On TANSTAAFL.

So there you are at work, dubiously contemplating some hapless trainee’s latest assignment and grumbling wrathfully about the total inability of modern university trained youth to reference their sources in any manner which makes sense (”…what are they teaching them? Surely they can’t all have done travel and tourism for their degree?”), when a colleague comes in and hands over a flyer.

“Someone was giving these out. It’s some Russsian band. Interested?”

You glance idly at the glossy bit of paper and your attention is suddenly well and truly caught. It’s Boris Grebenshikov. It’s Aquarium. It’s Boris Grebenshikov and Aquarium at the Royal Albert Hall. Tonight. And it’s free. Good grief.* Where can you get tickets?

The tickets, it turns out, have already all been distributed. But it should be possible to turn up and get returns. After all, the corporate entertainment world is unlikely to be interested in Aquarium. Which is how you and B come to be sitting in one of the boxes just above and to the right of the stage in the Royal Albert Hall - that vast plush red and gold arena - at 7.30 on a Monday night waiting for one of the legends of Russian underground rock to come out and play.

Mind you, it does have to be said that you’ve never quite cottoned to Aquarium before this evening. They always gave you the distinct impression they would break out the tambourines and take off their shoes any minute now. This is entirely the correct idea of Boris, at least, as you will discover, but by the end of the concert you don’t care any more as you have just been treated to three and a half hours of consummate musicianship.

It’s not just the fact that the individual musicians play really well, or that the band plays really well together. This is great, of course, and not something you are likely to turn up your nose at. After all, you spent a lot of time in your (earlier) youth going round the gigs of barely formed indie bands who really needed to be locked away in a garage and forced to play until their fingers bled each day for at least a year before they were let back out into a concert hall. Russian rock audiences should give thanks to the Soviet authorities for virtually banning all rock bands, thus forcing them to survive by gigging constantly and under circumstances where they couldn’t get away with simple loudness and a driving beat. And when they did get hold of any recording equipment, there wasn’t much time to play with the buttons to disguise the lead singer’s unfortunate habit of singing the first half of every song flat. So the singers didn’t.

But it also means that it doesn’t come as much of a shock to you that you are watching people with sophisticated musical abilities.

Although the virtuosity of the lead guitarist - also the lead flautist, penny whistleist and saxophonist - was a joy to behold and you were more than half in love with him and his habit of bouncing up and down with a huge grin on his face every time the music got to a bit he liked by the end of the concert.

It’s also not the way that the Hall is just so big and boomy. While this means it is not, you often think, particularly suited to classical music, which tends to get lost in the big mushrooms they have suspended from the ceiling in a desperate attempt to bounce some of the sound back into the audience, it works well for a band who have some nice big amps and a sound engineer who really knows his stuff. Still, quite how loud Aquarium were and quite how heavy they were pitching it was a bit of a surprise, but a pleasant, rather than a shockingly outstanding one.

No. It was the variety of the music.

You have always been aware that Aquarium and Grebenshikov claim the widest ranges of influence. To be honest, you’ve tended to assume this is just an excuse to play something wishy washy in the world music catogory, probably featuring pan pipes.

But by about half way through the evening you already feel as though you’ve been treated to a real musical tour of half the planet and are particularly impressed too by the way the set has been put together to showcase the similarities and highlight the differences between the songs. By the end of the gig, in fact, you have been dragged around the Celtic fringe, through English working class protest songs, contrasted this with some proper Russian harmonisation, been pulled into quite a few drinking songs, seen how many different instruments can double as a sitar, had some of the a capella singing you associate with South Africa, bounced around quite a bit of reggae flecked with the sound of steel drums, taken a musical tour of the USA from the blues through Country and Western to some rollicking RocknRoll and come straight off a measure or two of medieval dance music into the final furlong, which was the hardest hard rock you could possibly wish for.

Presumably just to show that they can do loud guitars if they want to, but hey, who needs it?

Eclectic doesn’t even begin to cover it. You thought it was outstanding.

B was a bit disappointed there weren’t more of Aquarium’s classic songs from the 80s.

Still, you were both in agreement that almost the highlight of the whole thing was provided by the sponsors of the event.

On your way up Exhibition Road to the Albert Hall you had been discussing why it was free.

“Perhaps,” said B after you’d just passed another couple speaking Russian, “it’s a way of collecting all the Russians in the UK together so it’s easier to arrest us.”

You largely agreed but suggested it might be the Estonians who were behind it, so they could gas a bunch of Russians in relative comfort. Or Roman Abramovitch, for whom hiring the Albert Hall would be a matter of seeing what pocket change he had, would stand up and give a fiery speech about how Russian expats should unite and overthrow the British government and set up a puppet state to bring renewed glory to the Motherland.

However, all was revealed once you had taken your seats and found yourself face to face with a large poster of a gentleman with a shaved head, saffron robes and ethnic Indian musical instrument. The prayer from the announcer at the beginning was a bit of a clue too.

And should perhaps have prepared you for the fact that you would be forced to sit and listen politely as the close of the concert began with a choir of men in white and women in saris with cut glass accents more suitable for a trot round Chelsea than singing songs in honor of Grubenshikov, who is a fellow traveller in this sect.

The songs themselves were a hoot, mind you. They consisted of a bit of humming and five (count them) rousing choruses of ‘Boris, Boris, Boris. Boris Boris Boris.’

However, you’d probably have preferred to pay for your tickets with actual money.

* Well, you were at work. There’s nothing more depressingly unhip than a teacher who swears.