Singing of a satellite

I'm smiling this morning. See Point #2 here to see why. :)

The lovely song in question can be seen below - start around the four minute mark to see/hear it, but I highly, highly recommend listening to the whole performance, which is all available in four parts on YouTube and also broken into segments as QT movies on Thomas Dolby's blog here.



For my friends who understand Russian, our fearless non-Russian-speaking duet heroes do pretty darn well, don't you think? There is a consonant that vexed one of them in the bridge, and a vowel or two that needed to be shorter or longer, but I'm really proud of them! It's hard enough to sing in Russian when you actually understand the language, but when you're doing this from someone's e-mailed phonetic transliteration with almost no rehearsal time, well, that's really damn impressive! Good going, Thomas and Bruce!!

For the handful of you who govorit' po-russki, here are my original lyrics - read them out loud like an overblown, crazy-haired, 50s avant garde Soviet poet, and they sound pretty freakin' cool:

О! звезда улетела
Наша родина пела
Шар серебра!
Мечта наша!

Мы слышали ваш сигнал
Музыку ангел играл
Великий дар!
Небесный царь!

Ученые нашей страны нашли ответ
Наша гордость горела как радостный свет

О! звезда улетела
Наша родина пела
Шар серебра!
Мечта наша!

Мечта наша!

I think my mother would be delighted to know that I'm still using my college education for a good purpose. Most Russian I've used in three years.

If anyone out here knows a venue/event that would be interested in a performance of the Sputnik and Beyond concert, Thomas is pondering the possibility of a university/art circuit/museum tour. You can leave suggestions/recommendations/contacts on his blog!