his blood in its small territory.

However, in the history and geography of the popular music Israel remains almost an entire white spot:
a couple of art rock bands in the early 70s, pop music in 80s and 90s – that’s it.

And as for the blues… That’s why I expected to hear the promised (by Steve Nekrasov) musicians with qualm. And I was wrong.


The first surprise to see was that one of the guys was our fellow countryman:
in the late 80s and early 90s Daniel Kriman played bass guitar in COSA NOSTRA band together with Ksyusha Yermakova (Jan Ku band now) and Ilia Alexeyev (NARODNOYE OPOLCHENIYE and many others).

In 1992 when the rock’n’roll situation (and not only that) got worse in postreconstructional Russia, he left for Jerusalem, where several years and bands later he met the other guys.

Sammy Ganzman was born in Haifa but set forth for a better part to the Motherland of his predecessors, to Memphis, Tennessee.

He had played in many bands and with lots of musicians - all from country music to rock’n’roll, after this he returned to the Promised Land. Eli “Fish” Grundman also comes from the USA.

Soon we are going to release a more detailed biography of the SOBO in our Encyclopedia (by the way, its name was taken from the prewar Big Bill Broonzy, more famous now through Muddy Waters’ performing), as far as the Russian background of one of the guys makes the band our potential client.)


Actually the SOBO was going to perform at the “NevaDelta” Festival, but its date was changed and it turned out to be fatal for the guys – their visas would expire soon, that’s why Steve decided to arrange shows at St.Petersburg’s clubs. In essence, it worked in favor of the band.

They played three big concerts instead of a thirty minutes set at the festival. The first one was at the PORT club on Saturday night July 13th. Inspite of Sasha Gnatyuk’s, new art-director’s efforts (he’s also a guitarist and an arranger), this place still remains strange for live music.

And an extremely unfriendly security, an expensive bar, absence of a good sound system and sound technician made the place another typical postsoviet discotheque for an undemanding audience.

Still the SOBO managed to impress everyone even there.

The next night was at the RED CLUB on July 14th. This place is also special, but more acceptable for music. At last, the brightest and emotionally saturated show happened on July 15th at the JFC CLUB.

A blues trio from St.Petersburg FOREST GUMP opened the SOBO. I do not know why the band took the name of a simple-hearted Tom Hanks’ personage, but the band did well, more than that. An elegant solo, neat phrasing, a combination of the traditional approach and their own view on the classical blues – and FOREST GUMP appeared to be an ideal stage partner for the SOBO.

The guests themselves were incredible. Their repertoire is also based on the standards, mostly, and at the same time the musicians are not limited within the strict style frames.
You could hear Delta and Chicago tunes, Memphis’country blues and the white blues of the 60s, and rock’n’roll, funk and soul tunes. Daniel Kriman’s technique is not widely spread: he uses slide in acoustic Gibson, without a pickup using minimum of processing (mostly wah-wah).

And he gets a specific sound - on one hand it reminds an archaic Elmore James’ acoustics, and on the other hand – brothers Vaughans’ modern blues-rock. Besides, Dan played harmonica, creating this dense and prominent sound background. Sammy, a singing bass player, made a good partner to him (one couldn’t sing better than a native speaker), who was constantly keeping the audience tense, tactfully filling in the technical breaks, making kids going and slightly provoking the audience, communicating to it easily, not getting embarrassed on account of the language barrier – to be short, he was the heart of the big company. A tacit drummer (hence his nickname) compensated the deficiency of words by the abundance of the music, delivering the reliable and an inventively built sound foundation to the guitarists.


During the three nights the SOBO played approximately the same set of the blues, making it in a new way each time.

The starry moments of the show were the bright and unpredictably intriguing interpretations:
Howling Wolf’s “Ain’t Superstitious”, Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” and “Sweet Chicago Home” (the last one was played with Steve on harmonica), Muddy Waters “Got My Mojo Working” (Sammy made the audience sing it) and John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom”, edgy cover-version “Who Do You Love”, “I am Ready» and, finally, a specially made for Russia DOORS’ cover-version “Roadhouse Blues”.

Except for the classical things, SOBO played several of their original songs. SOBO featured Big Blues Revival’s leader who sang his favorite “You shook me” – somewhat in-between the Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin.

If the PORT club was half full, and Red Club was full conventionally, so the JFC club was completely filled in and the audience went on the rampage. As usual, I say again my favorite phrase: Wish You Were Here.

Andrey Burlaka



HOME | BAND | MUSIC | HISTORY | REVIEWS | GALLERY | GIGS | GUESTBOOK | CONTACT