If you haven’t heard about Pussy Riot, you couldn’t possibly be reading this, because this is the internet, and you’re on it, and “you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a reference to Pussy Riot lately”, as my grandpa might say, if he were alive, and if he had heard of them. Which he would have. Because he was English, and The Guardian got exclusive rights to their latest video release, and he would have watched it, because he was a rascal. But have you HEARD Pussy Riot? I’m willing to bet not. In much the same way that people rail on Justin Bieber without actually having given him a listen, people are willing to get all up in arms about a band in Russia that they’d never heard of until last week, and definitely never listened to.
So ponder this. Are you even sure they’re an actual band? I’d argue they’re not, based on output and substance. I did my best to track down a way to buy a CD, and gave up. I eventually tried their MySpace page, and after getting annoyed with MySpace for trying to force me to update Flash and link my Facebook account, I suddenly realized that it was the WRONG PUSSY RIOT. It’s an Italian band from six years ago. Eventually I found and downloaded the collection called “Pussy Riot – Kill The Sexiest” [sic], and gave it a listen. Well, that didn’t take long. The longest of the songs clocks in at 2:11, and the total running time was 10:15. Probably the most interesting thing about it remains the rebellion behind it, not the music. As this review points out, some of content in these one-minute wonders is actually sampled from eighties punk, sort of completing a weird circle of irony.
Personally, I remain adamant in my support of Pussy Riot, merely on the basis of the absurd harshness of their sentence. But I’m perhaps much more impressed with the media savvy behind the “band” than even their ideology. One thing that never gets mentioned in major media pieces is that Pussy Riot is an offshoot of the Voina group, which was established in 2007. The band itself was really formed just last year, as a direct response to a decision by former President and current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev not to run for re-election as president. As the husband of Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova points out in this Spiegel interview, it wouldn’t be especially prudent to go into detail about their long term planning and the details of their “marketing strategy”, but rest assured, one exists. From the brightly colored balaclavas to the harmless looking threesome that took the fall (with amazing resilience under oppressive prison conditions, by the way), there was a plan behind Pussy Riot. But not much of a “band”. Sheer genius in activism, and a worthy cause. I hope my fellow citizens here in the states don’t wait until things are as bad here as they are in Russia before they get this savvy and productive when it comes to standing up for freedom. And fuck twats like Vadim Nikitin of the NYT who offer up liberal elite analysis questioning westerners’ support for the group, comparing Pussy Riot to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The issue here is resisting authoritarianism, not the kind of dumbass debates Americans are having right now, like whether or not Romney is testing well with black voters, or whether Obama plays too much golf.
If you haven’t actually listened to Pussy Riot, some clips are below, and you should have no trouble finding more tracks by Googling “Pussy Riot – Kill The Sexiest” [sic]. And since downloading the songs for free won’t do them OR your ears much good, visit FreePussyRiot.org to donate to the defense fund and generally keep up to date. Oh, and remember, there are eleven OTHER members now in detention. Let’s not forget THEM.
Vladimir Akimenkov, 25
Andrei Barabanov, 22
Fedor Bakhov, 31
Yaroslav Belousov, 21
Stepan Zimin, 20
Nikolai Kavkazski, 26
Mikhail Kosenko, 37
Maksim Luzyanin, 36
Denis Lutskevich, 20
Aleksei Polikhovich, 22
Artyom Savyolov, 33
You’ve probably seen the clip where Pussy Riot protests at the church. Before you get all indignant about the fact that they were protesting in a church, you may want to know what kind of bastard they’re referring to when they say “The Patriarch of the Church”. We’re talking about a church whose leader wears $30,000 Breguet watches which the church Photoshops out of images to make it look like he’s not the rich vain suckup to Putin that he is.
Pussy Riot has been at this for a while. Here they are last December performing on the roof of “Detention Center No1″, which holds protestors arrested after the elections immediately prior.
And here’s the “exclusive release” presented by The Guardian: