Better off red
By Thomas Conner World Entertainment Writer
6/25/99

The Red Elvises dish up rock 'n' roll . . . Siberian style.

Perestroika takes on a whole new meaning for drummer Avi Sills.

"I've found the best way to bridge the gap between the United States and Russia is to drink a lot of beer together and get people to take their clothes off," Sills said, laughing, during an interview this week.

Sills is the lone American member of the Red Elvises, comprised chiefly of excitable Siberians with a penchant for American roots rock.

The roll call: Sills on drums, Igor Yuzov singing, Oleg Bernov on the balalaika bass guitar and Zhenya Kolykhanov on lead guitar. Yuzov and Bernov came to the United States in a rock-folk band via an international Star Search competition. They won and landed a Kit-Kat candy bar commercial. Eventually they broke off to do their own, more rockin' band, added Kolykhanov and Sills and started churning out records like "Grooving to the Moscow Beat," "I Wanna See You Bellydance" and the latest, "Better Than Sex."

The sound is a bit of everything -- rockabilly, surf, country, ethnic folk touches -- and Sills said it's all the result of madness.

"All the voices in our heads are pretty wacko," he said. "It's all about making people feel good, and it's got this huge Russian twist to it. It's fun."

Fun is the main thing here ("We put the `f' back in fun," Sills said). The Russian members all have theatrical backgrounds, and they put them to use in the live show.

"It's a very visual show," Sills said. "This band is all about giving back to people and making music fun. We make light of serious topics, we run around all over the place -- it's contagious. People love for you to be an idiot on stage. And girls love it.

"We're Gorbachev's answer to the Spice Girls."

Much of the manic live energy comes from the group's roots on the American streets. For two years, the Red Elvises played nearly every day on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Calif. These wildly visual and improvised performances landed them appearances in TV shows like "Melrose Place" and movies like "Six-String Samurai."

"It was beautiful and grueling. You have to make people stop what they're doing for half an hour and watch the show, donate some money and buy something -- a CD, a bumper sticker, a T-shirt. We're very capitalistic," Sills said. "We actually got kicked off the street eventually. Luckily it was about the same time we started getting good bookings. They gave us five tickets in two weeks for ordinances they hadn't been ss enforcing in years. Our crowds had simply gotten too big. The businesses were doing poorly because people couldn't get to the stores. So they had us kicked off."

The Red Elvises are off the street and on stage Wednesday at The Fur Shop, 520 E. Third St. Ill-Fated opens the show at 9:30 p.m. Cover charge is $4.