Monday, May 24, 2021

Valeri Leontiev


Artist: Valeri Leontiev
LP: I'm Only a Singer
Song: "I'm Only a Singer"
[ listen ]
Song: "I Don't Love"
[ listen ]

I've just come back from a week-long road trip all around The Land of 10,000 Lakes! In case you're not familiar, that's another name for Minnesota. Most of the state's record stores are concentrated in the Twin Cities, and that's where I visited seven of them. The first five were all in Minneapolis...

 [ Minneapolis ]

...and my very first Minnesota record store was Cheapo Records, the big store on Nicollet Avenue. There was no listening station there (and none currently available at any of the stores I visited) so on this trip I basically had to judge a book by its cover. But what a cover! I had a strong hunch Valeri wouldn't disappoint with this 1988 LP, and I was right. Valeri (sometimes "Valery") Leontiev is a very big star in Russia, but of course I am not Russian, so I had never heard of him. I wonder: Do they have a lot of leopards over in Russia?

[ Cheapo Records — Minneapolis, Minnesota ]

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