Land on the ground and play below / day

After pulling the guitar out of the case, Aivars Hermanis last looked at the instrument in a whole way and then, without mercy, broke it in several parts. It was not a stage show that the musician culminated in the game's heat in the concert, broke his guitar and threw them into the audience, where fans catch and rake pieces to store as expensive relics. It was a secret act to hide the feet. « Crime » place – hotel room in Finland. Time – 1977 or 1978. Aivars brought the guitar remains in the yard and threw it into the debris. And now the empty case had liberated a place where the newly bought instrument could be placed to return to Latvia. It was a way for a musician to get to the western quality standards in the times of the USSR. Listening to foreign records had become clear that improving the sound needed serious tools, strings and everything else. But meeting with these coveted foreign items was a whole adventure.

First I had to look for dollars, which were illegal. Aivars drove to Ventspils and bought dollars from the sutener who delivered the girls to the sailors of foreign sailors who stopped in the port. When the dollars were obtained, one option was to give money to a legally traveling diplomat who is willing to buy and bring something. In this way, it was possible to get good strings or a pedal, but with the instrument more complicated. Aivars and composer Uldis Stabulnieks was lucky – they were giving the first time to the West, Finland. He stumbled upon some $ 400, rolled and carefully hidden when lodging the guitar amplifier capacitor. Legally led two guitars in cases. When he left the test and registered, Aivars Hermanis, a USSR citizen born in Liepaja, left the country with two guitars on March 7, 1955, so two must return. One was the way Aivars played, and the other – as he says, some shit that just looked like a guitar and did not pay more for a hundred rubles.

Stabulnieks « fell »

Arriving in Finland for three days, buying the coveted instrument was risky at once, as he could « hug », so first went to the music store only in intelligence. He watched one guitar there and talked to the seller to save it, because it would come after it the last day before going home. When that day came, in the evening around six, when it was dark, Aivars pulled out his dollars out of the hiding place and stealing to the store, looking around or following. As if everything is clean. Slipped into the store, bought a guitar put in a cardboard box, but it was far from victory.

As the hotel approaches, you have to be careful again whether someone doesn't notice and ask: Who is there? What did you buy, Aivar? Fortunately, everything