Boris Grebenshikov: Russian rock and roll ambassador Boris Grebenshikov sits back on a well-worn couch in his manager's Midtown Manhattan apartment and lights up a Russian cigarette in a cigarette holder. "If you don't mind, I will sit on the floor," he says, sliding off the couch and onto the Oriental rug that covers the wooden floor. "I will have less chance of falling down this way. "Russians are prone to falling down every time they sit in a chair," he continues. "Russians are afraid of chairs. I guess Russian people are so grounded in the soil of their native land that they prefer to sit as close to the ground as possible." Grebenshikov is as close as you can get to being a Russian rock star. His 16 albums with his group Aquarium have been circulated in Russia by people copying cassettes, and according to his manager, Kenny Schaffer, he practically invented Russian rock 'n' roll. Schaffer, an affable man in his early 40s, is the person responsible for bringing Grebenshikov to America, and to hear Schaffer tell it, Grebenshikov's odyssey from the Russian rock 'n' roll outlaw to international solo artist is the stuff that would fuel a weekly tabloid for months. "Two years ago," Schaffer says, "he was running from the KGB." Midtown Manhattan is a far cry from Grebenshikov's hometown of Leningrad, and with the late morning traffic sounds coming up into the apartment, it's also a strange place to be talking with a man whose own rootlessness marks him as the perfect Soviet rock 'n' roll ambassador. RADIO SILENCE, Grebenshikov's first American album, has just been released on Columbia Records, and he will be coming to Peabody's Down Under Thursday, Aug. 10, with a band that includes Aquarium bassist Sasha Titov. All of the attention that the Western media has lavished upon Grebenshikov has made him realize that, although he is an established star in Russia, he still has a long way to go toward establishing himself here in America. One of the ways that he's getting used to doing things the American way is by living in a rented apartment in Greenwich Village with his companion, Irena Pitova, and her 17-month old daughter, Vasya. There's something, typically cosmopolitan with his current living arrangement, maintaining residences in both countries. What has he learned about his own country from living here in America? "I appreciate certain things more," he replies. "Someone needs to be removed from something to appreciate it. "It's like the beautiful lines in a Russian poem: 'It's impossible to see when you're face-to-face/ The big things are only seen from a distance." What specifically does he now appreciate more? "I can't really tell," he replies. "It's more on the level of feelings and apprehensions. Intuition. It has something to do with the things that we are doing musically." Despite all of the press he's been doing lately, Grebenshikov is still a very private person and says that he won't be giving any more interviews after this album and tour. He thinks that touring to support an album is ridiculous and is in agreement with XTC's Andy Partridge about the endless cycle of repeating yourself town after town, city after city, club after club. In Russia, Grebenshikov has maintained a code of silence in recent years. "I refused to be interviewed a long time ago," he explains. "After Gorbachev came into power, a lot of things started to change. A lot of journalists figured out that now was the time to be the first in your field to interview a forbidden hero, and I was the most available hero. So they jumped onto me, and I was under this assault for about a year or a year-and-a-half. I was also talking to the Western media, which was interesting to me, because it wasn't strictly forbidden but kind of touchy. "That was interesting for me because I was heavily into creating this bigger- than-life phenomenon. Myth-making, as we call it in Russia. "So I made the mistake of talking too much," he continues. "The same mistake that I was and am still committing right now. After this tour, I'm not doing any more interviews, with very few exceptions." RADIO SILENCE will be the first album released on a new record label that is being inaugurated by a Russian company that is doing business with the West. Up to this point, the "official" albums came out on the Melodiya label, and "We finally broke the monopoly of the Melodiya label," Grebenshikov says with pride. "This is going to be the first album released on the second label." Does he think that it wil sell as well as Aquarium's albums did? "It will sell some," he replies. "People will naturally know how far I can fall. They think I've sold out." Do his fans in Russia feel that way about him already? "Well, I hope so," Grebenshikov replies. "Because that's exactly what I've done. I sold out. And it was worth it because in the process of being sold, I'm discovering a lot of things that would be hidden from me otherwise." Later that night at Tramps in Lower Manhattan, Grebenshikov is performing with Sasha Titov as an acoustic duo. He performs a number of Russian songs that sound like they could have been translations of Gordon Lightfoot classics. The difference is that as the audience of industry types, most of them from the New Music Seminar, begins to grow uncomfortable with the unintelligible lyrics, Grebenshikov closes his eyes and grits his teeth and carries on like a trooper. He dedicates a traditional Ukrainian folk song to CBS Records CEO Walter Yetnikoff who is in attendance that night. He knows the rules of this game called the American record business. For the godfather of Russian rock 'n' roll, it's a tough audience, and one wonders if he'll ever feel completely comfortable here in America. Earlier in the day, Grebenshikov was asked if he would ever want to live permanently in America. "I feel at home everywhere," he replied. "My home is in Russia, but I don't know where. "It's like an old song we used to sing when we were kids: 'My address is not a street and not a house. My address is Soviet Union," he said with a laugh. "We used to recite that kind of bullshit. It's weird I can tell you." Mark Holan. "Scene"