to leave and make music in a period of hopeful despair well to discuss that i'm now joined by john astin gray an american musician and an avid chronicler of the leningrad iraq scene john it's so good to talk to you thank you very much for your time thank you for inviting me now you have a very interesting a very unusual and i think is a somewhat dramatic story you came to the soviet union for. just won the week you called but it is big one of our biggest rock stars on line and he just shows you around is that how it all began that is how it all began a friend of mine her older sister was married to a russian emigre and when he heard i was going to visit russia and he knew i was a rocker in los angeles he said you need to call boys' school bench cock he's the most famous underground rocker in russia.

welcome back to worlds apart with john astin gray an american musician and a prominent speaker of the sylvia to rock scene in the nine hundred eighty s. john i know that there were long periods. during which you did not visit russia i think it was twelve or maybe even twenty years at a time that you stayed away from this country was there any particular reason for that you know when i left russia i came back to los angeles and i had my daughter and i kind of became a full time mother and again things had changed you know i was lucky that i lived through russia really three three different periods i was there under communism i was there through glass dos and i was there and capitalism and communism was really interesting for me because it was kind of you know close but behind closed doors there were parties and all this interesting happening you know the favorite time was when the russian people seen the happiest because nothing has changed much except for they could speak more freely and say things but then the last period was capitalism and that was a difficult time in the ninety's w