Pop star’s antics anger authorities

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 19

Pop star’s antics anger authorities

A new face will be seen in Television New Zealand’s coverage of the Social Credit Party’s conference this week — that of Mr Ray Miller, an assistant lecturer in political studies at the University of Auckland. He is completing a thesis comparing the development of Social Credit in Canada and New Zealand.

NZPA-Reuter Moscow

A Soviet woman pop star who favours scant clothing and sings while standing on her head has been told by a Moscow newspaper to clean up her act. An indignant report in the city’s evening paper said Katya Surzhikova spiced up her rock songs with acrobatic feats and roared out her final number while performing a headstand. To make things worse, she was clad in clothes which would have looked

skimpy on a beach, it complained. Reminding the singer that all artists had to adhere to “aesthetic norms,” the newspaper called on State concert organisers to make her tone down her act or keep off the stage. The report was the latest evidence of a major clampdown on pop music in the Soviet Union, where a number of prominent groups have been banned in the past few weeks after being condemned as decadent and Western-influenced.