Take yesterday, for instance. I was at a barbecue, having a conversation about the lyrics of Ra Ra Rasputin, which is exactly the sort of high level intellectual debate I tend to get involved in at these kinds of events. After the conversation had turned into an impromptu karaoke session (we all tried to start singing various verses then stopped when realised we couldn't remember any of them in full) I found myself swept up in what can only be described as a wave of cold-war nostalgia:
"Ooh! Ooh! Remember the Moscow song? That one from the Olympics? That had some BRILLIANT lyrics!"Silence descended.
"You know! It was played EVERYWHERE! Mos-COW, Mos-COW, da-da-da-da-da-da-dum........
More silence.
"You must know it! There were dance steps and everything! Mos-COW, Mos-COW....."
"Er, sorry" someone finally said (dodging some passing tumbleweed) "must be an Australian thing".
I went home later and checked, and sure enough, it's an Australian thing. Well, a German thing, technically. Moskau was recorded by a German band called Genghis Khan (yes, really) and adopted by Channel 7 in Australia for their coverage of the 1980 Olympics. As a result the song was released in Oz and spent five weeks at number one. It also became a huge underground hit in the Soviet Union. The director of the state-run TV station was fired instantly after he included a 15 second clip of the song's performance during a New Year holiday broadcast.*
Here it is; I think it's quite brilliantly insane:
*So says Wikipedia, which I tend to trust more often than some people seem to think is healthy, but then it also says a citation is needed and if even Wikipedia are questioning their own facts then, well, you know. Be wary of placing too much trust in this information, is basically what I'm saying.
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