Well-known musician, volunteer and television presenter Oleksandr Sydorenko (Fozzy) recalled in connection with the final of the Ukrainian Cup about his first (and last) performance in Donetsk.
“Today we will sing at the final of the Ukrainian football cup, and here is what I remembered on the way.
For the first time, we had to perform at the stadium in Donetsk in October 99, at the central stadium “Shakhtar”. We were supposed to sing a few songs during the break and then close the final of the match “Shakhtar” — “Metalist”. The organizers were surprised to learn about our Kharkiv origins (we had come from Kyiv) and forbade mentioning this in speeches, provided three radio microphones and brought us onto the field.
It quickly became clear that the microphones did not work in front of the central tribune — after the explosion of Bragin, jammers were installed at the stadium. During the imitation of singing, we ran around the field, trying to find spots where the microphones would work. There were no earplugs then, we just made noise and then stupidly did push-ups in the center of the field with the minus track playing.
“Shakhtar” won 3:1, I told my colleagues that the young forward of the hosts had great prospects — it was Andriy Vorobey, he scored a sweet goal with his head on the breakthrough.
After the final, the children who had been centrally brought to the stands (typical of the time/region) rushed to the fence for autographs, they started getting beaten by the Berkut. We somehow tried to stop this, but no.
The terrible aftertaste of that performance (Dilya was already about to hit the organizer) was polished by Serhiy Sivokho. Yes, Serhiy Sivokho. He, along with Dmytro Yakubenko, met us under the hotel, immediately (in the dark) gave an impolite diagnosis to the organizers and took us to dinner, where we washed away the ashes of disgrace in a natural way at a Korean (it seems) establishment “Day and Night” (that’s what it was called in Ukrainian) and almost joyfully went to Dnipropetrovsk.
Just like that.
P.S. In this story, there are still 5-6-7 interesting details, but not here and not now.
P.P.S. About 10+ years ago we received an offer to perform already at “Donbas Arena” — also football, and also for the Miners’ Day. On one condition — we had to start with the song “Dead dark mounds”). In short, we performed at the stadium in Donetsk only once. Out,” wrote Fozzy on Facebook.