Олег Коврига

Oleg Kovriga (b. 1958) is a Russian musical entrepreneur, producer, promoter and recording engineer from Moscow, who organized many underground rock concerts in the eighties. He founded an independent record label Otdelenine VYHOD in 1994, specializing in legendary 70-80s rock albums reissues, and restored concert recordings of cult and forgotten singer-songwriters and performers from ex-USSR. Before that, he worked for a couple of years at Otdelenie MAMONOV studio. Kovriga also published many music-related articles and reviews under D. Morozov pseudonym in various samizdat magazines. In 2009, Oleg appeared as a monk in Pavel Lungin's film Tsar. Oleg got interested in rock 'n roll and Western music since early teenage years. Listening to everything from punk and reggae to avant-rock, he used to spend his days hunting down and exchanging rare foreign LPs with other collectors known as "дискоболы" (disc-throwers, since they spend a lot of time handling and purchasing vinyls (discs) as part of their hobby). At the time he discredited all Russian-speaking rock as "Soviet crap", until some friends finally convinced him to attend Aquarium concert in 1982. The performance left him in awe and finally sparkled some interest in Soviet rock. After hearing Naumenko's Blues De Moscou (1981) album, Kovriga became a real fan. During 1983-84 political repressions against rock artists, Oleg started distributing "magnet tape" (reel-to-reel) albums by many groups. He organized illegal concerts and recording sessions for such highly-acclaimed musicians, as Petr Mamonov, Mike Naumenko, and Aleksandr Bashlachev. In 1991, Mamonov recruited Kovriga as an administrator in his newly-established Moscow studio Otdelenie Mamonov. Inspired by Tamla Motown concept, Petr envisioned Otdelenie as an accessible place for aspiring artists to hang out, improvise, collaborate, and make music together. Most people had problems dealing with Mamonov's tough character, though, so it ended up being more of a private studio and repetition base for himself. A few interesting albums were recorded there, including Jazzus Krest, a debut album by Svyatoslav Zaderij, and Rada & Ternovnik's debut Grafika (released a few years later). They also had plans to record Yuri Tsaler's solo material there, but never proceeded. After leaving Otdelenie Mamonov at the end of 1992, Kovriga started working at TAU Product. Gaining enough experience in publishing, distributing, and manufacturing compact discs and tapes, two years later Kovriga decided to start an independent label with his friend Evgeny Gapeev. Otdelenie VYHOD reissued and released many seminal albums by Zoopark, Nol, Automatic Satisfiers, Umka & Brº, EXIT, and Toadstools in the nineties and 2000s, and published Bashlachev audio-anthology with rare and archival concert recordings. Apart from official catalog releases at Otdelenie, Kovriga regularly manufacture, produce and distribute self-released editions for Leonid Fedorov, Olga Arefieva, Ivan Smirnov and other artists, without putting VYHOD label on them. According to many accounts and interviews, Oleg has a reputation of the good-spirited, kindhearted and honest man. For many years, he's been running his label with only oral agreements among partners, and he never pursued any legal or aggressive measures in conflicts, sometimes being ripped off tens of thousands of dollars by dishonest retailers and suppliers. Nevertheless, his label successfully survived more than one economic crisis in Russia and still operates today.