Description
A memoir by an American who almost single-handedly introduced Soviet rock to the free world, [...] Stingray, who wrote this memoir with her daughter, Madison, nicely captures her daring amid an atmosphere of liberation and fear, and she's a study in moxie and enthusiasm.
-Kirkus Reviews
As one of the first American musicians to break through the Soviet scene, and one of the few women to be seen as an equal amongst Leningrad's pantheon of rock superstars, Stingray's perspective on the development of late Soviet rock is probably the single most important source for those who want a birds-eye view of late Soviet youth culture, and Stingray's stories are as entertaining as they are relevant and illuminating.
-Alexander Herbert, author of What About Tomorrow?: An Oral History of Russian Punk from the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot
Wild and vivid - a rollicking memoir of romance and rock 'n' roll in an era of upheaval and transition. From Los Angeles to Leningrad and back again, Joanna's story is borne along by her infectious, headlong enthusiasm. It's quite a ride.
-Patrick Radden Keefe, creator of the Wind of Change podcast and author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
The history of Russian rock music could have been very different without Joanna Stingray. Joanna was friends with rock musicians, recorded songs with them, shot their videos and brought them clothes and instruments from the West. Her video footage, capturing young icons of Russian rock like Viktor Tsoi, Sergei Kuryokhin, Timur Novikov and Boris Grebenshchikov, is rare evidence of the golden era of the Soviet underground.
-The Moscow Times
Red Wave is a warm and conversational autobiography about a lost world, peopled with courageous artists risking their freedom for the ideas of expression, art, and rock 'n' roll. [...] We root for her and her friends to overcome bureaucracy, oppression, isolation, deprivation, and the heavy footsteps of the KGB. [...] In a readable and personable way, Red Wave helps shine some light into this remarkable corner of rock history.
-Tim Sommer, Guernica
-Boris Grebenshchikov (Aquarium), 2018
- North American and UK Print and Broadcast Campaign
- Targeted Regional Marketing Campaign
- Social Media Campaign
- Co-op Available
- ARCs and DRCs available through Edelweiss
- Targeted outreach to music press to reach multi-generational fan base
- Author tour: Southern California, Washington DC, London
- "Wind of Change" Spotify podcast special 45-minute episode on July 6 focuses on Joanna Stingray with interviews about her times in the Leningrad Rock Club and getting arrested by the KGB.
- CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Nathan Hodge to interview Joanna next time she is in Russia and will tie the English release of the book to its airing.
- The Moscow correspondent for The Guardian (UK), Marc Bennetts, will do an article when the English version comes out. He interviewed Joanna last year.
- Hollie McKay, Foreign Affairs Reporter for Fox News Digital did an online profile piece on Joanna last April and we will reach out for her to do a follow up piece when the English version is out.
- The Beverly Hills Weekly newspaper will do a big story on the book release with photos.
- Forthcoming CBC Radio q feature on Stingray timed with book release, which will be aired in Canada on CBC Radio 1 and in the U.S. on NPR and Sirius XM and internationally through PRI for a combined of 3 million listeners a week; the host is Tom Power.
- Wide academic outreach
About the Author
Joanna Stingray is an author and musician from Los Angeles, California, who lived for many years in Russia. She became the first American producer of underground Russian rock n' roll when she released the double album Red Wave - 4 Underground Bands from the USSR - a compilation of music smuggled out of the USSR by Joanna in 1985. A frequent traveler in and out of Russia, Joanna was interrogated by the KGB and FBI (both thought she was a spy) and in 1987, she became an enemy of the State - her visa blocked to keep her from entering the Soviet Union to marry Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparyan. After months of intervention by the U.S. State Department, she returned to Russia, married Yuri and in the early '90s became a television host, a recording artist, and well known rock personality throughout Russia. She has published several books in Russia about her time in the music scene as well as much of her photo collection. Her video diaries and interviews of bands and their musicians is the only archive of this clandestine, bygone world.
"FREE TO ROCK," the 2017 documentary expose directed by Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, features interviews with Joanna Stingray, prominent American musicians who toured the Soviet Union, and several important Russian musicians. It reveals to the world the dismantling socio-political effect of "soft power," and discovers how American rock n' roll and the release of Red Wave during glasnost contributed to the ending of the Cold War.
Madison Stingray is the author of two books as well as songs, poems, and short stories, the common theme of all being a strong female narrative and an attempt at human solidarity. She graduated from Georgetown University magna cum laude and received her Master's degree in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge in England. Growing up, the Leningrad Underground Rock days were stories that became her fairytales, and her contribution to putting those adventures in print is to inspire others that extraordinary things can happen to anyone who fights for something.
Reviews
Business and cultural pioneers don't set out to light the world on fire but end up doing so through ingenuity and determination. While we often think of globalization as factories and container ships, the exchange of goods and ideas between nations starts with one person finding something people in another nation would value. Joanna Stingray was that one person who brought Soviet rock music to America and did so in remarkable fashion.
-Forbes
Thanks to a resourceful Los Angeles singer and songwriter who heard-and liked-their brand of Russian rock, the bands are now playing to a faraway audience. [...] The album is the brainchild of Joanna Stingray a.k.a. Joanna Fields, 25, who has been exploring the Soviet Union's unofficial and unheralded rock world since 1984.
-Newsweek
Eight trips later she had 'smuggled' enough tapes of Kino and other groups out of the Soviet Union to produce an album, Red Wave-a kind of Greatest Hits of Socialist Rock. At first the Soviet press denigrated Stingray's tales of the "brave little American miss helping the oppressed Soviet musicians" as a self-serving fantasy. Now, though, inspired by glasnost if not by greed, Soviet officialdom has cut a deal with her to produce 10 albums of "unofficial music" for consumption in the U.S.
-People Magazine
The music on Red Wave - which ranges from the ska-tinged pop of Kino to the brooding, introspective songwriting of Grebenshchikov - was recorded mostly in cramped living rooms transformed into home studios with borrowed two-track and eight-track equipment. The lyrics, sung in Russian (a translated lyric sheet is provided), are not overtly political. But veiled reference to politics shine through, as does a keen awareness of progressive Western rock.
-Rolling Stone
Book Information
ISBN 9781733957922
Author Joanna Stingray
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint DoppelHouse Press
Publisher DoppelHouse Press
