Whenever we travel to Russia to play shows, I make an effort to learn a few phrases in Russian that I can say from the stage. They are usually short sentences that sound a bit absurd. The first time I tried this was at Chinese Pilot, a couple of years ago. Artemi Troitski gave me a few funny things to say like “It’s wonderful to play for you tonight here in the Kremlin”. The following night at Art Garbage I got our friend Mara to translate some other silly phrases like “ Last night I dreamed that I was Ala Pulgachova”.
Anyway, It’s a fun way to have a bit of communication with the folks who don’t understand my silly banter in English.
On our latest tour I didn’t get around to getting any phrases together before the Moscow and Petersburg shows because a lot of people seem to understand English in those cities. However, when we arrived in Ufa I realized that I had better get some phrases. There was a table of college girls sitting next to us when we were eating at the club the night before we were to play there. I asked them if they could think of any funny things that I might be able to say at the show the following night. They said that it might be funny if I said, “Privet, Bratva!” to the audience. I asked them what it meant and they said that it translated more or less as “Hello, criminal friends”. I could see how that would be funny considering that most of the people at our shows don’t look at all like criminals. I felt like I needed something else to say, so I asked them to translate “I’m wearing panties”. They told me that it would be hard because the word for underwear is the same for men’s and women’s underwear. I asked if there was a word for thong underwear and they said that it was called “stringi”. Thus “Ya nashu stringi” was born.
The phrase sounded very funny to me but knowing that the Russian sense of humor can, at times be very different from the American one, I decided that I should test my new phrase out before using it at the show. The moment I chose was a press conference that I was doing on the afternoon of the Ufa show. I was in the middle of answering one of the reporter’s questions when I just threw it in suddenly. It was something like “…well I discovered Kino while walking down the boardwalk in Sochi last year ya nashu stringi and I heard some music coming out of a bar….” The reporter’s face froze as if he couldn’t be sure about what I had just said. Then he began to laugh so hard that there were tears flowing down his cheeks. I realized that my phrase was a success. I used it to great effect at all of the remaining shows along with “Privet, Bratva”
An extra funny moment happened with my “Privet, Bratva” phrase when we were playing the opening night of a certain fashionable place in Rostov On Don. I hadn’t known that it was the grand opening of the club when I had agreed to play the show. Because it was their opening night, it was almost impossible for any of our fans to come. As a result the club was full of well to do looking people who had no idea who we were. I came out and sang a song on my own before the band came on and I was greeted by a sea of loveless stares. So I thought that I had better pull out one of my trusty phrases. “Privet, Bratva!” I shouted into the mic. Suddenly, to the right of the stage, I noticed a table filled with middle-aged men with large shoulders become very agitated. They were pointing to me and looking at each other with a look of disbelief. “Oh, God” I thought. “Those guys really are bratva!” “Well, nothing to be done about it now,” I thought and we launched into the next song. By the end of the show the Bratva were were dancing around with everyone else in front of the stage, enthusiastically singing along to our version of Kino’s Star Called Sun. All in all, my little phrases served me well. I managed to learn how to read the Cyrillic alphabet on the last tour so maybe one day I’ll learn enough Russian to actually be able to communicate with the Russian fans in their own language. Until then… Paka, bratva!
February 18th, 2007
Categories: Uncategorized . Author: david_brown . Comments: No Comments
Old Folks
I can’t imagine what the world must seem like to a person of my grandmother’s generation. Things have changed so much even since I was a kid. When I was 13, my friends and I would play video games after school at the local pizza restaurant. We would shoot at asteroids from passing space ships or do battle with aliens that were trying to invade the earth. I was shocked recently to hear that there is a game that is very popular among the kids in which a player can have sex with a prostitute and then kick her to death and steal his money back. Apparently one gets points for that. It makes me wonder what the world will look like when my son is 13. What kind of adults are we creating from children who can go online and view videos of blow jobs, anal sex, shit fetishes and murder. When do kids get any chance to just be kids?
Up until about 2 or 3 hundred years ago, the world that a child was born into looked very much like the world that their grandparents had been born into. For sure, that world contained many hardships that ours does not, but I suspect that there was a great comfort, a great humanity that came from old folks and young folks living in the same world and having some type of mutual understanding of how it worked.
The old people of today have a haunted look in their eyes. They look as if they’ve woken up on a distant planet that only vaguely resembles the world they grew up in. Many of them seem to feel as if there is no place for them here. We hide them away in warehouses so that they can die together, away from public view. Here in Barcelona, one sees a lot more old people around than in Los Angeles. Young people still spend quite a bit of time with their parents and grandparents. But one gets the feeling that this is coming to an end. The New World Order gives no quarter. “You’re either with us or you’re against us” said George W. Bush and he was right. Open markets, the global economy that primarily benefits about 400 billionaires is a juggernaut from which there is no escape. It doesn’t matter if our kids are raised on porno and junk food. It doesn’t matter if our grandparents get slapped around by underpaid, resentful nurses in an old folks home. It doesn’t matter if Walmart and it’s analogues drive thousands of family businesses into bankruptcy. It seems that everything is justifiable in the name of profits. This is not a world I want to get old in. But get old we do. We get older and eventually, we all take the same train home. Until then, thank you and good night.
February 18th, 2007
Categories: Uncategorized . Author: david_brown . Comments: No Comments
The big toe on my left foot is turning towards the little ones and the joint is a bit swollen. I think it’s because of a little bike accident that I had in Amsterdam last summer. The toe looks frail and elderly and it reminds me of my grandmother’s arthritic hands. I was thinking about it yesterday and I realized how easy it is to focus on what is wrong with us as opposed to what is right. So I decided to make a list of some of the things that I’m glad I’m not afflicted with as well as some of the things that I am blessed with:
I’m glad that:
I’m not obese
I don’t have terminal halitosis
I don’t have AIDS
My back isn’t in chronic pain
I wasn’t born in Darfour
I don’t find children sexually attractive
I have a home and people who love me and whom I love as well
I get to do what I love for a living
I’m not in jail
I’ve never been involved in a war
I don’t live in L.A. anymore
I have very good eyesight
I’ve been to many fascinating places in the world
One day I will die and maybe see my ancestors
I have a folding bicycle
I’m not going bald
I still have most of my teeth
I have control over all of my bodily functions
I’m not insane
Summer thunderstorms exist
I get to fly on planes and daydream
I live in Barcelona
I have a studio
I don’t have to die a drunk like so many of my family have
I don’t have to give people advice
Coffee exists
I can try to accept life as it is
Mangosteens exist
I didn’t have a violent upbringing
Obviously, this list could go on forever.
February 18th, 2007
Categories: Uncategorized . Author: david_brown . Comments: 1 Comment
Hello Everyone,
This is David from Brazzaville. We just got back from a lovely, winter tour through Russia. There were lot’s of long night trains, great shows and a horrible fever in St. Petersburg. Ivan and I saw wolves running across the snow in Siberia. We met hippies in Ekaterinburg and some young, semi-dangerous, boxers on the train to Novosibirsk. Vanya, our tour manager, danced his way into the hearts of all the young ladies who happened to be watching when he would get into his late night dance-a-thons. All in all, a good time was had by everyone.
We’re off to play some shows in Ukraine on Feb 22nd. We’ll be in Donetsk, Karkov and Kiev. After that, I’m taking the family back to the US for a few weeks. While there, I’m going to play a show with some of the original USA members of the band at the Temple Bar in Los Angeles. That will be on March 29th at 10:30 pm. In addition, We’ll be going up to Fresno to play a show at a place called The Crossroads on the 31st. Then, I’m going to fly out to Milwaukee to play a solo show on April 5th.
We’re trying to put together a train tour of Russia for early summer. We are planning to get a private train car that we can hook up to any passing train we like and use it to travel all the way from Vladivostok on the Pacific coast to Moscow. There are about 14 cities along the way that we can play. We’re also trying to get a boat to take up the Volga to play Saratov, Volgagrad, Samara, Kazan and Nizhniy Novgorod.
We’re also trying to book some shows for the East Coast of the US for either May or June of this year. Anyway, we’re very happy to be a part of the Vendlus family and are very grateful to Joseph for releasing East L.A. Breeze in the US.
besos,
David Brown
Barcelona (raining outside)
February 17th, 2007
Categories: Uncategorized . Author: david_brown . Comments: No Comments
