Almost a week after David Bowie's death, I dreamt that he and I were sitting at a table somewhere - a cheap school/college table, like one would have in a library, - and drawing
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jesus christ, how do you quote in this thing?.. bleh. reminds me why livejournal is not a thing anymore.
Maybe you've just subconsciously assimilated his cultural image really well.
I guess it's cultural osmosis of some kind. I mean, living in the West you do absorb the idea that Bowie is an icon, but if you don't actually listen to his music, the whys are nebulous. The makers of Venture Bros cartoon RPFed him as "The Sovereign", a shapeshifter that headed a society of supervillains. Except he wasn't actually David Bowie, he was someThing that was also David Bowie?.. I'm sure I'm missing a whole lot of layers of meaning in all this.
I have no idea what to make of the end of the dream, though. I mean, given that you have no actual feelings about him in real life. Very strange...
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Russians tend to draw parallels between him and our Boris Grebenschikov. Not that Boris was a gender-bender in any way, but he was always on the 'poet' edge of the "refined poet--Dionysian beast" rocker spectrum. Also, they kind of looked alike, and they hung out occasionally. So maybe I'm just anticipating Grebenschikov's death. He's younger than Bowie by 7 years, but in 'Russian man' years, especially in 'Russian poet' years, he's ancient.
And I can't even imagine the world without him. A world without Grebenschikov is a fundamentally different, lesser world. He's always been idolized in Russia, but as he matures and the world around him degrades, he shines brighter and brighter by example. Very different people say very similar things about him, and they all fundamentally boil down to the same heresy first espoused in a movie he cameoed in back in 1987: "He is G-d. He luminesces." There's a consensus that he's a somewhat higher order of being. A saint or maybe one of the lamedvovniks, the 36 tzaddikim upon whom the continued existence of the world is predicated. Not because he always talks in koans and nebulous deflections, but because everything he does enriches the world around him in a superhuman way. The amount of poetry, music, and concepts he permeated the Russian language and mentality with is mind-boggling. But even the things he does that pass relatively unnoticed actually reverberate in very positive ways. For instance, he worked with Gabrielle Roth on two albums, Refuge (1998) and Bardo (2002). Refuge is an album of mantras that he chants to music, in his very recognizable tone and with a pronounced Russian accent. The first time I listened to them, they sounded kind of funny. Now they are the only way I can meditate. (I actually measured my brainwaves with a gizmo while listening to them.) They are how I fall asleep on airplanes, stave off anxiety, or zone out while stretching. My husband Evan, meanwhile, at some point downloaded the 'Bardo' album, and listens to it non-stop. It's unclear what language Grebenschikov is singing in on it, but whatever it is, it grabs you and doesn't let go. So it's not even that he only has a special influence on Russian-speakers. Whatever vibes he's emitting work pretty universally.
I don't know if that's what Bowie did for the English-speaking crowd, but I think it's probably not too dissimilar. It's some combination of who they *are* and *what* they do and *how* they do, and how they look doing it. They perform themselves.
Incidentally, did you know he'd been offered a role on Hannibal?
Yes, we were all so excited when we heard. Then the show got canceled, just at the moment when it seemed Hannibal's uncle might put in an appearance (if only to evaluate his nephew's shiny new husband), but we still hoped he might come in for a reboot 1-2 years from now. So yeah, it's not a happy time in the Fannibal world.
Personally I think if you only hear/know one Bowie song it should be "Ziggy Stardust," not because it's the best thing he ever did (he hadn't yet developed his amazing vocal range, so just to begin with, some of his later stuff is a lot more impressive that way), but because it was just so iconic.
Right, I wasn't sure if that was his character, a song, or an album. I really should listen to him. On my list of things to do this year: the top 100 albums of Russian rock and the top 100 of Western rock.
I'm sure I'm missing a whole lot of layers of meaning in all this.
Huh. Haven't seen the cartoon, so no idea, except that it's a pretty well-established fact that "David Bowie" was always a character, even apart from all the sub-characters that the character was playing. (OR, of course, alternatively, that David Bowie was real, and was actually not human at all, but rather some kind of space-alien-god-thing who merely disguised himself as a human rock star. A rock star who disguised himself as a space-alien-god-thing, that is. Er.)
Russians tend to draw parallels between him and our Boris Grebenschikov.
Yeah? I had heard of Grebenschikov, slightly (no idea where), and of course I saw the pictures you posted on FB, but didn't know anything about him. Sounds like I should check him out. Both Refuge and Bardo sound interesting, the former particularly.
in 'Russian man' years, especially in 'Russian poet' years, he's ancient.
Oy. These guys. :|
I mean, Bowie was in a sort of similar position. He'd already had major heart surgery some twelve years ago. When he showed back up in 2013 I think everyone was sort of like, "Oh thank god, he's okay after all." Though he was also supposedly immortal, of course. So much for all that.
I don't know if that's what Bowie did for the English-speaking crowd, but I think it's probably not too dissimilar. It's some combination of who they *are* and *what* they do and *how* they do, and how they look doing it. They perform themselves.
Yes, this sounds right. It does sound like Grebenschikov has had a somewhat more universally positive reception, though (among Russians, I mean). Bowie, in spite of all the press he's always gotten, was still a sort of cult phenomenon. Just about every album he made is something of an acquired taste (I've rarely really liked any of his records the first time I heard them), and because he's always doing characters or some abstract sort of performative thing, he's not very accessible. Though I must say your descriptions of Grebenschikov's work don't sound at all mainstream either...
Right, I wasn't sure if that was his character, a song, or an album.
Yeah, all of the above. The album is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Now, if I were picking his best album, overall, I think personally I'd have to go with Scary Monsters (1980), but that one really is an acquired taste (I remember I hated it the first time I heard it), so. If you do end up listening to him and you're just like wtf, why was this ever a thing?... I think that's sort of the idea.
(Also, wow, top 100. For some reason that sounds really ambitious to me. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard even the top 30 albums of Western rock. Though I realize I should.)
(OR, of course, alternatively, that David Bowie was real, and was actually not human at all, but rather some kind of space-alien-god-thing who merely disguised himself as a human rock star. A rock star who disguised himself as a space-alien-god-thing, that is. Er.)
Yeah? I had heard of Grebenschikov, slightly (no idea where), and of course I saw the pictures you posted on FB, but didn't know anything about him. Sounds like I should check him out. Both Refuge and Bardo sound interesting, the former particularly.
Greben' also sang in English for a while, he tried to see if he can make over in the West. He did okay, make some English-language albums, but in the end he's a Russian poet, so he had to go back to what he was best at.
I mean, Bowie was in a sort of similar position. He'd already had major heart surgery some twelve years ago. When he showed back up in 2013 I think everyone was sort of like, "Oh thank god, he's okay after all." Though he was also supposedly immortal, of course. So much for all that.
Yeah, we are all painfully aware that Greben' isn't immortal. He aged drastically, his eyesight's failing, he's had heart surgeries... He drank a LOT when he was young because that was the late-Soviet modus vivendi for the Boheme, and it's catching up to him. Most of his contemporaries died off in the 90s. :/
To bad Brezhnev era USSR was so hella constrictive with respect to what you could and couldn't do given your profession. BG should've been in movies when he was young. Here's an excerpt from a student film a pal of his made as a course project - look at this dish!
It does sound like Grebenschikov has had a somewhat more universally positive reception, though (among Russians, I mean). Bowie, in spite of all the press he's always gotten, was still a sort of cult phenomenon.
Well, I don't know to what extent the Russian youth is into him. Boris (BG, as he's always been known) drops an album every couple of years, plus a ton of collaborative work with other bands and musicians, but his recent stuff (like, last 10 years) as not as massively epic. It's all quite listenable, but a lot of his earlier stuff was just so bloody fresh and weird, whereas now it's like, well-rounded and more generic?..
Though I must say your descriptions of Grebenschikov's work don't sound at all mainstream either...
Well, it's hard to define 'mainstream' in Russia. Like, pop and 'shanson' has been mainstream since the 90s, i.e. crap noise for women and men respectively. He's music for the brainier crowd. A lot of his earlier stuff especially is quite dense and really needs annotations. Which some websites actually have undertaken! there are whole encyclopedias online.
Yeah, all of the above. The album is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Now, if I were picking his best album, overall, I think personally I'd have to go with Scary Monsters (1980), but that one really is an acquired taste (I remember I hated it the first time I heard it), so.
You know, my favorite Queen album for some reason was always "Queen II". Which is literally no one's favorite. So I dunno.
Yeah, I know, top 100 is pretty ambitious... but I figure, it's kind of a glaring lacuna in my general education so far.
...Heh, yeah, definitely no idea. Except that the blond shirtless guy he's fighting is Iggy Pop, who was one of Bowie's best friends from the mid 70s onward. Dunno why they'd be fighting, though... or who any of the other people are...
Here's an ancient recording of Greben' making his American TV debut on Letterman
Thanks for the link -- I like this. He's got a good voice (even more noticeably on the second clip you linked to, but he sounds good here too). Funny thing: I watched this video first (before the Venture Bros. clip) and was wondering if he was alluding to Iggy Pop in the song, since one of Iggy Pop's bigger hits was "Real Wild Child (Wild One)." Could easily be just a coincidence, but it was weird to hear those lyrics and then see Iggy in the cartoon as well.
He drank a LOT when he was young because that was the late-Soviet modus vivendi for the Boheme
Yeah, I sort of figured. I'm sure Bowie did his share of hard drinking as well, but I think with him it was mostly psychedelics in the 60s, a ton of cocaine in the early 70s, and then just cigarettes basically forever (up until the heart attack, anyway).
look at this dish!
Heh. Not bad. ;) I think he looks good in both videos, really. Very pretty voice on this one, though.
And okay, since we're posting links, I'm just going to throw this in here randomly: the first six or seven minutes of this Bowie interview (1999) entertains me endlessly, partly just because he's 52 and adorable, but mostly because I'm pretty sure the whole manic thing is just an evasion tactic because he really does not want to actually be interviewed. (Edit: I see Iggy Pop has managed to show up here too, at about the seven-minute mark. What the hell.)
A lot of his earlier stuff especially is quite dense and really needs annotations.
Hah. Leave it to the Russians. (I remember one time, ages ago, we were talking about Vysotsky and you were observing that in order to get used to listening to music in English, you'd had to really lower your standards for songwriting. I wanted to be offended, but... I guess it's probably true. At least, my experience with Russians is that they're a much more literate and literary people on the whole than most English-speakers, so it would make sense that they'd both appreciate and prefer more complex songwriting.)
Thanks for the link -- I like this. He's got a good voice (even more noticeably on the second clip you linked to, but he sounds good here too). Funny thing: I watched this video first (before the Venture Bros. clip) and was wondering if he was alluding to Iggy Pop in the song, since one of Iggy Pop's bigger hits was "Real Wild Child (Wild One)." Could easily be just a coincidence, but it was weird to hear those lyrics and then see Iggy in the cartoon as well.
Oh, BG has a special voice, he does. XD Well, did, when he was young - he's a lot more hoarse now. On one hand, quite melodic, but on the other hand, he wasn't a trained singer, and he used to have this bleating vibrato... sounded a third Bob Dylan, a third Jacques Brel, and a third kid goat. XD
I'm sure he was into Iggy Pop in his old days too, and that song's probably a callback to him. I mean, what was a Russian rocker to do in a place with no native rock tradition? Step 1: absorb all the Western greats. Step 2: translate/cover the Western greats. Step 3: learn and build on the Western greats. Some of BG's earlier stuff was pretty much ripped off wholesale from marc Bolan or Bob Dylan - it didn't matter, he couldn't sell the albums commercially anyway, so it was all just playing around and learning. Then after it became possible to sell albums, "suddenly" people discovered the "plagiarism" - is it plagiarism when you credit the original author but don't get their official permission to use their work, because that's pretty much impossible?.. the jury's still out.
Yeah, I sort of figured. I'm sure Bowie did his share of hard drinking as well, but I think with him it was mostly psychedelics in the 60s, a ton of cocaine in the early 70s, and then just cigarettes basically forever (up until the heart attack, anyway).
Well, at least they keep a fellow skinny and pretty... alcohol generally does the opposite. When Russian artists die, they do not leave behind a beautiful corpse as a rule.
The Bowie interview is adorable. Man, he was a motormouth. Did he ever have a TV-show? He'd have been great. Put him in front of cameras like Craig Ferguson and just let him run his mouth for an hour. XD
Hah. Leave it to the Russians. (I remember one time, ages ago, we were talking about Vysotsky and you were observing that in order to get used to listening to music in English, you'd had to really lower your standards for songwriting. I wanted to be offended, but... I guess it's probably true. At least, my experience with Russians is that they're a much more literate and literary people on the whole than most English-speakers, so it would make sense that they'd both appreciate and prefer more complex songwriting.)
Well, the Russian rock tradition grew out of verbose 'city romances' and Silver Age poetry, not the blues, which is verbally minimalist. So it's no wonder. There were bands who tried to streamline lyrics and simplify the song structure - Kino comes to mind - but even so, it's not until I heard the band Mumij Troll in the late 90s that I realized that holy hell, they were actually doing that Western thing, where there are rhymed words but they fit together like an expressionist painting rather than an impressionist one.
Here's one of BG's prettier songs, though it's not his - it was written by a dissident named Anri Volohonskij I believe. But it became best known through BG's performance and came to be associated firmly with him.
This one's his though. From a period where he got really into searching for the specifically Russian aspects of Russian rock, and they took his some weird, weird, amazing places. He has a talent for making his songs sound a bit like old-timey magic spells/curses/prayers - repetitive, archaic, and hypnotizing. With a ton of contemporary references thrown in pell-mell. ("And that is how our life goes - now SECAM, and now PAL; Bite the big one in a field, or have the Savior in your head")
sounded a third Bob Dylan, a third Jacques Brel, and a third kid goat. XD
XD I guess I kind of see what you mean, though mostly he sounds just fine to me. (Admittedly, I have zero musical/auditory training -- I even kind of enjoy Bob Dylan's voice -- so my assessment is probably meaningless.) ...But what in the world is that squeaker noise? Is that some kind of instrument? Now that is strange!
I don't know that Bowie was ever exactly a trained singer, either. His "normal" singing voice is sort of nasal (sometimes extremely and purposely so), and he tends to come back to that by default at various points in his career. But he does also have this magnificentbaritone that got to be one of his trademarks in the late 70s-80s.
Then after it became possible to sell albums, "suddenly" people discovered the "plagiarism" - is it plagiarism when you credit the original author but don't get their official permission to use their work, because that's pretty much impossible?.. the jury's still out.
I've always wondered how this sort of thing worked, since nobody considers it plagiarism if you play a cover song live. I can see that it's a different story if you're making money off of someone else's material, but it does seem like the situation is pretty different when we're talking about covering Western songs in Soviet Russia...
Well, at least they keep a fellow skinny and pretty...
True enough. And staying skinny and pretty seemed to be rather high priorities for Bowie. Except, that is, in his last two music videos, where he looks genuinely pretty terrible, and even seems to be using bad camera angles and unpleasant lighting to deliberately accentuate how terrible he looks. Like, he looks considerably better in candid photos from just last month than in his last professional videos. Like he decided to really go ahead and play the "dying old man" character for all it was worth.
Man, he was a motormouth.
At least on that day. XD Like I say, I think he was mainly maneuvering to get out of actually having to answer any questions. It seems like every single time he got interviewed, it was always the same questions: "So, you used to do a lot of drugs -- what was that like?" and then "So how about that mansex? You were really into mansex back in the day. Right? So what was that like?" And then sometimes they'd throw in some even weirder or more obnoxious question like, "So hey, your wife is black. Do people comment on that?"
he got really into searching for the specifically Russian aspects of Russian rock, and they took his some weird, weird, amazing places.
Nice. I like both of the songs you posted, but yeah, this one in particular seems to be a really cool blend of typical rock elements and a very Russian sound. I have to admit that I don't have a lot to compare it to -- the only other Russian artists I've heard much of are Vysotsky and DDT, and their stuff also sounds very, very Russian to me (I think more so than what you've posted of BG's work, actually). But hey, on a totally irrelevant note: look, a beard! It seems like I never see modern-day Russians with beards. When I was in Kazan I swear only the Tatar guys wore them.
XD I guess I kind of see what you mean, though mostly he sounds just fine to me. (Admittedly, I have zero musical/auditory training -- I even kind of enjoy Bob Dylan's voice -- so my assessment is probably meaningless.) ...But what in the world is that squeaker noise? Is that some kind of instrument? Now that is strange!
No idea! BG loves his 'svistelki i perdelki' (whistles and fart-makers) - a fun translation of 'bells and whistles'. But yeah, BG's singing is most commonly verbed as "bleating". :)
But he does also have this magnificent baritone that got to be one of his trademarks in the late 70s-80s.
I wonder if it's just an inevitable consequence of cigarettes? No matter where your register is, everyone ends up a baritone eventually. This is what BG sounds like these days... in a subway in Moscow, because why not.
True enough. And staying skinny and pretty seemed to be rather high priorities for Bowie.
I think it might've been the opposite for Boris. He spent about 20 years being the king of Leningrad underground. The student film he played himself in was inspired by his songs - the screenwriter got obsessed with an illegally disseminated Akvarium tape. (Apparently, Boris spent a month in that apartment, being filmed, avoiding all conversation, and writing songs in the director's (the sailor with the moustache) kitchen. He turned out to be a natural actor, perfectly competent in every way, utterly obedient to the director, played every sort of instrument on the fly, - the perfect actor. And then he never did that sort of thing again. only music videos & cameos.
Anyway, even by 1981 he was already 'widely famous in narrow circles'. His photographs were scrapbooked by his fans and traded like baseball cards. He was wank material for a whole generation of late-Soviet intelligentsia youth. I mean, USSR had no Hollywood. There weren't that many widely known super hot guys. Even the male actors were mostly the kind that Hollywood had before men started getting subjected to the same beauty standards as women - charismatic and talented but not lookers. When Boris finally aged out of his prettiness, he let it go happily - shaved his head, grew a goat beard, got fat. (Some people were legit mad: 'how dare you, you were such a doll'.) I guess being pretty was too much hard work. XD
It seems like every single time he got interviewed, it was always the same questions: "So, you used to do a lot of drugs -- what was that like?" and then "So how about that mansex? You were really into mansex back in the day. Right? So what was that like?" And then sometimes they'd throw in some even weirder or more obnoxious question like, "So hey, your wife is black. Do people comment on that?"
Yeah, the perils of being a 'scandalous' person - all you get asked about it the 'scandals'.
But hey, on a totally irrelevant note: look, a beard! It seems like I never see modern-day Russians with beards. When I was in Kazan I swear only the Tatar guys wore them.
Yes! He grew a very bushy beard during his 'hyper Russian' days. the band was touring Russia while writing a new Russian album, so they got went all 'Old Believery' with the outfits and long beards, because why the hell not. Also went to see ALL the monasteries and churches. BG started taking copious notes on which monastery and church and cathedral had which kind of icon and wrote some very melancholy songs. I think these days he mostly wears a beard because he's old goddammit and he can do what he wants. XD
Here's a French film from 1985 about BG et al. Starts with a song of his: "Рок-н-ролл мертв". BG gives an interview in it! It's cute.
Maybe you've just subconsciously assimilated his cultural image really well.
I guess it's cultural osmosis of some kind. I mean, living in the West you do absorb the idea that Bowie is an icon, but if you don't actually listen to his music, the whys are nebulous. The makers of Venture Bros cartoon RPFed him as "The Sovereign", a shapeshifter that headed a society of supervillains. Except he wasn't actually David Bowie, he was someThing that was also David Bowie?.. I'm sure I'm missing a whole lot of layers of meaning in all this.
I have no idea what to make of the end of the dream, though. I mean, given that you have no actual feelings about him in real life. Very strange...
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Russians tend to draw parallels between him and our Boris Grebenschikov.
Not that Boris was a gender-bender in any way, but he was always on the 'poet' edge of the "refined poet--Dionysian beast" rocker spectrum. Also, they kind of looked alike, and they hung out occasionally. So maybe I'm just anticipating Grebenschikov's death. He's younger than Bowie by 7 years, but in 'Russian man' years, especially in 'Russian poet' years, he's ancient.
And I can't even imagine the world without him. A world without Grebenschikov is a fundamentally different, lesser world. He's always been idolized in Russia, but as he matures and the world around him degrades, he shines brighter and brighter by example. Very different people say very similar things about him, and they all fundamentally boil down to the same heresy first espoused in a movie he cameoed in back in 1987: "He is G-d. He luminesces." There's a consensus that he's a somewhat higher order of being. A saint or maybe one of the lamedvovniks, the 36 tzaddikim upon whom the continued existence of the world is predicated. Not because he always talks in koans and nebulous deflections, but because everything he does enriches the world around him in a superhuman way. The amount of poetry, music, and concepts he permeated the Russian language and mentality with is mind-boggling. But even the things he does that pass relatively unnoticed actually reverberate in very positive ways. For instance, he worked with Gabrielle Roth on two albums, Refuge (1998) and Bardo (2002). Refuge is an album of mantras that he chants to music, in his very recognizable tone and with a pronounced Russian accent. The first time I listened to them, they sounded kind of funny. Now they are the only way I can meditate. (I actually measured my brainwaves with a gizmo while listening to them.) They are how I fall asleep on airplanes, stave off anxiety, or zone out while stretching. My husband Evan, meanwhile, at some point downloaded the 'Bardo' album, and listens to it non-stop. It's unclear what language Grebenschikov is singing in on it, but whatever it is, it grabs you and doesn't let go. So it's not even that he only has a special influence on Russian-speakers. Whatever vibes he's emitting work pretty universally.
I don't know if that's what Bowie did for the English-speaking crowd, but I think it's probably not too dissimilar. It's some combination of who they *are* and *what* they do and *how* they do, and how they look doing it. They perform themselves.
Incidentally, did you know he'd been offered a role on Hannibal?
Yes, we were all so excited when we heard. Then the show got canceled, just at the moment when it seemed Hannibal's uncle might put in an appearance (if only to evaluate his nephew's shiny new husband), but we still hoped he might come in for a reboot 1-2 years from now. So yeah, it's not a happy time in the Fannibal world.
Personally I think if you only hear/know one Bowie song it should be "Ziggy Stardust," not because it's the best thing he ever did (he hadn't yet developed his amazing vocal range, so just to begin with, some of his later stuff is a lot more impressive that way), but because it was just so iconic.
Right, I wasn't sure if that was his character, a song, or an album. I really should listen to him. On my list of things to do this year: the top 100 albums of Russian rock and the top 100 of Western rock.
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Huh. Haven't seen the cartoon, so no idea, except that it's a pretty well-established fact that "David Bowie" was always a character, even apart from all the sub-characters that the character was playing. (OR, of course, alternatively, that David Bowie was real, and was actually not human at all, but rather some kind of space-alien-god-thing who merely disguised himself as a human rock star. A rock star who disguised himself as a space-alien-god-thing, that is. Er.)
Russians tend to draw parallels between him and our Boris Grebenschikov.
Yeah? I had heard of Grebenschikov, slightly (no idea where), and of course I saw the pictures you posted on FB, but didn't know anything about him. Sounds like I should check him out. Both Refuge and Bardo sound interesting, the former particularly.
in 'Russian man' years, especially in 'Russian poet' years, he's ancient.
Oy. These guys. :|
I mean, Bowie was in a sort of similar position. He'd already had major heart surgery some twelve years ago. When he showed back up in 2013 I think everyone was sort of like, "Oh thank god, he's okay after all." Though he was also supposedly immortal, of course. So much for all that.
I don't know if that's what Bowie did for the English-speaking crowd, but I think it's probably not too dissimilar. It's some combination of who they *are* and *what* they do and *how* they do, and how they look doing it. They perform themselves.
Yes, this sounds right. It does sound like Grebenschikov has had a somewhat more universally positive reception, though (among Russians, I mean). Bowie, in spite of all the press he's always gotten, was still a sort of cult phenomenon. Just about every album he made is something of an acquired taste (I've rarely really liked any of his records the first time I heard them), and because he's always doing characters or some abstract sort of performative thing, he's not very accessible. Though I must say your descriptions of Grebenschikov's work don't sound at all mainstream either...
Right, I wasn't sure if that was his character, a song, or an album.
Yeah, all of the above. The album is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Now, if I were picking his best album, overall, I think personally I'd have to go with Scary Monsters (1980), but that one really is an acquired taste (I remember I hated it the first time I heard it), so. If you do end up listening to him and you're just like wtf, why was this ever a thing?... I think that's sort of the idea.
(Also, wow, top 100. For some reason that sounds really ambitious to me. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard even the top 30 albums of Western rock. Though I realize I should.)
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...Here, just watch this. XD
Yeah? I had heard of Grebenschikov, slightly (no idea where), and of course I saw the pictures you posted on FB, but didn't know anything about him. Sounds like I should check him out. Both Refuge and Bardo sound interesting, the former particularly.
Greben' also sang in English for a while, he tried to see if he can make over in the West. He did okay, make some English-language albums, but in the end he's a Russian poet, so he had to go back to what he was best at.
Here's an ancient recording of Greben' making his American TV debut on Letterman
I mean, Bowie was in a sort of similar position. He'd already had major heart surgery some twelve years ago. When he showed back up in 2013 I think everyone was sort of like, "Oh thank god, he's okay after all." Though he was also supposedly immortal, of course. So much for all that.
Yeah, we are all painfully aware that Greben' isn't immortal. He aged drastically, his eyesight's failing, he's had heart surgeries... He drank a LOT when he was young because that was the late-Soviet modus vivendi for the Boheme, and it's catching up to him. Most of his contemporaries died off in the 90s. :/
To bad Brezhnev era USSR was so hella constrictive with respect to what you could and couldn't do given your profession. BG should've been in movies when he was young. Here's an excerpt from a student film a pal of his made as a course project - look at this dish!
It does sound like Grebenschikov has had a somewhat more universally positive reception, though (among Russians, I mean). Bowie, in spite of all the press he's always gotten, was still a sort of cult phenomenon.
Well, I don't know to what extent the Russian youth is into him. Boris (BG, as he's always been known) drops an album every couple of years, plus a ton of collaborative work with other bands and musicians, but his recent stuff (like, last 10 years) as not as massively epic. It's all quite listenable, but a lot of his earlier stuff was just so bloody fresh and weird, whereas now it's like, well-rounded and more generic?..
Though I must say your descriptions of Grebenschikov's work don't sound at all mainstream either...
Well, it's hard to define 'mainstream' in Russia. Like, pop and 'shanson' has been mainstream since the 90s, i.e. crap noise for women and men respectively. He's music for the brainier crowd. A lot of his earlier stuff especially is quite dense and really needs annotations. Which some websites actually have undertaken! there are whole encyclopedias online.
Yeah, all of the above. The album is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Now, if I were picking his best album, overall, I think personally I'd have to go with Scary Monsters (1980), but that one really is an acquired taste (I remember I hated it the first time I heard it), so.
You know, my favorite Queen album for some reason was always "Queen II". Which is literally no one's favorite. So I dunno.
Yeah, I know, top 100 is pretty ambitious... but I figure, it's kind of a glaring lacuna in my general education so far.
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...Heh, yeah, definitely no idea. Except that the blond shirtless guy he's fighting is Iggy Pop, who was one of Bowie's best friends from the mid 70s onward. Dunno why they'd be fighting, though... or who any of the other people are...
Here's an ancient recording of Greben' making his American TV debut on Letterman
Thanks for the link -- I like this. He's got a good voice (even more noticeably on the second clip you linked to, but he sounds good here too). Funny thing: I watched this video first (before the Venture Bros. clip) and was wondering if he was alluding to Iggy Pop in the song, since one of Iggy Pop's bigger hits was "Real Wild Child (Wild One)." Could easily be just a coincidence, but it was weird to hear those lyrics and then see Iggy in the cartoon as well.
He drank a LOT when he was young because that was the late-Soviet modus vivendi for the Boheme
Yeah, I sort of figured. I'm sure Bowie did his share of hard drinking as well, but I think with him it was mostly psychedelics in the 60s, a ton of cocaine in the early 70s, and then just cigarettes basically forever (up until the heart attack, anyway).
look at this dish!
Heh. Not bad. ;) I think he looks good in both videos, really. Very pretty voice on this one, though.
And okay, since we're posting links, I'm just going to throw this in here randomly: the first six or seven minutes of this Bowie interview (1999) entertains me endlessly, partly just because he's 52 and adorable, but mostly because I'm pretty sure the whole manic thing is just an evasion tactic because he really does not want to actually be interviewed. (Edit: I see Iggy Pop has managed to show up here too, at about the seven-minute mark. What the hell.)
A lot of his earlier stuff especially is quite dense and really needs annotations.
Hah. Leave it to the Russians. (I remember one time, ages ago, we were talking about Vysotsky and you were observing that in order to get used to listening to music in English, you'd had to really lower your standards for songwriting. I wanted to be offended, but... I guess it's probably true. At least, my experience with Russians is that they're a much more literate and literary people on the whole than most English-speakers, so it would make sense that they'd both appreciate and prefer more complex songwriting.)
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Oh, BG has a special voice, he does. XD Well, did, when he was young - he's a lot more hoarse now. On one hand, quite melodic, but on the other hand, he wasn't a trained singer, and he used to have this bleating vibrato... sounded a third Bob Dylan, a third Jacques Brel, and a third kid goat. XD
I'm sure he was into Iggy Pop in his old days too, and that song's probably a callback to him. I mean, what was a Russian rocker to do in a place with no native rock tradition? Step 1: absorb all the Western greats. Step 2: translate/cover the Western greats. Step 3: learn and build on the Western greats. Some of BG's earlier stuff was pretty much ripped off wholesale from marc Bolan or Bob Dylan - it didn't matter, he couldn't sell the albums commercially anyway, so it was all just playing around and learning. Then after it became possible to sell albums, "suddenly" people discovered the "plagiarism" - is it plagiarism when you credit the original author but don't get their official permission to use their work, because that's pretty much impossible?.. the jury's still out.
Yeah, I sort of figured. I'm sure Bowie did his share of hard drinking as well, but I think with him it was mostly psychedelics in the 60s, a ton of cocaine in the early 70s, and then just cigarettes basically forever (up until the heart attack, anyway).
Well, at least they keep a fellow skinny and pretty... alcohol generally does the opposite. When Russian artists die, they do not leave behind a beautiful corpse as a rule.
The Bowie interview is adorable. Man, he was a motormouth. Did he ever have a TV-show? He'd have been great. Put him in front of cameras like Craig Ferguson and just let him run his mouth for an hour. XD
Hah. Leave it to the Russians. (I remember one time, ages ago, we were talking about Vysotsky and you were observing that in order to get used to listening to music in English, you'd had to really lower your standards for songwriting. I wanted to be offended, but... I guess it's probably true. At least, my experience with Russians is that they're a much more literate and literary people on the whole than most English-speakers, so it would make sense that they'd both appreciate and prefer more complex songwriting.)
Well, the Russian rock tradition grew out of verbose 'city romances' and Silver Age poetry, not the blues, which is verbally minimalist. So it's no wonder. There were bands who tried to streamline lyrics and simplify the song structure - Kino comes to mind - but even so, it's not until I heard the band Mumij Troll in the late 90s that I realized that holy hell, they were actually doing that Western thing, where there are rhymed words but they fit together like an expressionist painting rather than an impressionist one.
Here's one of BG's prettier songs, though it's not his - it was written by a dissident named Anri Volohonskij I believe. But it became best known through BG's performance and came to be associated firmly with him.
This one's his though. From a period where he got really into searching for the specifically Russian aspects of Russian rock, and they took his some weird, weird, amazing places. He has a talent for making his songs sound a bit like old-timey magic spells/curses/prayers - repetitive, archaic, and hypnotizing. With a ton of contemporary references thrown in pell-mell. ("And that is how our life goes - now SECAM, and now PAL; Bite the big one in a field, or have the Savior in your head")
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XD I guess I kind of see what you mean, though mostly he sounds just fine to me. (Admittedly, I have zero musical/auditory training -- I even kind of enjoy Bob Dylan's voice -- so my assessment is probably meaningless.) ...But what in the world is that squeaker noise? Is that some kind of instrument? Now that is strange!
I don't know that Bowie was ever exactly a trained singer, either. His "normal" singing voice is sort of nasal (sometimes extremely and purposely so), and he tends to come back to that by default at various points in his career. But he does also have this magnificent baritone that got to be one of his trademarks in the late 70s-80s.
Then after it became possible to sell albums, "suddenly" people discovered the "plagiarism" - is it plagiarism when you credit the original author but don't get their official permission to use their work, because that's pretty much impossible?.. the jury's still out.
I've always wondered how this sort of thing worked, since nobody considers it plagiarism if you play a cover song live. I can see that it's a different story if you're making money off of someone else's material, but it does seem like the situation is pretty different when we're talking about covering Western songs in Soviet Russia...
Well, at least they keep a fellow skinny and pretty...
True enough. And staying skinny and pretty seemed to be rather high priorities for Bowie. Except, that is, in his last two music videos, where he looks genuinely pretty terrible, and even seems to be using bad camera angles and unpleasant lighting to deliberately accentuate how terrible he looks. Like, he looks considerably better in candid photos from just last month than in his last professional videos. Like he decided to really go ahead and play the "dying old man" character for all it was worth.
Man, he was a motormouth.
At least on that day. XD Like I say, I think he was mainly maneuvering to get out of actually having to answer any questions. It seems like every single time he got interviewed, it was always the same questions: "So, you used to do a lot of drugs -- what was that like?" and then "So how about that mansex? You were really into mansex back in the day. Right? So what was that like?" And then sometimes they'd throw in some even weirder or more obnoxious question like, "So hey, your wife is black. Do people comment on that?"
(His wife, incidentally, is/was gorgeous enough to actually out-glam him. I think their daughter has a good chance of being the prettiest human ever.)
he got really into searching for the specifically Russian aspects of Russian rock, and they took his some weird, weird, amazing places.
Nice. I like both of the songs you posted, but yeah, this one in particular seems to be a really cool blend of typical rock elements and a very Russian sound. I have to admit that I don't have a lot to compare it to -- the only other Russian artists I've heard much of are Vysotsky and DDT, and their stuff also sounds very, very Russian to me (I think more so than what you've posted of BG's work, actually). But hey, on a totally irrelevant note: look, a beard! It seems like I never see modern-day Russians with beards. When I was in Kazan I swear only the Tatar guys wore them.
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No idea! BG loves his 'svistelki i perdelki' (whistles and fart-makers) - a fun translation of 'bells and whistles'. But yeah, BG's singing is most commonly verbed as "bleating". :)
But he does also have this magnificent baritone that got to be one of his trademarks in the late 70s-80s.
I wonder if it's just an inevitable consequence of cigarettes? No matter where your register is, everyone ends up a baritone eventually. This is what BG sounds like these days... in a subway in Moscow, because why not.
True enough. And staying skinny and pretty seemed to be rather high priorities for Bowie.
I think it might've been the opposite for Boris. He spent about 20 years being the king of Leningrad underground. The student film he played himself in was inspired by his songs - the screenwriter got obsessed with an illegally disseminated Akvarium tape. (Apparently, Boris spent a month in that apartment, being filmed, avoiding all conversation, and writing songs in the director's (the sailor with the moustache) kitchen. He turned out to be a natural actor, perfectly competent in every way, utterly obedient to the director, played every sort of instrument on the fly, - the perfect actor. And then he never did that sort of thing again. only music videos & cameos.
Anyway, even by 1981 he was already 'widely famous in narrow circles'. His photographs were scrapbooked by his fans and traded like baseball cards. He was wank material for a whole generation of late-Soviet intelligentsia youth. I mean, USSR had no Hollywood. There weren't that many widely known super hot guys. Even the male actors were mostly the kind that Hollywood had before men started getting subjected to the same beauty standards as women - charismatic and talented but not lookers. When Boris finally aged out of his prettiness, he let it go happily - shaved his head, grew a goat beard, got fat. (Some people were legit mad: 'how dare you, you were such a doll'.) I guess being pretty was too much hard work. XD
It seems like every single time he got interviewed, it was always the same questions: "So, you used to do a lot of drugs -- what was that like?" and then "So how about that mansex? You were really into mansex back in the day. Right? So what was that like?" And then sometimes they'd throw in some even weirder or more obnoxious question like, "So hey, your wife is black. Do people comment on that?"
Yeah, the perils of being a 'scandalous' person - all you get asked about it the 'scandals'.
But hey, on a totally irrelevant note: look, a beard! It seems like I never see modern-day Russians with beards. When I was in Kazan I swear only the Tatar guys wore them.
Yes! He grew a very bushy beard during his 'hyper Russian' days. the band was touring Russia while writing a new Russian album, so they got went all 'Old Believery' with the outfits and long beards, because why the hell not. Also went to see ALL the monasteries and churches. BG started taking copious notes on which monastery and church and cathedral had which kind of icon and wrote some very melancholy songs. I think these days he mostly wears a beard because he's old goddammit and he can do what he wants. XD
Here's a French film from 1985 about BG et al. Starts with a song of his: "Рок-н-ролл мертв". BG gives an interview in it! It's cute.
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