My husband, The Russian, spent the first 28 years of his life in the former Leningrad, whereas I came of age mostly in Southern California. As you might imagine, this divergence makes for some major cultural differences between the two of us, including the lack of a shared pop music background. Although we’re both the same age, we grew up listening to very different songs and naturally developed quite different tastes. Aside from classical music, we don’t agree on much when it comes to our respective musical proclivities.
The Russian has a large collection of what I call Rooskie CD-skies. For whatever reason, Russian pop music relies heavily on the synthesizer. It’s also generally upbeat in a relentless, saccharine sort of way, surprising for a culture that’s elevated angst to an art form. As a general rule, I can only listen to about 1o to 15 minutes of the stuff before I want to gouge out my eardrums. At sometime during his 25 years in this country, The Russian developed a taste for Warren Zevon and Leonard Cohen, presumably because they reflect his darker sensibilities. He’s not known as the King of the Worst Case Scenario for nothing.
While I can’t stand The Russian’s music, he reciprocates by hating mine back. The works of Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, and Joni Mitchell fail to move him. He’d rather listen to cats in heat. I’ve managed to get him to tolerate a couple of girl groups–the Indigo Girls and Cowboy Junkies–but other than that, if he comes home and I’m listening to something on the stereo, his usual question is “what is that noise?”
In the course of our almost fifteen years together, The Russian and I have driven cross-country three times and from Los Angeles to Seattle once. These are long-enough journeys on their own, but without a mutually agreeable playlist they can drag on forever as even the most scintillating pair can’t keep up a decent conversation for 3000 miles. Imagine driving across North Dakota in the darkness, where all you can see are the lines on the highway in front of you and the far-and-few-between headlights of passing cars, yet not being able to blast your favorite tunes and sing along. If there’s a hell, this is how I’ve experienced it.
It was in the search for something we both could enjoy that I somehow stumbled across the Red Elvises. Based in Los Angeles, they were founded in 1995 by Igor Yuzov and Oleg Bernov, two Russian musicians who met in Southern California at a Russian-American peace walk and decided to form a band. They originally described their style as “Siberian Surf Rock,” which captures the eclectic nature of their work. Part rock-and-roll, part Russian folk music, with a dash of rockabilly and a hint of Beach Boys thrown in, they cross the cultural divide in a way that allows both The Russian and me to enjoy them. We now own a few of the group’s CDs, which has pretty much doubled the amount of pop music in our CD collection that we can both embrace.
The first video below is from a Red Elvises’ performance at Rusty’s Surf Ranch, a dive bar on the Santa Monica pier. “Drinking with Jesus,” from their most recent album, showcases their irreverent humor and the way in which they combine Russian and American sensibilities.
The chorus is classic, combining self-pity with the unique grammatical stylings of the Russian-American immigrant community:
Why am I not happy?
Why am I not rich?
Why nobody love me?
Why life such a bitch?
Why indeed? The second video, a performance of “Lara’s Wedding” also filmed at Rusty’s, features my favorite song from the new album, a modernized version of a classic Russian-Jewish folk song.
The upbeat tempo disguises what is, in fact, a sad song about love lost and now married to some other guy:
Today is Lara’s wedding day
And wasted guests all say good-bye
And I am sitting all alone
With a broken heart
And a glass of wine
But even heartache can be dissipated with enough vodka and the chance to “dance like crazy.”
Above all else, the Red Elvises’ music is playful and fun, their lyrics riddled with dark humor, which is why they managed to bridge the cultural divide at our house.
Michelle,
Somehow I missed you becoming an author here, for which I apologize. Nonetheless, welcome! Glad to see your perspective more widely available.Report
Thanks Kaz! It’s taken me a while to get up to speed.Report
Cowboy Junkies a girl group? C’mon!. They’re 3/4 men.
And, since you had to mention them…Report
I think of them as a girl group because they have a woman as lead singer and because, to me, their work has a female sensibility. I’ve mentally catagorized them in with the Indigo Girls and k.d. lang.
I had no idea they were Canadian.Report
I can see the link, but I tend to think of them in the same category as Grapes of Wrath/Ginger, Blue Rodeo, Rheostatics – bands with elements of country, rock, folk, etc, but not someone who is/was all-out country like kd lang.Report
Hmm. . . I’ve never really thought of kd as country. And, I must confess, I’ve never heard of any of the other bands you mentioned.Report
Oh, do, do, do check out Blue Rodeo and the Rheostatics.Report
I find that outside of the Anglosphere, people tend to be more forgiving of manufactured pop music, think Back Street Boys. I never heard any Russian pop but J-Pop, K-Pop, and C-Pop are similar in their apparent manufactured pop music. Before rock, Americans used to be more forgiving of manufactured pop to. Elijah Wald covers this a lot. Its why we used to refer to certain pop songs as being standard, meaning that everybody from Frank Sinatra to Billie Holiday to the band you hired for your wedding, was expected to know them. Rock music changed this. Songs became closer identified with a particular artist, artists were expected to write their own material for the most part (before the Beatles the concept of the cover song would make no sense to people), and have their own voice.
Coincidentally, widespread knowledge of how to dance while touching somebody else, collapsed during the transition period between traditional pop and rock music. The decline began very swiftly after the end of WWII and was complete by the hippie era.Report
To be fair, a lot of half-assed singers make great careers out of being fine songwriters. The good ones write to their own voice, creating songs that are designed for them.
Walking a fine line back to the coloratura…where the artist was expected to improvise around the composer.Report
See Irving Berlin, great and witty song-writer but horrible singer if you listen to a recording of him singing his own songs. Rock music, particular the Beatles but the trend started before them, really changed what a lot of people expceted in pop music. Artistis became expected to write and perform their own material, the material was expected to be true to their experience. In short, they had to be authentic. Before rock, nobody expected authenticity in pop music. Whether Frank Sinatra experienced what he sung about was irrelevant to enjoying him. In many other countries, this expectation of authenticity doesn’t exist.Report
Authenticity seems to cut against the grain of people like Bowie and A Flock of Seagulls.
Maybe it’s not the right word…
“This is me, I am here, this is what I want to tell you.”
Ah, singer as storyteller, as having the volitional choice to tell which tale they wish!
I agree that most rock fans make a big deal about not liking some of the pop-commodities (hanson, Bieber, yadda yadda). I doubt idol singers get the focused hate …Report
These guys would be awesome at a party.
And that says something, because usually you want party music to be singalong music. These guys are fun to listen to even when you don’t know the words.Report
A friend played “Sad Cowboy Song” for us the night before family was heading to Cedar Point for a weekend roller coaster extravaganza. I ran out and bought “I Wanna See You Bellydance” for road tunes. Fortunately, my husband and daughter also thought they were awesome. Sitting waiting in the train for our first ride up the Millennium Force, we starting singing “Rocketman”.
For Chicago-area-folk, don’t know if they still are, but for a long time they regularly played at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn early in October.Report
I have only listened to Lara’s Wedding and think they would be a great party band. But listening to the beginning of the song I kept expecting Clint Eastwood to jump out of the shadows and shoot somebody.Report
what I call Rooskie CD-skies
I know he’s Russian, not Soviet, but I woulda gone with “CCCD’s”.Report
Also, Red Elvises come around here fairly frequently, I may try to catch them next time. They seem best experienced live, like Gogol Bordello.
Totally OT, but every time I see the post title, I get this song stuck in my head:
http://youtu.be/0b9wDkeanDYReport
Gogol Bordello reminds me of a zydeco band, in that I’ve never heard a zydeco band live that I didn’t like, and I haven’t heard a single one on tape that I care for.
Live, definitely.Report
Yeah, I got a chance to catch them in Germany and it was a fun show (a bit overlong, but still good).Report
Will, where do you live that you get to hear zydeco bands?Report
I was in La. back in the early ’90s for awhile.Report
Gogol Bordello, thought about putting them on my albums list for the car trip. But truth be told, as much as I like them, my tolerance is pretty limited. Like certain foods where the first few bites are awesomely amazing, but you quickly hit your limit on that particular kind of thing.Report
they’re very good if you’re really drunk.Report
No discussion of Russian music is complete without a few bits of Zvuki Mu.Report
1/2 of Russian Culture is the Gogol/Chekov/Pushkin stuff
1/2 of Russian Culture is pure kitsch.
They have nothing inbetweenReport
Yeah, that sounds about right.Report
The theme of drinking with Jesus makes me think this is appropriate (and if you don’t know and like Martin Zeller you’re a bad American).Report
Drinking with Jesus is all well and good, but I have it on Westerbergian authority that He never buys any smokes.Report
And amazingly, both Minnesota bands.Report
James–I’ve heard the song before (and really like it) but never knew who sang it. I guess I’m a bad American, but that can be remedied.
I’ll have to listen to Glyph’s link on the laptop as it’s not available for the iPad.Report
OK, no wonder I’m familiar with that song. Zellar was with Gear Daddies and I have a copy of the CD it’s on. Doh!Report