Grazhdanskaya Oborona Vsyo Kak U Lyudey Album Cover T-Shirt

T-shirt featuring the original Всё как у людей (Everything Like Everyone Else) album artwork — the only fully acoustic incarnation of Grazhdanskaya Oborona that Egor Letov fully approved. Recorded in 1989 during breaks from Russian Field of Experiments and Yanka Dyagileva’s electric albums, it captures the raw intimacy of songs “only for our own.”

The project arose under pressure from those around me (mainly Yanka) — to capture, in acoustic form, what I was regularly playing at home and apartment concerts, among friends, acquaintances, and for myself. And to record it exactly as it should be played and sung only for our own.

Before this, nothing like it had been recorded on GrOb Records (except Yanka’s Not Allowed). I’d always seen my work as electric and hard-hitting — acoustic was just necessity. So the idea of making a purely simple guitar album, from already well-known songs, but with a new, independent sound and meaning no worse than the electric versions — it was partly risky and definitely interesting. Like exploring new territory.

That’s how the double album Tops and Roots came about, recorded September 16–17 and 19, 1989, during breaks from Russian Field of Experiments and Yanka’s Anhedonia and Home! She sang backing vocals, Kuzma played electric guitar.

Bonuses include raw, unfinished demos from 1989–1990, previously unreleased. The album is split into two parts: Tops and Roots and Everything Like Everyone Else.

This was the only acoustic Grazhdanskaya Oborona release at the time that I fully agreed with.
— Egor Letov, July 5, 2005

• Unisex regular fit
• Premium heavyweight cotton
• Worldwide shipping
• Limited run