PRESS
Was the subculture's birth a CIA plot, as one Russian legislature recently claimed, or a genuine musical phenomena? The White House, in fact, played a hands-on role in this soft power strategy, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter's administration helped send the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to the Soviet Union in 1977 for the first tour of an American rock band on Soviet soil.
- The Atlantic
recent press
War in Ukraine: Backlash in Russia against anti-war musiciansBBC MARCH 21 2022
A few days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one of Russia's largest media companies, Russian Media Group (RMG), released a statement explaining why it would no longer be playing certain artists on its popular radio stations or music TV channel.
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how rock music helped bring down the berlin wallCULTURE SONAR AUGUST 23 2019
This year marks 30 years since East German officials ordered the opening of the Berlin Wall, a physical and symbolic barrier between the communist “Eastern Bloc” and Western culture...
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MEET JOANNA STINGRAY, the american who jumped the iron curtain and married a soviet rock starRUSSIA BEYOND APRIL 9 2019
Tailed by the KGB and FBI, rubbing shoulders with Soviet underground rock legends, and daily life in the USSR – her new book 'Stingray in Wonderland' is a real page turner.
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‘FREE TO ROCK’ breaks down social reform through musicTHE SEAHAWK APRIL 2 2019
During UNC Wilmington’s annual Communications Studies Week, Producer and Author Doug Yeager came to show and discuss a documentary called “FREE TO ROCK.” The documentary, directed by four-time Emmy winning filmmaker Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, is a documentary about the significant impact rock music had on the demise of the communist system behind the iron curtain and the Soviet Union.
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Cincinnati Native Doug Yeager Returns to UC with the Documentary 'Free to Rock' |
Long-Haired Anti-Regime People: Was Rock’n Roll Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall? |
how a guitar maker starting rocking back in the u.s.s.r.NEW YORK TIMES MAY 25 2018
Yuriy Shishkov, who came to the United States in 1990, was a fan of Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore while growing up in the Soviet Union. Decades later, Shishkov designed one for Prince...
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Rockin' Behind the iron curtain: to russia with love
AMERICAN ROUTES DECEMBER 17 2017
During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department started sending jazz musicians overseas with the tactical aim of using their hot licks to thaw relations with Eastern Bloc countries...
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BroadcASTERS TUNE IN WITH FREE TO ROCKPop Twist Entertainment is celebrating the news that broadcasters in the US, Europe and Middle East have acquired its music documentary Free To Rock – How Rock and Roll Brought Down the Wall.
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X-ray decks: the lost bone music of the Soviet Union
GIAN MARIA VOLPICELLI AUGUST 1 2017
The music flowing out of the record player sounds distant, muffled, surrounded by whispers. The singer’s voice alternates moments of clarity with crackly sputters – as if coming out of a wormhole from a windy day in the Fifties.
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MUSIC BEYOND BORDERS |
Rocking the Stasi |
THE EUROPEAN JULY 26 2017
Rock’n’Roll translated to rebellion and youth. Future and Freedom. It often meant freedom from the “establishment”, the conservative parents, the partially reactionary West-German society of the 1980s, writes Lia Maiello. David Gilmour, Iggy Pop, Joe Elliott, Jimi Hendrix, Debbie Harry, Kurt Cobain and David Bowie – those are the heroes of my youth...
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BBC NEWS JULY 1 2017
When music captures the spirit of freedom it can cross any border. In 1961, Communist East Germany built a wall across Berlin, and tried to seal itself off from the West. But new research shows how concrete, barbed wire and a huge effort by the secret police, the Stasi, failed to silence the seductive beat of rock and roll and punk...
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FREE TO ROCK - Ossia come la musica può cambiare il mondo
Venerdì 2 giugno 2017, ho partecipato alla conferenza stampa “Come il rock abbia decretato la fine della guerra fredda – vero?” (Wie Rock-Musik den Kalten Krieg beendete – Oder nicht?), presso l’Institute for Cultural Diplomacy a Berlino.
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Remembering Soviet Pop: the USSR's Vocal-Instrumental EnsemblesRYAN WAUSON MARCH 14 2017
“Vesyolye Rebiata” (The Jolly Fellows), “Krasnye Maki” (The Red Poppies), and “Siniaia Ptitsa” (Blue Bird)—these are just a few of the bands that dominated Soviet mainstream music from the 1960s to the 1980s. While the West twisted, discoed, and boogied, the people of the Soviet Union were treated to a bland but charming, state-censored version of Western music: the so-called vocal-instrumental ensembles...
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Early press
What Colbert and Springsteen Can Teach the Next President About American PowerANDRÁS SIMONYI SEP 28 2016, 5:37PM
There was something magical and even transcendental in the air last Friday at the Ed Sullivan Theater when Stephen Colbert hosted Bruce Springsteen for his first-ever interview in the “Late Show.” This was a bit of rock history in the making, in line with the theater’s great tradition.
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Life After Chase: Nick Binkley
CHASE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION MAY 3 2016
And then there’s the Nick Binkley who, all the while he was soaring in the business world, was also building a reputation and discography as a songwriter, guitarist and music producer.
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The Illicit Soviet Records Hidden on X-Ray PlatesIf the images in the video above look like ghostly relics of a bygone era, that’s because they are. They’ve been collected by Stephen Coates for his book, X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music ‘On the Bone’, and they were recently on display at The Horse Hospital in London...
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Free To Rock Asks Us To Reconsider The Power of CultureJACKSON SINNENBERG NOVEMBER 19 2015
The question is nearly as old as humanity itself. Which is the more effective tool to end a war: words or weapons? Here, in Washington, DC, we often enjoy playing up both as the choice armaments of the United States of America for confronting and ending conflict...
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New Documentary Reveals How Rock and Roll Music Helped End The Cold WarJOE TASH MAY 1 2014, 8:33 AM
Valery Saifudinov clearly remembers his first exposure to rock and roll music. He was 10 years old and walking down the street in his native Riga, Latvia (then part of the former Soviet Union) when he heard “Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill Haley & His Comets blaring from a window...
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Film Proves Rock Music Toppled CommunismPUBLIC BROADCASTING OF LATVIA
MARCH 11 2015, 10:15 AM The US documentary film 'Free to Rock' had its world premiere screening at the Splendid Palace cinema theatre in Riga Wednesday, telling the story of how, as a critical form of free expression, rock’n’roll music was instrumental in bringing down the Iron Curtain, and leaving open the question of what rock music’s role against the...
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Spies, Spooks, and Rock 'n' Roll at Twilight of The Cold War CARL SCHRECK APR 21 2014, 5:45 PM
A pro-Kremlin lawmaker spawned a tsunami of scorn in Russia this week by alleging that Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi's Perestroika-era anthems were composed by CIA operatives trying to destabilize the Soviet regime...
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Ex-pat Russian Rocker Laments Canceled Ukraine ConcertsGARY WARTH APR 3 2014, 5:58 PM
Valery “Seisky” Saifudinov has been watching the unrest and controversy in Ukraine, Crimea and Russia in recent weeks with a little more frustration than most of his fellow Escondido residents...
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‘Louie, Louie:’ Why the FBI spent two years (and 119 pages) investigating one songLESLIE TAYLOR, THE STAR MAY 24, 2013
The FBI investigation of everybody’s favourite party song, “Louie, Louie,” took two years and 119 pages of documents, the agency reveals....
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Red Wave: How Soviet Rock Made it to The USThe 25-year-old American singer Joanna Stingray played a major role in the fate of Sergei Kuryokhin and Leningrad rock. The stepdaughter of a successful gallery owner from Los Angeles, she came to Petersburg as a tourist and unexpectedly discovered a rich rock...
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Rock 'n' RevolutionCOUNTLESS rock bands have sung about rebellion. One of the few that can claim it spurred a revolution is the Plastic People of the Universe, who — starting with no political agenda — catalyzed democracy in Czechoslovakia...
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Russian Rock Band Keeps the FaithPATRICK JACKSON MAR 25 2004, 4:09 PM
With a lethal name like DDT, the band could never be mistaken for the sugary mass of Russia's all-pervasive pop music.
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Rock & Roll was certainly a contributing factor to ending the Cold War.
- President Jimmy Carter