Zoo Biography

Childhood and youth years Mike Mikhail Naumenko was born on April 18 in Leningrad. Mike's parents were indigenous Leningraders, father is a teacher of a technical university; Mother is a library worker. The head of the family, the main teacher, and the authority of T -shirt was a grandmother. Grandma was a cultural and very educated person, and most importantly - she loved children, understood them and always found a common language with them.

Mike learned to read very early at 5 years old. In the kindergarten, where he began to go at 6 years old, he was, on behalf of the teacher, a regular reader. Mike studied at a school with an enhanced study of English, so after graduation, Mike knew English very well and could well have entered the university philological faculty, but he did not reveal such a desire. The deepening and expansion of language knowledge was always associated with his hobbies.

He read, translated, and reflected such a number of literature that he was already an authoritative specialist in the theory and history of rock music. After school, Mike entered the engineering and construction institute. Misha passed the entrance exams quite successfully, a winter session was safely passed. That is, Mike began his studies at the institute well and calmly.

He liked student life, less strict than at school, a scholarship. But he studied simply by inertia, without any interest. With sin in half, with two academic leave, under the pressure of his parents, he held out four courses and threw the institute when he remained until the end of a year and a half. By the music of years up to fifteen, Mike was absolutely indifferent.

Misha never sang in childhood, did not participate in amateur performances and in general could not stand any public speaking to guests or at school. Parents bought a tape recorder and a guitar to Misha to the sixteenth, that is, in the year, when all the youth was fond of this. He loved his first guitar, very inexpensive and, probably, not very good, gently and devotely.

He studied on the guitar on his own, although perhaps at first someone and friends helped him. Moreover, here Mike showed patience, diligence and perseverance. For a long time he did not know a notate letter, but always refused to go to a music school. For some reason, Mike considered this to be completely unnecessary and even harmful. The first musical experiments of rock music Mike Naumenko became interested in being a schoolboy, about the year, but if everyone then listened to the Beatles Bitles, Mike preferred to listen to the rhythm-end-Bigz "Rolling Stones" Rolling Stones, as well as Folk Rroke Dylan and Marca Bolan, the music of Jefferson AirPlane.

In addition, Mike collected Western articles about T. Rex, Doors, D. Under their influence, Mike began to compose songs in English and tried to play with various compositions. But these songs of Mike were never performed from the stage. Even then, at school, Mike Naumenko clearly defined the style of his work in rock. This is the so -called "direct rock", in which the greatest attention is paid to texts.

Naumenko in rock is known about the first experiments of Naumenko. He tried himself as a musician in many compositions. As part of this group, Mike played a bass at the beginning of the year. The first independent steps in rock music. Acquaintance with B. in the spring?

Their musical relations quickly grow into friendly and for a long time! First, they arrange seats together with a classic rock and roll repertoire under the general name "vocal and instrumental group named after Chuck Berry." Until the summer of the year, they perform at concerts together, hold a mini-festival of acoustic rock. In the middle of the year, Mike and Boris Grebenshchikov, with the support of the abbreviated Aquarium, are released by the joint acoustic album "All Sisters Brothers." Songs of the album, such as "Woman", "Chapter 7", "Bathroom", immediately attract the attention of lovers of rock music with their youth vocabulary, honesty, and, most importantly, poetry.

An interesting fact: the album was recorded in the open air on the banks of the Neva. In March, Mike, as part of the Aquarium, performs at the Tartu Festival "Aquarium" was invited to Tartu as a special guest. Another fact is interesting: in the summer of the year, Naumenko performs a tour of the villages of the Vologda region as part of the Overhaul group, which is perfectly described in the novel “The Unpaclied Circle” of the Guitarist of the Overhaul group, Vyacheslav Zorin.

The first solo album. Finally, in the year in the studio of the Leningrad Bolshoi Theater, Mike Naumenko writes his first solo acoustic album "Sweet N and others." Of the recorded 32 thirty -two songs, only 15 fifteen were included in the album. It was this record that brought the first, although the absentee success of Mike Naumenko. This album has another feature, this was the first real home -made album, which became the prototype of everything that followed it in format and design!

The album made by a home -made way instantly dispersed around the country. Mike immediately began to be called "Leningrad Bob Dylan."Mike himself believed that his roots were in rock and roll X, and persistently searched for musicians with the desire to perform their songs in an "electrical" version. Such an opportunity is provided by Mike Naumenko in the fall of the year.

Autumn of the year. Organization of the Zoo group. In the fall of the year, Mike finally collects the first composition of his own group and, not without regard to the "aquarium" calls it "zoo". The first to membership in the group were two musicians of the student group "Farewell, Black Monday" Alexander Khribunov Gitar and Andrei Danilov Danilov, and then on the recommendation the bassist Ilya Kulikov from the Maki group was invited.

In this composition, the Zoo begins to rehearse in November. First performances. In February, the Zoo for the first time performs on one of the dance floors of the city in the following composition: Mikhail Mike Naumenko - guitar, vocals; Alexander Khrabonov - guitar; Ilya Kulikov - bass; Andrey Danilov - drums. In the spring of the year, the Zoo enters the organized Leningrad rock club, and in May, at the final concert of the first season of the club, shows its own program, which is entirely consisting of Mike's songs.

The style orientation of the "zoo" on rock and roll and rhythm end-blouse, which has already appeared then, has not undergone changes since. The performance of the Zoo caused a stormy, albeit ambiguous reaction of the public. The impression of the group was so unexpected that some of the biased hurried to enroll the "zoo" in the ranks of punk rock. Many young listeners of rock music at that time were brought up on the texts of the Leningrad "Russians" and the Moscow "Time Machine" with their castles, ships, cosmic disasters, so the "Zoo" spoken language in combination with dense rock and roll sound and impressed the new wave.

But with all this, Mike Naumenko came to their liking to many of his naturalness. The songs of many groups at that time, the same “Time Machine”, for example, tried to carry some specific philosophy, morality. Mike already managed to avoid this. One of the concert records served as the basis for the “live” concert album “Blues de Moscou” “Blue de Mosk”, the other translation of the album “Moscow Blues”, which included almost all then hits.

In the same year, Mike Naumenko meets the duet of Garin and Hyperboloids Alexei Rybin and Viktor Tsoi, who had already been hiding as “Kino” by that time and plays a guitar solo at the Group’s debut concert in the March of the year in the Leningrad rock club. The second solo album. In the year, Mike Naumenko records a second solo album called "LV". The number "55" is the year of birth T -shirt.

The material is noticeably different from previous notes with musical diversity, parody directional and replete with dedications to St. Petersburg musicians - "Song for pig" Pig Andrey Panov, "Summer" Song for V. Tsoi, “Guru from Bobruisk” a parody of B. In April of the year in the Lengrad Rock Club, the “Kino” electrical debut is held, in which Mike Naumenko plays as an invited guitarist.

By the way, with a year, Mike repeatedly in a duet with Viktor Tsoi later - the three of us with Nail Kadyrov, the guitar gave several apartment concerts in Leningrad and Moscow. The first festival of the Leningrad rock club. In the year, at the Anthropus studio, Zoo writes its best album "yesterday and the day before yesterday the most famous compositions:" Prigorine Blues "," DRAID "," If you want ", a somewhat unusual for the" ZOOPAR "The capital Ballad" Strange Days ", which then began to be called the encyclopedia of our life.

And the song" Major Rock and Roll "becomes a hit of season, hit About the official lists, at the first festival of a rock club, a pianist and singer Alexander Donskoy appeared as part of the Zoo, who had yet managed to change many groups from a “long distance”, which in the middle of the 10ths shone at concerts in honor of the birthday of the participants of “The Beatles” "Earthlings".

Although the performance of the Zoo turned out to be uneven, and the group did not become a laureate, Mike himself received a prize for the best texts. By the next winter, the original composition of the group broke up. Ilya Kulikov was drafted into the army, the search for a bassist began. Kulikova’s place was taken by Mikhail Vasiliev "Aquarium". He graduated from the institute and went to Petropavlovsk as a drummer Andrei Danilov, had to look for a replacement for him.

Another musician of the Aquarium appears in the group - Peter Troshchenkov. The second festival of the Leningrad rock club. In March, the Zoo Naumenko and Khrabunov first appeared on the stage of the Lengrad Rock Club, accompanied by the rhythm section of the Aquarium: Mikhail Vasiliev Bas and Peter Troshchenkov. In May, the successful performances of the new Zoo composition at the concert on the occasion of the three years of the Leningrad Rock Club Leningrad Palace of Youth Mikhail Vasiliev Bas, who at that time, actually left the Aquarium, plays at the Zoo by the end of the year, and Petra Troshchenkov was replaced by the best drummer of the city Evgeny Guberman ex-Aquarium, August.The performance of the Zoo at the second Leningrad rock festival of June has become one of its central events.

By that time, the composition of the group was as follows: Mikhail Mike Naumenko - a guitar, vocals; Alexander Khrabonov - guitar; Mikhail Vasiliev - Bas; Evgeny Guberman - drums. Interestingly, Naumenko, Guberman and Vasiliev in the period? A small digression is needed here. Let me remind you that in December, on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, the period of campaign against amateur rock and many famous and popular groups began.

In the year, the domestic press is actively included in this campaign. Two articles by V. Vlasov in the Leningrad "shift" and an article by composer Alexander Morozov in Komsomolskaya Pravda, who came out in the year and be frankly provocative in nature, undoubtedly influenced the decision of the jury of the second festival of the Leningrad rock club.