Grazhdanskaya Oborona
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Grazhdanskaya Oborona or Gr.Ob. (Russian: Гражданская Оборона, Гр. Об.) is one of the earliest and most famous Russian punk bands. The name of the band can be translated from Russian as "The Civil Defence" (but "grob" also translates as "coffin").
The band was created by a young Soviet dissident Egor Letov in December of 1984. At that point, Russian underground music was close to its peak. Rock bands such as Aquarium, Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), and Kino were enormously popular; however, punk rock as a genre was new to Soviet underground musical scene. Gr.Ob. were the ones to fill this vacant niche, and now maintains a huge army of fans, admirers, and followers. It inspired hundreds of subsequent Soviet and then Russian punk bands.
Up to the collapse of the USSR, Gr.Ob was often viewed as an anti-Soviet band. In his deeply symbolic lyrics, Letov often spoke against militarism, dictatorship, the Soviet system, the war in Afghanistan, etc. That was the reason why the band was censored and prohibited. Letov and his bandmates spent years in hiding, recording songs in kitchens and cellars of their friends' flats. Despite heavy censorship, the band played on several rock-festivals (notably its premiere in Novosibirsk in 1987, where it was considered a sensation).
Gr.Ob.'s sound mainly consists of distorted electric guitars, simple bass lines, and Letov's deep, energetic voice.
Russian punk, songs at one time passed from tape copy to tape copy by hand (magnitizdat). Many modern-day artists such as Chizh, Vopli Vidoplyasova, Yegor Letov, and Smyslovye Galucinacii recorded a terrific tribute album covering GrOb's songs.ru:Гражданская Оборона