Marc Almond: In Search Of Vadim Kozin

Marc Almond travels to Moscow in search of the marvelous Russian tenor Vadim Kozin, tango-singer and superstar. The darling of the Soviet Union, Kozin melted hearts by the tens of millions in the 1940s, playing to packed concert halls and rallying Red Army troops in World War 2. 

Kozin made dozens of hit records and lived the high-life of a celebrity in the most rarified circles around Stalin. But he vanished one day in 1944 when the secret police arrested him and sent him to the GULAG for homosexuality. * His records were pulled from the shops, his voice from the radio. The public thought him dead, but Kozin would spend the next 50 years in Siberia, still singing and performing in the strange looking-glass world of internal exile.

BBC World Service. 

The producer, Monica Whitlock, writes about Vadim here.

* Possibly not really for homosexuality. He was released in 1950.

Tainted Love: Floppy Disc Drives (Featuring Marc Almond)

Posted by Mr Marc Almond.
Happy Valentine's Day!

Marc & The Mambas: Years Of Tears

And so, to the sound of thundering timpani, an imperious Almond strides out in Andalusian sombrero, black silk kimono, and Cuban heels. He throws a flamenco pose, and stamps into a show which leaves everyone feeling that they have seen something very special.
A sculpture of a bull's head waits atop a grand piano. Early in the first act, during Jacques Brel's "The Bulls" he will wear it as a mask while, overhead, images of dancing senoritas alternate with photos of slaughtered bulls. Though opposed to animal cruelty, Almond is both repelled and attracted by the horror of a bullfight and the raw sexuality of its symbolism. Torment and Toreros draws parallels, implicit and explicit, between matadors and military massacres, prostitution and addiction, masturbation and suicide...

Simon Price reviews Marc & The Mambas at Antony Hegarty's Meltdown for The Independent.
Don't know why or what's happening this weekend to make me so sentimental, but this review made me quite tearful.
Go Simon!
Go Antony!
Go Marc!
And the Mambas!

Marc Almond: Edinburgh Man

Ten Plagues has got some rave reviews - ain't seen it yet, but I'm overjoyed for you two boys.
Sounds like it'll be a little bit amazing.
Wow.

• They are doing it in Edinburgh.

Festival News 2: Lovebox

Now I don't care about you, but the only UK music festival that tempts Fagburn is Lovebox in July.
As with last year, Sunday is Bummers' Day (unofficial) - with a line-up specially tailored to please The Gays.
Scissor Sisters are headlining.
Yup, I've got really tired of them and their One Big Office Party live schtick, too.
But there's also 2 Many DJs, Marc Almond, Robyn, the gals from Horse Meat Disco, and loads of gayers running around mashed on drugs.
Yay!
But why oh why oh why have Lovebox booked The Drums to play, not on Bummers' Sunday, but on the painfully straight Saturday with Snoop fucking Dogg???
FFS!

Quote of the Day: Marc Almond

“I was born in the Fifties, a child of the Sixties, a teenager of the Seventies, became a star in the Eighties, a [drug] casualty in the Nineties and an actual casualty in the last few years” - Marc Almond