Time Out at 40

Andrey Arshavin | Liza Boyarskaya | Sergey Shnurov

Sergey Shnurov

Sergey Shnurov
Sergey Shnurov is the fabulously foul-mouthed frontman of ska band, Leningrad. Banned from playing in Moscow by Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov (it’d never happen to Coldplay), Leningrad prove that punk's not dead, it's just moved to the Baltic.

You were born in the city that your band’s named after. Is there a sense of pride in that?
No, it’s a paradox. We both, me and you, were born in a city which doesn’t exist anymore. Leningrad is a phantom, a myth. It was much rougher than St Petersburg. When I think of Leningrad, the first things that come to mind are the Blockade, Kirovsky factory, grey streets.

Do you think it was the right thing to rename the city?
St Petersburg is not a city, it’s a megapolis. There’s no urban consciousness, there’s too many out-of-towners. Petersburg was originally intended to be the city for outsiders, it was to be used to re-educate them. But it's all turned upside down. Now the newcomers own the city.

What do you think of Time Out ?
I see it here and there, but I don’t read magazines at all. There’s just one, Vlast [Power, a political weekly], to be up to date with the political situation. But that’s all. If you don’t have any cultural life to speak of, who needs magazines?

www.Spb.timeout.ru

Andrey Arshavin | Liza Boyarskaya | Sergey Shnurov
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