Tim Sommer, music journalist for MTV and former music news director for VH-1, reviewed Joanna Stingray’s memoir, Red Wave for the art and culture magazine Guernica.

He emphasizes that “the book is a valuable document about a lost world, peopled with courageous artists risking their freedom for the ideas of expression, art, and rock ‘n’ roll,” and notes Stingray’s “warm and conversational autobiography” is full of “vivid, emotional, and chatty accounts of the extraordinary underground stars of the time—people like Boris Grebenshchikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Viktor Tsoi, Yuri Kasparyan, Aquarium, Kino, and the Pop Mechanics.”

For more information on Stingray’s personal journey uncovering Leningrad’s clandestine rock ‘n’ roll scene and becoming an unlikely Cold War hero, click here!