Playing at Leo Records 40th Birthday thoughts.
Back in the late 80s early 90s I was at art school in Falmouth. I was already taking the tentative musical steps towards wanting to make music a big part of my life. I was a raw hungry, more arrogance than ability, young man with eyes on technical ability and the need for respect. I still had the they must listen to me for I am playing childishness that comes at that time (see the Elvis film Jailhouse Rock to see a good description). Fame and fortune beckoned it was my right so I thought.
Then a series came on the TV charting the Russian New Music movement. It followed how musicians in the then USSR were rebelling against the establishment, and the control they had over creative thought. These people were taking real risks just to make this music. One programme in particular 'Letter from Volgograd', depicted a place where the pollution was so bad it would shorten your life and the living standards were close to barbaric. Really not the advert that the CCCP would have wanted you to see. The people there had no way out, they couldn't just nip to Paris and start afresh. This was it. So what did they do? They created some of the most beautiful and exciting music I had ever heard. It was their means of escape. The place where their spirits could lift. Their defiance was inspiring . They weren't endlessly making demos to try and get signed and wanting to be rock stars. They made this music because they had to. Suddenly I realised that I was approaching this music thing all wrong. It took a number years for it to fully sink in but once it did it changed my whole attitude towards music. As one of those meme things said 'If the path ahead of you is clear, you are on someone else's.'
Fast forward a good few years and I am standing on a doorstep ringing a bell for the door to be opened by the man who made those films, Leo Feigin, having as a member of Fourth Page released a record on his label. It was quite a moment. So for me when I get on that stage at Oto that young hungry man (that sat in front of the TV all those years ago) will understand that the path he took musically was the right one.
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/leo-records-40th-anniversary-show/
