When Joanna Stingray's New Wave music career stalled after a Studio 54 performance and record release, she traveled to Russia with the name of one musician to meet if she could sneak off her state-sanctioned tour. That fateful, shadowy encounter with the now-legendary Boris Grebenschikov opened the rabbit hole" for her tumble into Soviet underground culture and a decades-long devotion to Russian rock, as well as her own spectacular rise to fame in that country. Called "the American tractor" by artists and musicians for whom she smuggled guitars, equipment, Americana, and art supplies into the U. S.S. R.; and out to the West, their music and art, Joanna Stingray is credited by Russians for helping pave the way to the cultural opening that collapsed state control. An apogeal event was the U. S. release of the double album produced by Stingray, "Red Wave: Four Underground Bands from the Soviet Union." Months later, Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the suppressed music be released, launching the bands to notoriety. "Rock is for young people. It's an opportunity to open up a road into the future and breathe deeper. And all thoughtful people understand that it's not just young people fooling around. They are captivated by this music. If some of our rock bands like Aquarium and Kino were released in the West on the Red Wave album in June 1986, why shouldn't they have been released in Russia?" -Mikhail Gorbachev, 2019 Interviews with musicians and Stingray's extensive collection of photographs fill out her inspiring and poetic memoir. "Joanna Stingray's appearance in St. Petersburg in the early 1980s must have been God's response to our unconscious prayers. Her naive bravery, curiosity and generosity created a kind of a lifeline for us, rockers: she brought in things we needed to play our music, and took out not only our recordings but the very message of our existence. Had it not been for her and her Red Wave it would have taken Aquarium many more years to have official records on Melodiya and Kino to start touring Europe. This fearless maiden broke through the siege that looked hopelessly unbreakable. She threw a life-saver into our waters and she changed everything. No matter how many times we thank her - it's never enough." -Boris Grebenschikov 2018 "Joanna was like a tornado. Just imagine someone could drag Tsoi, Kuryokhin and Grebenshchikov into her vortex and as a tractor pull the Russian underground to the West. A breath of fresh air and bright hopes - it's all Joanna! -Yuri Kasparyan (Kino) 2019" | Red Wave by Joanna Stingray, Paperback | Indigo Chapters