Monday, September 14, 2009
OLD BROWN SHOE
I'm about to review a television programme, but don't analyse the review. Whenever I watch TV on a Saturday night I'm *rather the worse for wear* and a lot of the facts and details tend to be forgotten and replaced by a soup of wine, detritus and confusion. Still, I'm sure that you'll appreciate that I'm looking at the, er, bigger picture here.
The documentary I was watching was trying to persuade us that Mikhail Gorbachev was not responsible for Perestroika or Glasnost the fall of the Iron Curtain. The real catalysts for change were BEATLES.
At the moment BEATLES are being forced back into our lives because their albums have been re-mastered and there is some sort of BEATLES video game to introduce a new generation to a lifetime of buying endless reissues of BEATLES product. This documentary is part of a BEATLES Decade on BBC4. For the next ten years, BBC4 will show nothing but earnest BEATLES documentaries.
In this programme, we were informed that young people in Russia couldn't get enough of the swinging pill poppin' moptops until well into the 1980's.
The documentary I was watching was trying to persuade us that Mikhail Gorbachev was not responsible for Perestroika or Glasnost the fall of the Iron Curtain. The real catalysts for change were BEATLES.
At the moment BEATLES are being forced back into our lives because their albums have been re-mastered and there is some sort of BEATLES video game to introduce a new generation to a lifetime of buying endless reissues of BEATLES product. This documentary is part of a BEATLES Decade on BBC4. For the next ten years, BBC4 will show nothing but earnest BEATLES documentaries.
In this programme, we were informed that young people in Russia couldn't get enough of the swinging pill poppin' moptops until well into the 1980's.
Apparently, Russians didn't have any sort of fun before 1963, and even that was limited to Leonid Brezhnev singing at the Kremlin's annual booze-up in celebration of increased crop yield figures.
Well, that's complete bullshit for starters. Can you think of anyone in the world less likely to have a knees up and break into song than Comrade Brezhnev?
Hmm, perhaps he would do a couple of hours of Nico songs accompanied by a harmonium.
BEATLES music was forbidden in the USSR, so soldiers would bring back recordings of their songs from Radio Luxembourg. As a result of this, most Russians assume that BEATLES songs fade out at regular intervals, and have made a cult figure of Horace Batchelor from Keynsham in Bristol.
Some of this music found its way onto flexi discs. These were rescued from bins behind hospitals and had been used for X-rays.
According to the narrator, BEATLES songs were recorded onto Uncle Sergei's Lung.
Uncle Sergei's Lung were a thrashy and useless band who distributed music on cassette in 1982 and they were much praised by John Peel for about a fortnight because he always backed hopeless cases.
A black market flourished as BEATLES flexi discs were exchanged.
Someone on a street corner would whisper the following to shady looking potential customers;
"Pssst ... you want to get THE SHAKES???? You want to ROCK AND ROLL????"
If the customer nodded their head in compliance, the salesman would retrieve a flexi disc from his sleeve and the customer would pass over 500,000,000,000,000,000 roubles.
Hmm, perhaps he would do a couple of hours of Nico songs accompanied by a harmonium.
BEATLES music was forbidden in the USSR, so soldiers would bring back recordings of their songs from Radio Luxembourg. As a result of this, most Russians assume that BEATLES songs fade out at regular intervals, and have made a cult figure of Horace Batchelor from Keynsham in Bristol.
Some of this music found its way onto flexi discs. These were rescued from bins behind hospitals and had been used for X-rays.
According to the narrator, BEATLES songs were recorded onto Uncle Sergei's Lung.
Uncle Sergei's Lung were a thrashy and useless band who distributed music on cassette in 1982 and they were much praised by John Peel for about a fortnight because he always backed hopeless cases.
A black market flourished as BEATLES flexi discs were exchanged.
Someone on a street corner would whisper the following to shady looking potential customers;
"Pssst ... you want to get THE SHAKES???? You want to ROCK AND ROLL????"
If the customer nodded their head in compliance, the salesman would retrieve a flexi disc from his sleeve and the customer would pass over 500,000,000,000,000,000 roubles.
To love BEATLES was an expensive business.
Many of the long term BEATLES fans who were interviewed were obviously as mad as arseholes.
In a boring footnote, I will add my own experience of BEATLES IN EAST EUROPEAN COLD WAR YEARS.
On my one and only visit to my dad's homeland in Croatia, I ended up sat in the corner of my auntie's dark, one storey farmhouse in a remote village, listening to my dad and several relatives and friends gabbling away in Serbo-Croat for hours.
My dad hadn't bothered to teach me any Serbo-Croat. He didn't bother to translate any of the conversation he was having because he was kind and considerate like that.
As I sat in the corner feeling as if I might as well be watching Martian Cinema through 3D glasses, I noticed that the wallpaper in the farmhouse featured a recurring motif of a scene from the Yellow Submarine film.
My sixty year old auntie had plastered the wall with BEATLES.
That is how all pervading BEATLES were.
Labels: Back In The USSR, Beatles, Horace Batchelor, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nico, pill poppin', Yellow Submarine
