Songs that survive time In the distant, near “stagnant-table” years, very little was written about the “Machine...” and, it seems, only bad. This, like, bourgeois petty-temie, clouding the brains of young people, underground frond and generally rotten amateur activity. In short, “you are going the wrong way, comrades,” so you will get a “blue bird stew” (this was the name of the long-standing derogatory and devastating material about the group in Komsomolskaya Pravda). Meanwhile, as time has shown, in the stew under the sauce, but already from the litter of the same blue bird, turned just the persecutors of the "Machine...", including famous Soviet composers, and prominent Komsomol workers, and, of course, "active" members of the party. Today it is obvious that all their mass “special opinions” (or, more simply, sweeping letters) concocted at the behest of Suslov ideologists from the Central Committee of the CPSU, did not stand the test of the “time machine” (literally and figuratively). But the time of the drivers was long, if not eternal.
Their songs have really outlived time and sound even better today than the day before yesterday. With each decade, they insist like good wine, and become tastier – sweeter, more tart, more desirable. And the litmus test of this process again, as in previous years, is the heated reaction of thousands of people. Andrei Makarevich, Alexander Kutikov, Evgeny Margulis, Andrei Derzhavin and Valery Efremov meet as national heroes.
Each of the “machinist” songs is welcomed with warm applause, and many of these epochal hits are happily sung by the listeners themselves. Puppets, I Drink to the Bottom, My Friend Plays the Blues Best, Bonfire, Horses, Three Windows, Train, She Was Good, Blue Bird, Turn, Candle - yes, it would seem, all the same, stuffed with a set of hits, but! Why do you listen to them over and over again, sometimes singing along, reflecting, and often dropping a tear? Because there are wonderful melodies, because these songs are about us, our being, because there are coded the best years of our lives; because they are written in elegant Aesop language, in many of them subtle poetry and a lot of space for inquiring mind and imagination. Because their songs are honest.
Moreover, none of these compositions is not only not outdated, but has acquired new shades of meaning in the new era. For example, surprisingly modern and patriotic sounds today does not give in to adversity “Starling”, who sang everything in the winter and “couldn’t figure out where to fly, why is he called somewhere”, if his homeland, songs and friends are here? By the way, he still sings. “And who needs his trill if spring is already spring? Who says the song ends in winter? It's not over! What a stupid starling... How few words and how many thoughts! So much humor and, most importantly, irony! And the melody?! Light, jerky, cheerful, built on the reception of staccato, she brilliantly imitates the jump of a starling from branch to branch, his “flushes” and “trills”. And now let’s project it on the life of an individual. Not much in common? Here's the picture. Little masterpiece. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but only in December I realized that this seemingly unpretentious thing is about me. That is, apparently, these songs we still open and open.
By the way, I do not understand the kind of “smart” people who endlessly repeat that “Time Machine” is not rock, but “Soviet style VIA” or just “songs in pop arrangement with guitars.” Oh my God, it doesn't matter if it's rock or grog, blues or jazz, Britpop or trip-hop, if it's trembling, forever young and talented! Yes, for the most part, these are really lyrical, philosophical songs, but try writing them! Simplicity is the point. These songs are worth other cantatas and symphonies.