Those Russian vids are cool (please keep sending them, if not here, at least to me off list).
Honestly, though, I have yet to find any Russian band that blows me away. On the other hand, during the Cold War, for some reason your neighbors in Poland cranked out a surprisingly large number of good stuff.
Like this video from 1985 from Poland's Siekiera, a band who started as a hardcore thrash band then went into his really weird, cold wave, post punk direction, which is where they are at in this vid. It has the feel of a Polish Bauhaus or something:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XagVXbaUb8
And from 1982 (!!) in Poland, Dezerter playing as fast and aggressively (and as good) as any US or Brit hardcore band at that time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i27IoDMqqE
So what was Russia doing in '82?
-B.
Chris Doss wrote:
"People have been putting all this old music footage from Soviet TV on youtube, which I think is pretty cool, although some of it kind of sucks."