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Summer's here! I'm heading off the warm weather and piercing sun with a classic band this week: Рок-Ателье (Rok-Atel'ye, 'Rock-Atelier') are a band established by Kris Kelmi (1955-2019), real name Anatoly Kelmi, in 1980. Like many bands of that time Рок-Ателье went through several 'periods', with different line-ups and hiatuses throughout. 'Свежий ветер' dates from the first years of the band's existence, and it's that period we are interested in today.

Several factors played into the creation of Рок-Ателье. In 1980 Kris Kelmi was working for the Moscow State Lenin Komsomol Theatre (best known as the Lenkom Theatre). According to sssrviapesni.info he'd performed in Аэропорт in the 70s, which is a name we will have heard before. 👍 It so happened that on that year, the band that was performing with the Lenkom Theatre were planning to go professional by themselves, which meant the theatre would need to put together a replacement. Kris Kelmi promptly gathered several musicians who became the first iteration of Рок-Ателье, and for the first part of the 80s they stayed with the theatre, taking part in their stage productions as well as making their own music. It's pretty difficult to find a good quality image of this first line-up online, but thankfully, Рок-Ателье's first album cover immortalized them for us.

(By the way, that first band who left? None other than Аракс of Week 11, who would run into their own difficulties only a couple of years later... 😣)

Pictured above are: Kris Kelmi, Pavel Smeyan, Alexander Smeyan, Sergei Berezkin, Boris Oppenheim and Yuri Titov, who were the first set of musicians gathered for the Рок-Ателье project. Aside from Kris Kelmi, probably the best-known figure here is Pavel Smeyan, who was the main vocalist for Рок-Ателье up to 1983; he's actually how I discovered this band, as his contributions to the band primarily show up under his name on Youtube, not Рок-Ателье 😅 As one might guess from the surnames, Pavel and Alexander Smeyan were brothers, twins in fact. They'd previously performed together in the ВИА 'Виктория' (Victoria), and both were present for Рок-Ателье's first album recording, as well as their first onstage performance in September 1980. Presumably they had high hopes for how this stint would work out.

Unfortunately things took a terrible turn. In December 1980, Alexander Smeyan died at the age of 23. One of the most untimely deaths in Soviet music, and one of the most mysterious, as the circumstances around his death have never been resolved: the official cause was suicide by hanging, but Pavel Smeyan always maintained his brother had been murdered, and there are a number of suspicious factors that seem to back up that account. (e.g. Despite what the official papers said, the medical examination appears to have shown that Alexander died of a stab wound to the liver, and later Pavel Smeyan discovered that a violent brawl had taken place at the date and place his brother died.)

The loss of Alexander Smeyan was what drove Pavel Smeyan to a lifetime of song. It seems that he did not seriously take up vocal work until his brother died, that being more Alexander's area when they were playing together. Рок-Ателье's fortunes looked up a lot after that - they were involved in the premiere of Juno and Avos, one of the most popular rock operas produced in the Soviet Union, as well as going professional themselves in 1982. 'Свежий ветер' is a product of that intermediate time when everything was changing for everybody, both for grief and for hope; I feel that the lyrics, as well as the manner in which it is sung, reflects that very strongly.