Saturday, May 23, 2009

...Our Honored Dead Have Not Died in Vain



This Memorial day weekend, I'd like to share a video that proves that the thousands of Americans who died in Korea, Vietnam, and other anti-Communist brush wars between 1945 and 1992 did not die in vain.

Let me introduce to you the Leningrad Cowboys, a Finnish (not Russian, alas*) rock group, playing Sweet Home Alabama... with the Alexandrov Ensembe, s Soviet-era military band**, no less, in concert ca. 1993.

(It appears that The Leningrad Cowboys started out as a fictional rock band in a comedy movie that eventually took on a life of its own... like the Monkees or the Blues Brothers. And yes, they do covers of both in other concerts.)

If anybody had told me I would ever see such a thing when I turned 18 (three days after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and killed its President) I would never have believed it.

(We sometimes forget how miraculous the death of the USSR really was.)

Anyway. Ladeeez and Gentlemen.... THE LENINGRAD COWBOYS... et. al.

A better (but un-imbeddable) 4 minute version of this can be found here.

((Hat tip to Charles Johnson, who posted this one months ago. See? I don't ALWAYS have bad things to say about LGF.))

* Original post said they were Russian; they're not.
* Original post said they were the Red Army Choir; the Alexandrov Ensamble is the actual name of the group appearing here. This is from a 1993 filmed concert in Helsinki.

2 comments:

  1. Somewhere Ronnie Van Zandt, Steve Gaines, Billy Powell, and the other Skynnrd's are having one hell of a laugh

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  2. And Frank Zappa never dreamed that his stuff would drive the Czech Secret Police to distraction. (Vlacav Havel recalled being severely flogged by his nation's gendarmerie while being told, "We'll beat the Frank Zappa out of you!")

    An amazing world innt?

    ReplyDelete

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