POP REVIEW : Soviet Group Shows It Can Hold Its Own in Land of Rock ‘n’ Roll

It took quite a bit of coaxing to get Steve Quillen, 16, to accompany his aunt to Thursday night’s premiere San Diego performance by Soviet rock band Vladimir Kuzmin and Dinamik.

He likes rock ‘n’ roll, but this Soviet stuff? It couldn’t possibly be the real thing, Quillen thought.

He thought wrong.

“I never heard any Soviet bands before, and I figured they would simply try to copy our bands, our songs,” Quillen said. “But these guys were great--they have their own sound, their own songs--and I was really impressed.

“They definitely know how to rock ‘n’ roll.”

Adam Weinberg, 28, agreed. “I’m not quite sure what I expected,” he said, “but I certainly didn’t expect rock ‘n’ roll.”

Indeed. Judging from the first of Vladimir Kuzmin and Dinamik’s six-night stand at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s Sherwood Auditorium, it’s apparent that there is, in fact, rock ‘n’ roll behind the Iron Curtain--good, solid, original rock ‘n’ roll that holds its own against anything the Western world has to offer.

Throughout their nearly 90-minute, 13-song set, singer-guitarist-songwriter Kuzmin and his five-piece group--superstars in the Soviet Union, where each of their last three albums has sold more than a million copies--consistently wowed the disappointingly small crowd of fewer than 200 with their infectious tunes, their stellar musicianship, and their dynamic stage show.

They ripped and they shredded, they thrilled and they chilled. So what if most of their songs were sung in Russian? A screaming guitar solo is a screaming guitar solo, a catchy melody is a catchy melody, a driving beat is a driving beat.

Sure, there was an obvious Western influence, both musically and visually. “When I Become Another Man” sounded a lot like Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young,” “Save Me Tonight” like Ultravox’s “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes,” and “Simone” like the Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut.”

Wearing a black jacket, black hat, and too much makeup, Kuzmin resembled a cross between Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks; bassist Valentine Lezov, with a bandanna tied around his head, had the New Jersey tough-guy look of former Bruce Springsteen guitarist Little Steven Van Zandt.

But that’s to be expected. Rock ‘n’ roll was, after all, born in the U.S.A., and Kuzmin and Dinamik are no more guilty of plagiarism than, say, the Scorpions (from Germany), Golden Earring (from the Netherlands), or any of the other foreign rock bands already accepted by American pop audiences.

This influence, however, was a lot less pronounced than one might expect. Although sung in English, the dramatic ballad “Mamma, I’m in Trouble” tackled adolescent angst from a Soviet perspective; the song was highlighted by a weepy guitar solo that seemed to underscore the anguish of the lyrics.

And the up-tempo “Pioneer,” sung in Kuzmin’s native tongue, was as much an ode to, as an indictment of, the Soviet Union’s youth communist movement, the yin and the yang reflected in the dazzling, yet all too brief, guitar dual between Kuzmin and Alexander Goriachev.

The band encored with a pair of covers by two distinctly American groups, ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”

For Vladimir Kuzmin and Dinamik to really be on a par with the best from the West, they must polish up a few rough edges. The smoke billowing from behind the drum kit, a throwback to the progressive rock era of the 1970s, has long been passe, and the group’s synchronized stage movements--jumps, kicks, spins, splits, facial snarls--were overly contrived.

But overall, their performance demonstrated that rock ‘n’ roll is, indeed, the universal language it’s long been made out to be.

Opening the show was San Diegan Mike Keneally, the talented singer-songwriter known locally as the leader of popular original-music band Drop Control and known nationally for his recent stint with Frank Zappa’s road band.

Accompanying himself on guitar--and, for one song, on piano--Keneally played a delightful half-hour set of originals that ranged from the jazzy “Destiny Boy” to the raucous “Situation Very Bad.”

He also threw in two covers: Frank Zappa’s “The Idiot Bastard’s Son” and the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing.” The latter was less an interpretation than a complete restructuring, similar to what Devo did more than a decade ago with the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”