Little Fyodor is a raving-mad guitar scientist spewing esoteric social commentary onstage while his sourpuss, keyboard-playing sidekick, Babushka, rounds out the show.
Their “avant-pop” performances leave some people scratching their heads. But bored is one thing the audience never will be during a Little Fyodor & Babushka show.
We checked in with Fyodor, a local music veteran who takes his name from the Russian novelist Dostoevsky and looks as though he has his finger in an electrical socket, to find out more about his quirky, creative vision:
Q: Is Little Fyodor a band, performance art or both?
A: Both and neither. It started off as music but the performance just comes naturally. I act out my songs for the same reason James Brown dances to his songs – because of the music, and because (the performance) becomes part of what I want to express. My songs are about the difficulty of being human, psychosis, neurosis and discomfort. This all comes out in my body language.
Q: The Pet Shop Boys sang about the power of brains and brawn. Who brings which of those qualities to your duo?
A: One of us has to be the brains and the other has to be brawn? You might say Babushka is the brawn. She’s taken on more and more of a creative role, so I guess she’s becoming the brains too.
I know where my bread is buttered – I’ll give them both to her. She provides support as an act of mercy reflective of her Old World upbringing. I represent the worst of the New World, where everyone is alienated and in their own cocoon as the result of worrying more about building skyscrapers than who’s in the dirt next door.
Q: You’ve got a song called “I Want an Ugly Girl.” Please elaborate.
A: I was just disgusted with the expectation that everybody has to outdo each other, has to be more normal and pretty and mainstream than the next person. Maybe I’m exaggerating. I’m prone to that. In a sense I was trying to convince myself too. I’m an old (fogey) who grew up with hippie ideals that said beauty was only skin-deep. I wanted to believe that. I can’t claim that I’ve ever gotten all the way there but I use music to push myself away from worrying about things that aren’t important.
Little Fyodor & Babushka, Big Green Lime and The Breathing Process open for The Emmas on Saturday at the 15th Street Tavern.
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-820-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
