By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 12:48:20 +0000

Thank you Tom! That was really interesting to read.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 18:18:54 +0000

Your resume of the history of Choba B CCCP is impressively accurate except for a couple of timing details. I knew Paul’s former Manager Richard Ogden quite well at the time and what I remember him saying what happened was that Paul wanted the so-called “Russian” album to come out as his next EMI album release (it would have been a year before “Flowers in the Dirt”) but Parlophone and Richard did not want it to be officially released at all, because doing so would set up an album recorded for fun in two days by two “scratch” bands to be critically compared to John Lennon’s carefully crafted and acclaimed rock and roll album. So Richard suggested to Paul that MPL should secretly release it as a bootleg in the UK, completely without EMI’s knowledge, dressed up to look like it had actually come out of Russia, hence the title and Mike Ross’s sleeve design. Paul embraced the idea but when MPL’s legal eagles heard about it they insisted that Richard should inform EMI, who predictably enough immediately put the mockers on it. I remember Richard saying that Paul had really been into the idea and was somewhat cheesed off that EMI had been told about it, but the damage was done. To try to smooth things over Richard manufactured 50 copies at his own expense, using an ancient 12″ hand press at EMI’s factory, which they kept to make “test pressings”, with the sleeves hand-printed by Mike Ross and presented them to Paul for Christmas, each disc sealed and numbered 1-50. I understand that Paul kindly signed and gave a copy to everyone involved with it. But in the new year he was still pushing for it to be officially released so Richard took the whole Russian theme one step further and persuaded EMI to license it exclusively to the Soviet State record label Melodiya, with whom EMI cooperated quite often on classical recordings, knowing full well that even though Melodiya was not permitted to export, thousands of copies would immediately flood into the West, as you quite rightly point out it did. I remember Richard dining out at the time on his experiences of flying twice to Moscow to negotiate with the top brass in Melodiya as the Soviet Union collapsed around their ears.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:09:34 +0000

You're right, of course, and the title ideally should have been written correctly, but unfortunately the website can't handle Cyrillic letters very well. Also the album is commonly known among English-speaking fans (and on McCartney's own website) as Choba B CCCP, so it would be a bit confusing if I changed it here!

By: OLEGARKO SHPIONAZHSKY

OLEGARKO SHPIONAZHSKY — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 20:26:18 +0000

The title of the album “Choba B CCCP” is an incorrect transliteration, using a combination of Latin (English) — “Choba” — and Cyrillic (Russian) — “B CCCP” — letters. The correct transliteration (using ALL Latin letters), which would help English speakers pronounce the title, should be “Snova V SSSR.” And, as indicated in the text, it should be pronounced “snova vee ess-ess-ess er.”

Comments on: Choba B CCCP

By: Joe

By: Tom

By: Joe

By: OLEGARKO SHPIONAZHSKY