RED WAVE

Joanna Fields was a young Beverly Hills wannabe pop star when she followed her sister on a school trip to Leningrad in 1984. Offered a chance to meet with some local musicians, she thought she’d wow them with her music; instead, she discovered a robust underground rock scene that was bravely defying censorious authorities. Enchanted by the likes of Boris Grebenshchikov, whose samizdat cassettes were massively successful and earned him a reputation as the Soviet Union’s answer to Bob Dylan, she looked for ways to spread the word. Working some industry connections, she produced a 1986 compilation, Red Wave, which presaged the thaw of glasnost and perestroika that inspired more cultural exchanges. (Grebenshchikov would later record a well-received album with Western rock acts.) But Fields was watched by the FBI and fell in and out of favor with Soviet authorities, which denied her a visa to marry another popular musician. (She officially changed her last name to Stingray to exploit a loophole that allowed her to reenter Russia.) With the end of the Cold War, Stingray remained in Russia, becoming a popular musician in her own right and introducing U.S. and U.K. acts to Russian audiences. Stingray, who wrote this memoir with her daughter, Madison, nicely captures her daring amid an atmosphere of liberation and fear (David Bowie and Molly Ringwald each wanted to adapt her story), and she’s a study in moxie and enthusiasm. But without the Cold War intrigue, the book’s second half is much drowsier, larded with dry tales of video shoots and Stingray’s efforts to get a newly liberated Russian society to combat littering.

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