IZO

Potap and Nastya Kamenskikh, In Our Yard.

New Year's Eve: Mayak Cafe, 1 January 2009, 5.30 am.

Avia, I Don't Love You, 1988 (thanks, NM).

 

Buddha sweetie boys.

Boris Grebenshchikov has cancelled all concerts for unspecified medical reasons (NEWSmusic, in Russian).

The most successful concerts of 2008 in commercial terms; Kirkorov is 2nd, Zemfira 3rd, MakSim 5th (Russia-ic).

Miss World comes home and announces how pleased she is to have shown that the most beautiful girls are in Russia (RIA Novosti, video, in Russian).

From the 90s: Natalya Vetlitskaya: Look In My Eyes (via digits-letters).

Сектор Газа, Проститутка.

Shain On Yo Krezi Daimond.

Folks like to use the music of the late pop legend Viktor Tsoi to promote their cause. Recently it was a bank in Kazakhstan had the idea. Now the new political movement Solidarity, whose organising "bureau" includes Garri Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov, wants to use Tsoi's work as its theme – but apparently hasn't asked permission of the rights' holders, his family. The song in question is (I Want) Changes (Перемен) (moritas, in Russian; via dolboeb).

Miss World 2008 speaks! 

She did it! Ksenia Sukhinova (IZO, earlier),from Tyumen, wins the Miss World crown in South Africa ("the 51-year-old competition was originally scheduled for October 4 in Kiev, but was delayed in September over security concerns due to the conflict between neighbours Russia and Georgia") (Yahoo) (thanks, MK). Below: she wins Miss Russia in 2007.

More Syava. 

There's more and more Kandinsky Prize stuff pouring out: videos of the pre-prize picket, statements from artists, voting conspiracy theories from Ekaterina Degot and others. I can't keep up. Here's the group Krem'L, Peace Labour May (via dmitrivrubel).

Julia from Mariupol, the Anastasia Queen (anastasiaqueen.com, in English!) (thanks, MK).

Yesterday was Russian Constitution Day, and Miss Constitution won a (foreign) car (drugoi). UPDATE: more here (Megan K. Stack/LA Times) (thanks, MK):

When her moment of glory came, Masha Fyodorova was draped in the Russian flag and handed the keys to a brand-new, pink-and-orange Mini Cooper. She strolled off the stage in a shower of confetti and sparklers, an economics student from the provinces reborn as the official paragon of patriotic womanhood.

The gathering Friday of B-list pop stars and hundreds of die-hard pro-Kremlin youth activists on the edge of Red Square was beauty pageant as patriotic ceremony, emblematic of today's sexed-up, nationalistic Russia.

Evgenia Borzykh and group Mikhalna.

Metallica ... zombie ... masterpiece ... music video ... All Nightmare Long (io9):

It's a dreamy, half-CGI tale of how the Soviets find a space spore that reanimates dead flesh. They unleash it on the United States in the 1940s, and reduce the country to chaos before swooping in to "rescue" the Americans. We see glimpses of our alternate present world, with giant Soviet robots occupying US cities full of burning zombies.

Now attention is on the stilyagi movement: Tamara Miansarova, Black Cat.

Ksenia Sukhinova, Miss Russia 2007, has won the Top Model 2008 competition in Johannesburg; this competition counts as a semi-final for the Miss World competition (Biznes Stil, in Russian).

Interview with Liz Mitchell of Boney M, who were HUGE in the USSR, about her Russian experiences (MK v Pitere, in Russian). Below: Boney M in Russia, singing Rasputin (apparently they weren't allowed to perform this song on Soviet-era tours).

The Television Morality Committee will today meet to discuss the reality show House-2, which is accused of corrupting young people (ITAR-TASS, in Russian).

Petr Nalich in concert, with video (NTV, in Russian). Nalich made his name on the internet; the queue for his concert at B1 Maximum was a good hundred metres long.

Regina, Yes Boss. "I had my doubts, but couldn't resist."

On the cusp of a new era: Boris Grebenshchikov, The Communists Caught a Boy, 1991.

From today you can download Peter Nalich's new album free; it's 52 megabytes (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Zemfira has been in a late-night punch-up with a porter (Life.ru, in Russian).

The body of former Mashina Vremeni keyboardist Alexander Zaitsev has been found in Yurevets, Ivanovo region. Someone has apparently been arrested in connection with his murder. Zaitsev disappeared a few months ago (Sergei Stillavin, in Russian):

The press reported that the former musician, under the influence of narcotics, had been kidnapped in Moscow by unknown people and taken away in a car. Zaitsev's friends speculated that the reason for the kidnapping might be an attempt by criminals to get possession of his Moscow flat.

That's a nineties-style story: in that decade countless old men and women were murdered for their apartments. Well, if your business method ain't broke, why mend it?

Actor Stanislav Sadalsky performing in, apparently, a night-club. Because/not for sadness/was Georgia created/by the Lord...

Tamara Miansarova, Ryzhik.

 

Helena Majdaniec, Rudy Rydz.

The obscure career of Bohumil Konečný, 1905-81 (Tony Ozuna/Prague Post):

Bohumil Konečný ... has been unjustly ignored, and ultimately forgotten by Czechs due to an unfortunate turn of events at the peak of his career.  ... In 1965, Konečný had made an acquaintance with an admirer of his work, Petr Sadecký. ... In 1967, Sadecký emigrated to the West, though he kept in touch with Konečný, sending him letters and postcards. What Konečný didn’t know was that Sadecký was busy trying to pass himself off as the author of Konečný’s works, first for Karel May Publishers in Germany, then more ambitiously as the discoverer of a group of disaffected Soviet dissidents who, he claimed, had created a heroine named Octobriana, a voluptuous woman with superhuman powers. In 1971, in London, Sadecký published and promoted a false samizdat book, Octobriana and the Russian Underground, which briefly became a media sensation. David Bowie was so inspired by Octobriana that he wrote songs about her intended for a film. In reality, however, Octobriana was the Amazona character originally drawn by Konečný, simply altered by the imposter Petr Sadecký.

30,000 inhabitants of Krasnoyarsk were asked which "typical Englishman" should be immortalised in a statue next to the James Shark Pub in the city-centre? Winnie-the-Pooh? James Bond? Winston Churchill? Mister Pickwick? Mick Jagger? David Beckham? In the end they passed on all the above and chose Roman Abramovich (Oreanda, in Russian).

Kai Metov: Pozishn Namber Tu.

Emakha-Emaso (in transliteration); there seems to be some confusion whether the performer is in a prison camp or on a building site, but maybe it doesn't matter (via stillavinsergei).

1975 Komsomol BAM construction song (pakhmutova.ru).

Reproductions of Nazi posters on sale in Estonia in the form of calendars etc (leh_ich/tonismagi, in Russian).

Karl Marx's Das Kapital re-issued as Japanese manga (Independent).

Для девушки из Дагестана звучит эта песня ;) Iosif Kobson, Somewhere Far Away, performed in 1973.

Russian rap: Noggano.

"When I'm sixty-four-five..." In the town, I think, of Dzerzhinsk.

I am 65. I would like a male or female of the same age to live with me. So that I have someone to talk to. Call Sunday evening (photo by pavel-otdelnov).

It's said that censors have stopped the sale of Lolita Milyavskaya's latest album due to the explicit photo-shoot that illustrates it BUT you can in fact buy the forbidden goods in some Moscow music shops (MIGnews, in Russian). Sounds like an advertising campaign rather than censorship to me.

Nikolai Voronov, White Dragonfly of Love, and parodists.

In Moscow last year the most popular names were: Alexander, Ivan, Nikita, Maxim, Artem (boys) and Anastasia, Anna, Maria, Daria, Polina (girls). Boys' most popular names haven't changed that much over a couple of centuries, but not so girls' names: in the eighteenth century in the town of Bezhetsk the popular girls' names were: Anna, Paraskovia, Maria, Avdotia, Tatiana, Marfa, Irina, Natalia, Matrena, Ekaterina, Daria, Nastasia, Fekla, Elena, Akulina, Fedosia, Aksinia, Afimia (avmalgin, in Russian).

Lolita Milyavska (IZO, earlier) anti-Saakashvili, anti-war video.

Take Me Back To Your House. Клюква.

Some Tatar pop.

Nikolai Voronov, Moment (Мгновение) and Lady (Госпожа).

Darya Dontsova is the most prolific detective author (Russia IC)? Flying out of Sheremetevo recently I bought her book Fanera Milosskaya, featuring the quaintly-named private eye Evlampiya Romanova, but even given that I had nothing else to read on the plane I found it tough going. The text is apparently a husband-obsessed disquisition pandering to female anxiety. The first half-dozen pages feature Evlampiya's extended opinion on how you will lose your husband if you nag him; a cameo of an alcoholic husband and despairing wife; and a client who wants Evlampiya to check up on her possibly cheating other half.

The Russian government's budget for the 2009 Eurovision song contest in Moscow is upwards of a billion roubles (about $40 million) (gazeta.ru, in Russian).