Banned bands from Russia in the 80s!

[Charger]

Alice Cooper just posted this rather interesting list of bands that were banned to play in the Soviet Union back in the 80s!

Alice was quite a vandal back then wasn't he...and Sabbath mellowed in Religious Obskurantisim! 

[Tyr66]

Julio Iglesias - Neofascism !!!

[Billy Underdog]

Nazareth - sadism?  Kiss - nationalism! Judas Pries - racism!!! Village People - violence?!?!

[Zzzptm]

There were all kinds of forbidden things in the USSR back then. In the 70s, rock and roll was pretty much flat-out banned, no further discussion. Other nations in the Soviet bloc had different attitudes, with East Germany and Hungary seeming to have the lightest touch on censorship. Poland and Czechoslovakia were a little more strict, while Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania pretty much also banned the stuff, more or less. (and, yes, I know that Yugoslavia and Albania weren't Soviet bloc, but they still had cesnsorship) If they did allow rock, it was only of the most insipid variety, so as not to upset the populace or agitate them to oppose materialistic dialectism.

The Hungarian band LGT got banned twice in Romania, probably because the Romanian government didn't want anything to agitate their Magyar-speaking population too much...

After the crackdown on Solidarity, *all* the Soviet bloc nations took a much harder line on rock and roll, and you can hear it in the changes in the bands' sounds. Skorpio, for example, had been very much a hard rock outfit. After Solidarity, they went 80s synth-pop. When they play now, they're back to hard rock - evidence of censorship, I believe. This also happened with Ostrock heroes Puhdys, LGT, and other bands.

After Gorbachev came to power, the grip on those bands was loosened, but there were still restrictions on what could and could not be brought in from the West. But after Communism ended in 1991, those restrictions vanished.

At the same time, the popularity of home-grown bands dropped off. Now that fans could have the Western stuff, without restriction, they pretty much forgot about their local heroes. It's a shame because there was some very good rock those bands were able to produce. Then again, there was always something of an underlying protest in their music, so when the reason to protest went away, so did the interest in the protest itself. So it goes.

[Typhon]

B-52s, they probably didn't like the band's name. 

[Zzzptm]

Original list... and Black Sabbath is number 13 on it!