OFFICIAL BOOTLEG: FIRSOV'S RECORD (1990)
Songs carelessly performed to the accompaniment of an electric guitar by me, exhausted from fever and a severe runny nose, and soulfully recorded by Sergey Firsov at home in December 1988 on a cassette player. The one obtained by Sergey himself is called the "Russian Field of Experiment", and in this bootleg form it has an irresistibly wide unauthorized circulation. In the summer of 1990, I put a reverb on the record, partially cut the background, cut out the clicks between the songs and, having made a kind of selection from it, kind of "officialized" in the form of an album like this.
Yegor Letov. "Official Albumography of GrOb-Records" (1990).
Our French friends, Nathalie and Joël, wanted to release Yegor and Yankee's recordings in France, but they asked for acoustic recordings, counting primarily on Russian emigrants, fearing that they would not appreciate the recordings of "G. 0." an Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder, into which you could stick a guitar into two microphone inputs, and through the Aiwa soundboard also a stereo microphone, and mix it all with each other.
We hung the microphone from the chandelier, Letov sat on one side, Yanka and I sat on the other, and off we went! We recorded it quite quickly, almost without takes. Letov was in great shape and sang from the bottom of his heart, Yanka and I sang along with him here and there. but they were never able to publish it in Paris, five or six years later we published it in St. Petersburg with Oleg Grabko on his leiManchester Files. The title was given by Letov himself, who called this record "Russian Field of Experiments", but later he recorded an album with the same name, asking me to rename my record "Russian Field of Experiment" - well, a genius has the right to whims.
The recording turned out to be very light and light, Egor was at the peak of creativity, and this is very well felt, many of my friends still consider this recording to be the best of Egor Letov's acoustic recordings. I am very glad that it will finally be released on vinyl - as Robert Plant said, on a "black disc with a hole" - I feel that I will have to buy a vinyl camera!
Sergey Firsov, November 4, 2021
