Salon.com > Julia Barton

I miss hating the Soviet Union

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Ronnie Dunn, half of the former bestselling country music duo Brooks & Dunn, has a singing voice that’s echoed through many a truck stop and stadium. And Dunn loves himself some Soviet art.

You read that right. Soviet art. This summer, I went to Nashville to interview Dunn for PRI’s "Studio 360." “I’ll show you my Gerasimov,” he said with a drawl, as he strode up his mansion’s staircase in cowboy boots. “That one’s a Timkov.” The balladeer showed me wall after wall of impressionistic landscapes, portraits and sketches. And then he turned the interview on me: What was Moscow like the last time I went? How’s the traffic? When did I learn Russian, and why?

“Wow,” I thought after I collected my jaw off the floor and said goodbye. “He’s got the Thing. He’s got it bad.”

I should know. I’ve had the Thing most of my life. The Soviet Thing: an addictive mixture of wonder and disgust evoked by all aspects of that communist empire.

Music Feature: Back in the U.S.S.R.

Thu, 11 Jun 1998 13:20:00 +0000

On the world's largest landmass, he's almost as well-known as God, and he goes by the same initials. But outside of Russia, Boris Grebenshikov has to get by with comparisons. He's been called the Russian Bob Dylan, the Russian David Bowie, even the Russian Brian Ferry. With a smoky tenor voice, at times poetic, angry and seductive, Grebenshikov does have something in common with all of the above. But few rock stars have been to hell and back as many times as he has.

Nine years ago, Grebenshikov burst onto the Western scene in a way that no Russian singer had done before or since. It was at the end of rock's "We Are the World" feel-good period, and BG became the designated perestroika poster boy. Long-haired, brooding and fluent in English, Grebenshikov appeared on the front page of the Village Voice and in the pages of Rolling Stone, New York and Mother Jones, and was the subject of "The Long Way Home," a documentary by filmmaker Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter," "Gorky Park"). The film shows Grebenshikov's struggle to record his album "Radio Silence" with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. With most of its songs in English, "Radio Silence" was to be Grebenshikov's big Western debut.

Banqueting in Britain

Fri, 19 Dec 1997 20:00:00 +0000

I was not ready to be a student of the world, but there I stood in the ancient heart of European learning, picking up platters of melba toast and putrid herbal balls. All night I'd been running in and out of a roaring, candlelit hall, doing whatever the person in front of me did. I was lost in an army of hired servants, clearing the appetizer and serving the fish, clearing the fish and serving the roast -- and pouring gallons of wine at the same time. The guests, apparently alumni and faculty of this distinguished Oxford college, had shown great appetite until we'd brought in this palate-cleansing dish, artlessly called "green butter." Now they'd broken away from their tables, clotting the aisles with an exuberance that terrified me.

"Ohhh, who did it?" a man in a tuxedo moaned. "None of us! It just wafted over!"

G-strings, juicebars and justice

Mon, 18 Aug 1997 19:00:00 +0000

DES MOINES, IOWA -- michelle Flagstad remembers the rainy afternoon in May when her job became illegal. She had her curlers in her hair, getting ready for the commute from her home in Des Moines to her workplace in Ames, when her boss called. "We're closed indefinitely," the boss said. Why? "Go out and buy a newspaper."

From the headline story, Flagstad learned that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad had just signed a bill making nude dancing in non-alcoholic bars a crime -- and that's exactly what the 21-year-old English major at Drake University had been doing two nights a week to put herself through college. Years ago, the state had invoked its liquor-licensing authority to require at least G-strings and pastie coverage at premises serving alcohol. But four establishments -- including Blondie's, the bar where Flagstad worked -- got around the restriction by selling no booze at all. And that was the way that Flagstad wanted it.

Media Circus

Wed, 23 Jul 1997 19:00:00 +0000

Ira Glass may be producer and host of the hottest new show on public radio, but he can't score a free lunch. Taking a break from our interview in his cluttered office at WBEZ in Chicago, the creator of "This American Life" eyes the sacred stack of sandwiches for volunteers manning the pledge drive phones. Could he, maybe, have one? The volunteers shake their heads no -- a refusal for which Glass, whose hour-long program drew over $8,000 in pledges the night before, has only a low-blood-sugary shrug. There are no gods in public radio.

Media Circus: Soros losers

Wed, 19 Mar 1997 20:00:00 +0000

LIFE must be hard for the business pundit these days. Imagine the dilemma: Your businessman readers are delicate creatures, like crack babies who must be soothed and told constantly that they are loved. But that's OK, because, for the most part, you do love them. Your real problem is that, like all who roam the wide columns of the op-ed page, you've built your career on the clever put-down, the righteous retort and the chewable insight. After a long day of crushing Big Labor or signing trade agreements with Asian communists, your readers want to snuggle between the sheets of the Lincoln Bedroom and chuckle as you, Business Pundit, tear another straw man limb from limb.

But what's left to destroy? Your clients have joyfully triumphed over just about everything, leaving you with a serious glut of bile. How many more pieces can you write about those pernicious government regulators?

Riding to the rescue: George Soros.

Radio Off

Wed, 26 Feb 1997 20:00:00 +0000

Saturday night, just two hours before Tony Rodriguez planned to pull the plug on Fab 105, people were still begging.

"Man, I hope you find a way to keep the station on the air," they'd say, stopping by the corner of the suburban Dallas theater where I was trying -- unsuccessfully -- to interview the object of their affection. Tony's dark eyes, moist from telling me how, say, the fact of creation testifies to the existence of the Creator, would dry quickly as he turned to face his beseechers.

"Sorry, dude," he'd intone. "The Beatles die in Dallas. Again." And he'd lose his train of thought. Again.

So I don't have the whole story on why Rodriguez, 37-year-old heir to a local Spanish-language and Christian broadcasting empire, decided last August to devote one of his frequencies to "peace and love." Nor do I know why that concept entailed playing only music of the Beatles, covers of Beatles songs, and selected solo compositions of ex-Beatles. Tony's decision to end "Fab 105" is similarly shrouded in mystery, though I think it had to do with the fact that his "electronic art" experiment (as he described it) was costing him wads of money. But more than that, Tony, like so many others in the radio business these days, wants out. As I drove home from the goodbye party (the first of three, all sold out), I listened to Fab 105 crackle its last amid the more powerful R&B and country signals around it.

Media Circus: Rock this town

Wed, 12 Feb 1997 20:00:00 +0000

i can hear paleontologists in TV-land arguing about it already.

Scientist A: "Once, in the not-so-distant past, our world was populated by conniving oil men, big-haired floozies, blue-and-silver-clad football monsters and yappy billionaires. Then, as if overnight, those species disappeared. I'd say that gradual climatic changes caused this mass extinction."

Scientist B: "But look at the huge crater and traces of iridium all over Middle America. Surely you must realize that only a foreign intruder could have ended Dallas' domination of the tube."

Damn right, professor. And after the much-promoted NBC flick "Asteroid" airs Sunday and Monday (9 p.m. EST), there will be plenty of evidence to bolster that theory. "Asteroid" is one of those so-called Big Event Miniseries that whiz through our galaxy during the quarterly ratings-crazed "sweeps" months. It features Michael Biehn ("Terminator," "The Rock") and Annabella Sciorra ("Jungle Fever," "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle") in a "story about heroes racing against time to save the planet from the most catastrophic natural disaster in recorded history," as the promo material puts it with admirable understatement.