A major difference between USSR and western rock music of 60-80's is that most of the Russian bands never really cared about the music (yes, I know that USSR != Russia, but as the majority of the bands sang songs in Russian, I will use that term). There were many reasons for that. There were no money, there were no good instruments, there were no good recording equipment. There were no sponsors. There were no local musical heritage, and getting discs with western music was a challenge.

However, even though the music was recorded on handicraft hardware built from spare parts of three different machines, even though the guitars and processors sounded as a mix of Nirvana, Chuck Berry and Bach, even though a drum machine beat the same boring 4/4 far-from-reality rhythm through entire song, even though guitar solos were as simple as in guitar beginner's guide, even though the rehearsals were performed at someone's apartments or (in better case) in underground studios, even though in many cases there were no official discs available, so the listeners had to use their tape recorders to spread records, even though... Despite all of that, Russian bands played the rockest rock I've ever listened to. Every single song was an inexhaustible source of energy, love, truth and wisdom. It may sound oddly, but probably the poor quality of the music was one of the compartments of the inspiration made by the songs... Good enough music would just have prevented the listener from feeling the spirit they carried.

One of the common ways of spending summer vacation for me, as for a typical resident of humid continental climate, is a trip to "somewhere where is sunny and hot". However, I am completely stuck this year. It appears that every place that I'd considered as a good summer choice in past years is much cooler and less sunny than my hometown this year :).


A wonderful consequence of a hot (what? I said "hot"? I must have said "hoooooot"!) summer this year in Kyiv are the chestnuts that have blossomed a second time this August (usually the chestnuts blossom on Spring).

No wrong no right,
I'm gonna tell you there's no black and no white.
Queen, "One Vision"

A small addition to the previous post.

Dividing people (and other things) into black and white on the basis of some particular feature of them is one of the biggest mistakes one can make. Unfortunately, our mind is lazy. It is much easier for us to sort a hundred elements out into two (three, four, ten) groups by some common criteria and operate with those N groups, than to put each one to a separate personal group and deal with 100 groups instead. Sometimes this is called abstracting. Naturally, abstracting is good when used in maths or biology, but it distorts our vision when applied to real-world or social stuff.

Sometimes this feature of our mind is exploited by unfair people. The teams of candidates of presidential/governmental races often try to blacken the opposite candidate by showing them as adulterer, a person of doubtful character and so on. Well, it is difficult for me to understand the relation between PM's sexual temperament and their economical and manager's skills (needed for the state to prosper).

I try to classify the things as vectors of different essential properties. For instance, a typical vector of a person is (name, sex, age, sense of humour (1-10), kindness (1-10), intellectual level (-1-10), positiveness (1-10), honesty, appearance, physical skills, risk-ability, ..., smoking (yes/no), ...). This relates to all people, not only to friends (politics have some of the properties grayed, e.g. honesty ;)). The properties are mostly orthogonal, and thus such classification helps not to sort people into black and white, stupid and clever, or honest and dishonest. Really, there are quite a few properties to consider, and the presence of negative ones does not mean the absence of positive ones.

When I was younger, I did not like smoking girls. The fact that the girl smokes was quite definitive for me; every such girl used to immediately get to the "black list" (or "uninteresting person list", no matter) without any possibility of becoming a close person in future. I don't know the exact origins of such attitude; it is likely to have been built from a number of sources including viewpoints introduced by the parents, books, movies and own [poor] experience.

However, the attitude has changed drastically when I was about 16. I was forced to spend a continuous period of time with a girl who smoked hard. Though the girl obviously had to get to the "black list" at once, she was someone quite different from all the smoking girls I have ever met. Actually, in all other aspects she was very close to my understanding of what the ideal woman should be like. That was really a challenge, something to what practicing psychologists often refer as a "pattern breach".

That case made me reconsider my viewpoints a lot. Basically, it has given me an understanding of two things, (1) it is stupid and extremely unwise to sort out people and things into black and white just on the basis of their particular feature or features, (2) if something does not fit into the existing viewpoint, it is very likely that the viewpoint is wrong and should be revised. Since then I am trying to be more liberal and intelligent when forming my opinion on particular person or object.

Really, being too unloyal is non-productive and even insulting sometimes. Don't you hate your neighbour just because he snores too loudly at night? Hasn't your coworker become an enemy for you just because he always occupies your parking place? Haven't you stopped buying goods in a nearby supermarket just because a cashier has once shortchanged you?

You know, snoring is always a symptom of some disease. The neighbour does not snore intentionally to annoy you; he is likely just not be unaware of such "feature" of his organism. He is also likely to be a smart and friendly person in all other aspects. The coworker is likely not to know that you have chosen that parking place for yourself, in turn, he also dislikes you because you are occupying "his" place. The SM cashier might have had a sleepless night that day because of her daughter's school exam and just got mistaken when calculating the change. Yet, a smoking girl is neither a devil nor a criminal. (Yes, most of the criminals are smokers, but you can hardly state the opposite). Maybe, each of them is worth giving 'em a chance?

It is very exciting to fight with your own mind. My today has begun with a bunch of minor and major negatives. First, I failed to get in time to a bus to carry me to a gym (20 seconds is not a delay for an appointment but they are vital when you are trying to catch a bus ;)); the subsequent bus had no free seats, so in addition I have lost 30 minutes of morning reading. Finally having got off the bus (the driver obviously used to drive road rollers in his best years), I found one of the pedestrian traffic lights on my further way broken, resulting in yet another 5(000) minutes of waiting for traffic to let me cross the street. And it was only 7:15.

The dawning day gave me another missed-on-the-edge bus, enormous queue in a bank, broken lock of the outer door, discharged battery on the mobile, and three or four broken or postponed (for various reasons) work plans.

Yet going in the first bus, I understood that it’s simply an another “unlucky day”. Such days - consisting of a shower of misfortunes and sad mistakes - occur from time to time, and in most cases I just accept them as they are, trying to avoid doing complex or critical tasks. However, for some reason I decided to fight my mind today and to do my best to remove the “unlucky” sticker from the day :).

So, having got off the bus I began to search for positive stuff around to fix my karma. Funny dogs in a park, clear blue skies, an accidental green wave I’ve got into, a small smiling girl didn’t help. Next, mad race in a gym to squeeze negative energy out of my mind. A little better, but still far from the ideal. Okay, 10 minutes of relaxed park walk; an exchange of smiles with an ice-cream seller (I’ve tried all the sellers around); another chapter of a book; a cold shower; some funny Internet stuff. Nope. Fixed door lock. No avail...

And finally I did it! To be exact, the sound of acoustic guitar, harmonica and Bob Dylan’s voice coming from my PC’s speakers did that. And the mind has suddenly become clean and positive; I realised that it would be even better to alter the work plans in the way I was forced to do in the morning, and there’s nothing fatal in missed buses and absence of habitual morning book. I also realised that I’ve just lived (and continue to live, as it was something about noontime) a brand new day of my life, - a wonderful day, full of new experience, knowledge and feelings. You bet, I have just fought down my own mind!

Covers: Ghost Riders in the Sky

The song that expresses an American version of the Wild Hunt story has been covered more than half a hundred times (for half a hundred years).

What is interesting about the Ghost Riders version of the Hunt, is that the American idea of the story is quite optimistic and life-asserting, while the classic European versions describe the Hunt as something presaging suffering, catastrophes and deaths. Though the original lyrics are credited to Stan Jones, he said that "he had been told the story when he was 12 years old by an old cowboy friend". That is, the story is likely to be something more than just a personal view of the author, and can be considered to belong to American folklore of that (or former) times.

Duane Eddy and Dennis Solee, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Our knowledge or, to be accurate, the part of our knowledge responsible for subjective information, is mostly wrong. Our knowledge is being constantly formed by the sources that produce highly distorted information that is often based on assumptions of the authors, false or even counterfeited facts. In many cases only side aspects of the whole picture is presented.

The dissonance between the “real” reality and the reality that is forcibly being boxed up into our minds has increased drastically with the overall commercialisation of the society. News is not a source of up-to-date information anymore, it is a commercial product that is positioned on global or local markets of “news receivers”. Led by the main idea of capitalistic economics, the competition, news companies are forced to run after fun, not after essence. It is more important to have weather forecast presented by a hot blonde in mini rather than to provide accurate temperature values for tomorrow (I have nothing against the blonde herself, even the other way round, yet the *main* purpose of a forecast is informing about correct weather). In order to make information acceptable by as wide set of “news receivers” as possible, the facts are often brushed and beautified to exploit baser instincts at the expense of actuality.

Actually, it is hard to blame news companies for this, as they are just doing their business. Those who do not adhere to the general stream will be knocked down and substituted by the others who will do.

What is sad, is that “thanks” to our oversimplified and running-for-sensations world, we stick to false ideals, we hail losers (or common people in best case) and are not aware of real heroes. The “real” reality has nothing to do with the things propagated. There are no fairy adventures and heroes on white horses, live-for-today’s and good-vs-evil’s, 90-60-90’s and 23-years-old-sexy-nuclear-physics-professors; the real reality is boring and mostly undistinguished, but whom such reality would be interesting to? Pop is king.

Obviously, this cannot last forever. While not being able to discover it today, the people will definitely notice the difference between what they watch, hear or read around and what they see with their eyes. But what would be the price?