Video Review: Monsters in Moscow

Covering the "Monsters of Rock" show of 1991 in Moscow. Soon after the failed plot by Communist hardliners to overthrow President Gorbachev, where over 300,000 turned out to see the likes of Pantera, The Black Crowes, Metallica, who give a particularly gritty performance, and AC/DC. Sadly, though, the overbearing presence of the authorities caused friction with the crowd, allegedly resulting in several deaths. We see the bands talking to the local youngsters about the problems they face. The vid is well shot and edited, and gives a useful insight into this troubled land.

GRADE B

Mark Liddell/ Riff Raff/ July, 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!