Video: Legends of the 1990s: the Kar-Men group, or the story of why the famous "exotic-pop duet" broke up
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Founded in 1989 group "Carmen" gained popularity at such a rate that within a few months the whole country knew this name. It was the first male duet in the USSR who performed their own songs, and prepared a choreographic performance for each of them. Sergei Lemokh and Bogdan Titomir became idols of hundreds of thousands of listeners, but in the spring of 1991 the duo broke up, and each of the performers took up a solo career. There were several versions of the reasons for the disagreement.
Sergei Lemokh and Bogdan Titomir in the late 1980s. worked as a dancer for the singer Vladimir Maltsev. It was he who first performed the song "Paris, Paris" written by Lemokh, which soon became the hallmark of the "Carmen" group. "Exotic-pop-duo" began their performances with this name, and in 1990 changed it to "Kar-Man" ("Man-Machine") - thus they "went to meet the wishes of the listeners, obscuring the initial reminder of the insidious Spanish the rival of today's young seductresses."
The performers themselves interpreted the name of the group as "driver" or "traveler", which corresponded to the concept of the project: the first album was called "Around the World", and each song was dedicated to a specific country or city. Later Sergey Lemokh said about the reasons for choosing this name: “I don’t know what legends there may be, our team is named after the long-range fighter,“road man”, and“CarMan”is the American slang name for the long-range fighter.”
Their popularity was gaining incredible momentum, within six months after the founding of the group, she collected stadiums throughout the country, cassettes with pirated recordings were bought up like hot cakes, and then copied on home tape recorders. In 1990, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper conducted a poll, according to which the Kar-Man group became the winner in two nominations: "Discovery of the Year" and "Group of the Year". In the same year the group received the Shlyager-90 prize, and in 1991 it won several more awards: 50x50, Star Rain and Ovation.
In 1991, Bogdan Titomir unexpectedly left the project and took up solo activities. As it turned out, the Gala Records record company offered the Kar-Man group a contract with serious obligations for 10 years in advance, which Lemokh signed, and Titomir refused to sign. The second album called "Kar-Mania" was released without the participation of Titomir.
Later, Titomir admitted that in the last months of the group's existence he did not communicate with Lemokh at all, they even came to concerts in different cars, and then decided to stop working together altogether. Titomir believes that this happened because of different views on music: Lemokh wanted to make the second album similar to the first, and he already wrote other songs, which he soon presented in a solo performance - "Do as I do", "High" and " Nonsense". Sergei Minaev said: "Lemokh was much more interesting and musical, but Bogdan felt the fashion and the whole conjuncture better." They also said that the reason for the collapse was that both performers were real leaders, and each of them wanted to be in the first roles in the team. For the past 20 years, Bogdan Titomir and Sergei Lemokh have not seen each other and do not communicate.
Sergey Lemokh continued performing under the Kar-Men brand, with which he tours to this day. In addition, he recorded the soundtrack for the animated series Captain Pronin, created musical screensavers for television programs, worked as a composer with other artists (Natalia Senchukova, Lada Dance, Natalia Gulkina).
The fact that the Kar-Man group is still gathering halls, Lemokh explains with its music that does not lose its relevance: "; as well as his own image: “A pop artist should take care of himself, because the stage and pop music, in particular, sells sex. For a man, these are regular exercises in the gym, physical activity, healthy sleep, a healthy lifestyle, I will not reveal anything new to you. People in Russia after 40 for some reason stop taking care of themselves, in vain, but the West has recently been very beneficial to us in this regard."
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