THE NAKED AND THE DAMNED

Thursday, June 28, 2007
Turns out that I am sharing my room in the Olympic Village Hotel with Lu Edmonds, London-based musician from the Mekons and The Damned ( http://www.wacobrothers.com/lu.htm ) and a “key figure in World Music,” according to the program for the Sayan Ring Festival (he's on the jury, too). It’s true – he not only speaks Russian but knows all the stars of Central Asian roots music personally and all the inside-Tuvan gossip. We’re traveling to Tuva together with Sasha and Huun Huur Tu, and going on from there to the Festival in Big Shush. He’s really into the arcana of the throat-singing genre and the personalities involved. He goes on and one about this guy and that one… “A really fucking phenomenal singer, man, really strong on the kyrgyraa. I’ve been there with them, northern herders, they hang out in buckskin, like the Sioux. And this one guy, a southern boy from the Mongolian side. He’s been in trouble, man. Horse thieving. A lot of rustling going on a few years back, a lot of bad blood.”

We have a few days in Moscow before heading East, so Lu and I hang out at the brand new Mall just a stroll from our Olympic Village Hotel, logging onto the free Wifi, eating pizza at the food court and ogling the girls. What do they feed them here? Moscow girls are utterly stunning – miniskirts and high heels at noon! Ah, but the girls are interested in billionaire oligarchs, not a couple of scruffy rock n’ rollers from the impoverished West.

When we get bored, Lu and I head for the Banya – the Russian baths. It’s full of businessmen with bottles of vodka and whiskey, eating smoked fish and sausage. The call goes out and everyone crowds into the sauna. A big cedar-lined room full of naked men sweating, wearing silly-looking felt hats. One man sits on a stool and fans the heat around the room, waves of heat searing the flesh. Moans and groans in a rising crescendo of heat and sweat, some beating themselves or one another with eucalyptus branches, shouting encouragement until by mutual agreement the room bursts into applause and everyone pours out the door to sluice off the sweat in the showers, or plunge into the cold pool. I suspect Lu of secretly enjoying a little too much the beating he gave me with those branches, but then he probably thought the same about me. In any case, we’re eager to get the hell out of dirty filthy Moscow and head to the cleaner climes of Siberia.