Free the Cobblestones

November 7, 2011

As part of PUSSY RIOT’s first tour, we spent more than a month performing in public places in what police say is a restricted area in Moscow.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THE SONG “OSVOBODI BRUSHTKA” FOR THE CLIP?

Elections are coming up. Moscow now has a lot of cobblestones, thanks to Mayor Sobyanin. They need to be used for their intended purpose.

In general, the song “Free the Cobblestones” is dedicated to the elections. Forget about the polling stations, because your ballots will go to the Presidential Administration for toilet paper. On December 4, we suggest going outside and breathing some fresh air with us.

In addition, we are going crazy about a couple of topics, which we also introduced our song. Firstly, we are outraged by the cutting down of the Khimki forest and the boorish pressure on the campaign to protect it from state bandits. Secondly, we are really infuriated by the recent adoption of the anti-abortion law, against which a large-scale feminist campaign has been conducted since the spring of 2011.

A LOT OF NOISE WAS CAUSED BY THE ACTION AND DETENTIONS AT THE “AEROPORT” METRO STATION. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED THERE?

Almost all the media said that the concert at the Airport was organized by the group Voina, and this was a big mistake on the part of the press. The concert was organized by us, the group PUSSY RIOT. Yes, indeed, some Voina activists were present at our concert, where they were arrested by the employees of the Center “E”. They were probably captured because the faces of the Voina activists are well known to the operatives from the Center for Combating Extremism of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. We are very outraged by the detention of innocent spectators of our concert.

TELL US MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR CONCERTS ARE GOING. HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO PERFORM ILLEGALLY? 

Once, on our feminist business, we found ourselves at the Skhodnenskaya station. Tyurya, a member of PUSSY RIOT, tripped over some iron devilry standing in the middle of the station, threw her head back and screamed: “Fuck, this is a real concert venue!” That’s how we understood where exactly we should hold our debut tour. After that, we started wandering around the city and looking for suitable concert venues. Naturally, all of them were illegal. How could it be otherwise? We decided to pay attention to those people who use ground transportation – that’s why one of our street venues was the roof of an overcrowded trolleybus, another – the roof of a bus.

The concerts were held during rush hour – either morning or evening – because the more people, the better. We performed at seven in the morning and seven in the evening. For example, the concert at the Skhodnenskaya metro station began at 7.30 in the morning, when all of Moscow, including police officers, were on their way to work. When we began our performance, surprised people poured out of the stopped carriages and raised their heads. The crowd shouted, “Come on, come on!”

The lamp replacement tower where we were holding the concert was shaking as much as it could, the structure was bursting at the seams from women’s screams. The spectators on the platform began to worry that during the performance the tower would fall with us and shouted at us, “Girls, get down quickly! It’s going to collapse!”

When it was time for our favorite verse –

Egyptian air is good for the lungs
Do Tahrir on Red Square
Spend a wild day among strong women.
Look for a crowbar on the balcony, free the paving stones

– we went wild and started tearing apart the pillows that we just happened to have with us. Fluffy snow fell like an avalanche on the heads of the spectators. Streams of air, penetrating the metro stations, inflated the feathers, again and again lifting them into the air in whirlwinds. Both we and the spectators found ourselves in the epicenter of a blizzard in the vestibule of the metro.

In the middle of our performance, a man in a blue hooded jacket came up to the stage, started angrily kicking the tower and yelling: “Russia doesn’t need feminists! You need to be expelled from the country! The Americans are paying you money to corrupt our youth with your obscene lyrics! You’d better learn how to cook cabbage soup!” Some elderly people, witnesses to the performance, approached this man and expressed their complete agreement with him.

But still, most of the audience nodded approvingly to the beat, many sang along to the choruses and filmed the performance on their mobile phones.

We were already finishing the concert and getting ready to get down from the tower, but some half-crazy old woman was still walking around the tower, shouting: “They’ve done something wrong here! Feminism is a disease, it’s not normal. God forbid I have such a daughter-in-law!”

The white blanket of feathers at the station blinded the police officers, who, having swallowed a lot of fluff, were unable to restrain us in time. The three of us rushed into the train that had arrived at the station. The driver, despite the shouts of the police, did not brake the train, the doors slammed shut, and we rode on.

Having reached the University metro station, our combat group decided to go outside to freshen up. And then our Tyurya saw a trolleybus. “Fuck, I want to go there! Right up to my moustache!” she exclaimed. Without thinking twice, we threw off our coats and climbed onto the trolleybus. “Don’t climb in there, the trolleybus is live! You’ll die! There’s hellish current there!” the passengers shouted.

During the third verse of the song “Free the Cobblestones” –

It’s never too late to become a mistress
The batons are loaded, the screams are getting louder,
Stretch the muscles of your arms and legs
The policeman licks between your legs

– the trolleybus driver, a plump woman of about fifty, who had been looking at us from the bus stop, suddenly exploded indignantly and climbed up to us on the platform: “Oh, you feminists? Now I’ll lick you! Perverts! Get out of here!” Having climbed onto the trolleybus, she was going to throw off the equipment and musicians.

But we only began to glorify the cities of recent revolutionary glory even louder, chanting in the chorus, “Tahrir, Tahrir, Tahrir, Benghazi! Tahrir, Tahrir, Tahrir, Tripoli!” The pillow and its feathers were put to use. The students at the bus stop echoed the soloists: “Benghazi! Tripoli!” The driver realized that she was in the minority, and it would be better for her to get off and not interfere with the PUSSY RIOT concert.

Towards the end of the song, our soloist Balaklava rushed to the base of the moustache to do acrobatic tricks – a wheel, somersaults, and a pyramid. The tricks were performed to applause and cheers from the audience.

At the end of the concert we had a slam right on the roof of the trolleybus, beat each other up good and slid to the ground with our clothes and equipment. The equipment was acting up, but it still sounded, wheezing. The tour continued.

One evening, at about six o’clock, when people are crushed in the metro during the evening rush hour, we found ourselves in the passage from the Lenin Library station to Borovitskaya. It quickly became clear to us that the well-lit area above the people’s heads was the perfect place for a feminist punk band to perform.

In the transition to Borovitskaya, the spectators were unusually unanimous in their satisfaction. Everyone, young and old, supported the feminist Khlyst in Russia and Tahrir on Red Square, as well as the idea of ​​illegal performances.