A long and happy life / Such a long and happy life / From this day forth, a long and happy life / For every one of us / For every one of us

Here are a few songs from an album that caught my attention by the Polish band Siekiera “hatchet”), entitled Ballady na koniec świata.

The nesting doll. / The balalaika. / The Volga. / The peasant hut. / Borshch. The Samovar. / Sputnik. Pancakes. / Forever, forever. / Everything that is ours — forever.

My ears went missing / In broad daylight / And I became sad / Like a turkey, or an owl

Autumn, once again you’ve reminded my soul of what’s most important / Autumn, once again I’ve lost all peace of mind.

I love you for the fact that your expectation awaits / That which can never happen.

Here’s a song from the group Перемотка (Rewind) off their album Дождь прошёл в парке отдыха (It Rained in the Amusement Park).

Sticking with the “sea” theme for now, here’s another more obscure Viktor Tsoi song with an unexpected anti-war twist at the end.

Viktor Tsoi wrote quite a lot of songs in his brief life, and the vast majority are well worth listening to. At some point I wanted to post a few of the more obscure ones. Here’s one from KINO’s final album, the “Black Album.”

I was delighted to notice a reference to Knut Hamsun in today’s song. If anyone hasn’t read Hamsun, do yourself a favor. I also found an excuse to feature some Norwegian and Polish poetry.

Come see me / To listen to old records / The Divine Comedy, Peter Gabriel, and Sting / The world has lost its mind / I’m sick of everything that’s out there / Let’s listen to old records until morning

And if you suddenly grow bored by your affectionate light, / You’ll find room among us — there’s rain enough for everyone.

A hellishly black / Ear-piercing / Predatory / Despairing / Flock of sparrows is singing inside me.

Arise, arise upon the threshold, / Like a bronze sculpture, / Like a bronze crucifix; / Arise, arise upon the threshold.

I declare my building / A nuclear-free zone! / I declare my yard / A nuclear-free zone! / I declare my city / A nuclear-free zone! / I declare my…

Our hearts demand change, / Our eyes demand change. / In our laughter and our tears, / And in the pulsing of our veins, / Change! / We’re waiting for change.

In my view, AuktYon is the most unique and most innovative late Soviet rock band — their music is quite unlike anything else in Russia (that I know of), and I can’t really think of a single Western rock group that they resemble.

Here’s another nice song from the delightful Belarussian band Молчат дома, from their 2017 album С крыш наших домов (From the Rooftops of Our Buildings) — a line found in today’s song.

Pyotr Mamonov, one of my all-time favorites, died recently of COVID. All things considered, he had a long and productive life after being on the brink of death as a young man after some Moscow hippies he was brawling with attacked him with a sharpened file…

This light-hearted song is one of several by the 80’s band Секрет that remain well known today. The group referred to itself as a “Beat-Quartet” and hearkened back to an older kind of rock-and-roll.