Grooving to the Moscow Beat
I recently noticed that Red Elvises got added to the Rhapsody catalog. Yay! Last time I checked, which was a while ago, they weren’t there, which effectively means I’ll never listen to them. (Like I’m gonna dig up a plastic disc to listen to music! Okay, I might dig through my fileserver for some mp3s, but it’s such a mess, I rarely bother.) If you don’t know them, take a listen to their first album: http://play.rhapsody.com/redelvises/groovingtothemoscowbeat (how about that URL, eh?)
It brings up fond memories of repeatedly running into them playing on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Aside from a bunch of fun groovy surf music, their lyrics crack me up.
"I got so drunk I sank my boat. It couldn’t spoil my happy smile. I swam from Moscow to New York: five hundred thousand square miles." (in Tango)
Harriet is another of my favorites — a sweet ballad that turns painfully sideways about halfway through. Reminds me of Tom Lehrer’s Weiner Shnitzel Waltz. Maybe I’ve just got a thing for campy Elvis impersonator bands. But as the Elvises always say during their shows, "if you don’t like our music, we have T-shirts and bumper stickers too." If you want a smile, lend your ear to Red Elvises — quality entertainment from Siberia!