St. Petersburg recently celebrated the opening of the Rock Club and 35 years of official acceptance of their local scene*, and coincidentally I ran across some official soviet censorship lists from the summer of 1984:
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https://pp.vk.me/c604417/v604417769/200a1/NAAEyfTUS3E.jpg
(one notes that кино, despite having being on the list, now merits a symphonic interpretation ... tempora mutantur)
It's apparently a soviet attempt to "reassess the contracts of musicians who performed violently or sexually in concert, and creating a panel to set industry standards.", but I'm not sure any of the censors (similar to how their US counterparts seemed to have forgotten Elvis' pelvis?) actually listened to the censees.
For example, I can understand how the soviets (who seem to have been even more obsessed than the LDS with squeaky-clean?) would have had problems with the Ramones and Acca/dacca.
And maybe the B-52s got the boot for their name, not their songs. But the Talking Heads? Yes? Asia?
Was there something amazingly subversive about new wave or prog that my white suburban teenage friends of the time completely failed to appreciate?
@1:36:36
Doing donuts isn't particularly russian, but a universal behavior among young males*, one which I just happened to have run across recently in a russian tube:
(@2:36)
Now, someone may wish to quibble with the adjective 'universal', but it appears that it is widespread, not only geographically, but even temporally. Even before the internal combustion engine, even before wheeled vehicles, one could hope to impress the "ladies" with a well-executed drift:
(@3:15)
Today's troika features the singer Lolita (rather than the Nabokovian theme), mostly developing some themes we've seen before.
Firstly, another (New Years carnavelsque this time) take on "trava u doma", a song in which "the Earthlings" sang about space being great, but not as good as returning home, which was not only an early 80's hit but is still covered today:
secondly, we've run into chess in at least two cards before, and here it is, once again prominent:
... and finally, a song for which I don't have enough italian to tell if the lyrics are as ambiguous as the video, but I love the subtlety with which they tell an off-color joke in a family-friendly manner:
Felicita
TIL why symposiasts reclined on couches on three sides of the ἀνδρών.
On a lighter note from the Caucasus, here is a dance troupe* who are perfect to read Kevin Wald by, and suggest what the entertainment at a symposium might have looked like, in the early hours before all the lightweights were sent home (or at least to dark corners) with the αὐλητής, and the hardcore participants could get down to philosophizing for the ages.
Several years ago, I'd run across the pastiche, with several Pliasova-worthy moves
"Cossack Dance is not a Crime!"
and more recently the "karaoke comedy"
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which was not only written and produced in a very Bollywood style, but was even marketed in proper Bollywood fashion, by going around to smaller markets and getting the locals to sing hit songs from the movie, eg:
but today I learned that neither the pastiche nor the movie was that big a crossover, because if we go partway between russia and india, we find the local music and dance also lies on that continuum.
"Dagestan Lezginka"
(and some amount of culture flows from russia towards india, as well: for instance, the chechen commander in the following movie may speak a local language [subtitled] in the rest of the video, but I'm pretty sure he says "Poyekhali!" when telling his men, "let's roll!")
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