I came across this troupe of Finnish rockibilly, rock and roll, pumk outfit purely unknowingly in the film 'Take take of your scarf, Tatjana' a film by Aki Kaurismäki. The film itself, if you haven't seen it, is a road movie featuring a vodka addict and a coffee addict who steals his mum's pension book and locks her in the storeroom to get his fix. In fact he doesn't let her out till the end of the film!
The actors who play these addicts also feature in the films 'Leningrad Cowboys Go America' and shares much of the dry, absurdist humour of 'Take care of your scarf...'
I'm sure there are many intelligent essays, reviews and deconstructions out there about the director and the cowboys, explaining the social/historical contexts of the films and their links to post-war Soviet culture. For me the films serve as simple and effect Chaplin-esque studies in silent comedy and the Eastern European take on popular culture.
My next encounter with the cowboys was when I downloaded their version of 'Happy Together' featuring the Red Army choir. It was uplifting and inspiring. If only one thing could inspire world peace short of Abba reforming to head the UN would be this anthem. If I had the power this song would feature on a soundtrack about my life in a film starring either John Simm or Michael F. Hall, playing me obviously. 'Happy Together; might make it onto the closing credits. Aki Kaurismäki would be the obvious choice as director, although I'd be curious to see how he'd tackle the incidental soundtrack of 70s disco, 80s synth pop, 90s dance and 2000s, to backdrops of Wigan council estates and Bolton and Manchester city centre's, unless the Cowboys perform the tracks themselves.
What fully inspired me to invest in these films was the clip of 'Those Were the days' on youtube.
Genius. The reference to donkey's is a Finnish thing I am assured. This clip alone features all the ingrediants of the Leningrad Cowboys films. As with 'Happy Together' they've taken a 60s pop song and made it their own, in this case, making it more effective than the original.
And now I have the films. I had my own Leningrad Cowboys season over the summer. I laughed at the jokes about beer cans, tractors, dead cowboys, vodka, revolutions, donkey's, all delivered with sparse dialogue and odd versions of popular songs. In a perfect world, if I was Michael Eavis I'd have The Leningrad Cowboys playing Glastonbury every year. Every year.
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