http://www.theakforum.net/forums/80-rec-center/107953-i-don-t-know-what-about-place.html

I don't know what it is about this place

TRX
06-20-2010

Back in 1986 a Finnish director made a movie about a Russian folk group called the Leningrad Cowboys. In the movie, the local commissar told them they sucked, and they should go to America where people will listen to any kind of garbage. So the band made its way to New York, decided to play "rock and roll", and worked their way west, playing biker bars and just plain dives to get gas money.

I guess a lot of people in Finland speak English, it was filmed in English. It's definitely *not* an American-style movie, while I and a few others think it is ROFL funny, most of the people I've persuaded to watch it were unimpressed.

Anyway, the movie came and went, but the guys who acted the Cowboys parts kept on being the Leningrad Cowboys. And they've kept a full tour schedule ever since. Twenty-four years, so far.

After the fall of the Soviet Union they hired the Red Army Choir to do backup vocals and instruments, which shows the difference in relative earning power between even little-known rock bands and what was left of the Red Army... in 1992 the Cowbows and the 160-man Alexandrov Ensemble did the "Total Balalaika Show" in Helsinki, to the largest concert ever held in Finland so far. They alternated between covers of '60s-70s rock and Russian folk music.

And they freakin' ROCKED!

The sight of a dozen Leningrad Cowboys in pompadours and 160 Russian soldiers in full dress uniform belting out ZZ Top or Rolling Stones songs to 80,000 screaming Finns simply unhinges reality-as-we-know-it.

The concert video is also called "Total Balalaika Show", there are clips from it on YouTube. Some of the Red Army guys look like they're not sure how they got there, and some of the others are having an absolute BLAST. You don't think of "Red Army" and "fun" or "Red Army" and "rock" together. You just don't.

"Sweet Home Alabama" from the Balalaika show: Sweet Home Alabama

Here's the Cowboys more recently in some club, doing a cover of The Doors' "L.A. Woman." L. A. Woman


TRX
06-24-2010

Try this then:
http://www.archive.org/details/StarWrec ... ishEdition

The Finns definitely have a bizarre sense of humor. Too little sunlight and too much booze, I think.