Penza, 20 June 2016. PenzaNews. The song “V Pitere – Pit” [lit. “St. Petersburg Is For Drinking”] by “Leningrad” band that received great criticism from people of culture, state officials and politicians for its video clip is designed to break the stereotypical impression of St. Petersburg as a grey and dull city of mostly historical connotation, explained the leader of the musical band Sergei Shnurov during the press conference before his concert in Penza in the evening of Monday, June 20.

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“The song ‘V Pitere – Pit’’ was born because the poet Alexander Voznesensky once wrote a poem [that transformed the word ‘Piter,’ a colloquial name for St. Petersburg, into Russian ‘terpi’ (meaning ‘keep tolerating or suffering from something’)]. The city had this unpleasant connotation, or a negative emotion, to be more exact – that St. Petersburg is a dull city where people need to endure, keep suffering, surviving, and so on and so forth. I wanted to break this stereotype and show Piter slightly different,” the musician explained.

According to Sergei Shnurov himself, this objective was achieved.

Also, the leader of “Leningrad” noted that St. Petersburg is also seen as a museum city, and the culture is always “head-deep in the past” which gives off an impression that the city has nothing going on in it in the present.

“This is what I was trying to break down with my phrase ‘St. Petersburg is for drinking.’ I can’t tell if it was successful enough or not: but I think it was,” Sergei Shnurov said.

Moreover, the journalists asked the musician about sampling the Penza bitters “Zolotoy Petushok” that the local fans presented to him recently. In turn, Sergei Shnurov strictly remarked that he never drinks a day before a concert.

“When I’m drinking, it’s for three days in a row,” he added.