Medvedev Remembers His Disco Days as a DJ
Sergei Yolkin
2011
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On Tuesday night, ahead of their Wednesday gig at the Olympic arena in Moscow, the legendary British rock group Deep Purple went to visit President Dmitri Medvedev at his residence in Gorky near Moscow. Dmitri Anatolyevich is a long-time keen Deep Purple fan, so, he invited the rockers to come to his home. They remained true to their usual style and came to the presidential residence in jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies, but frontman Ian Gillan did put on a dress jacket. Medvedev told them that he’s listened to the music Deep Purple for the past 33 years. “When I started listening to Deep Purple, of course, I couldn’t have imagined that I would be here sitting with you guys at this table”, he said. He said he was a DJ at his school’s disco, always playing records from various rock bands. “It was an unusual disco, as the driving force behind it was hard rock. I brought a list of the music to be played there for the approval of the Komsomol committee”, Dmitri Anatolyevich said. Ian Gillan joked that when he was young, he thought, “the police and the president… they’re all old dudes, but that’s changed”, he said as a compliment to President Medvedev.
23 March 2011
RIA-Novosti
http://rian.ru/caricature/20110323/357093255.html
An Editorial Aside:
In the original Russian version of the cartoon, the outside voice says, “Не надо! Зыкину давай!” “Oh, no, you don’t! C’mon, give us some Zykina instead!” Lyudmila Zykina was a popular Soviet singer that was a fave of the older generation in the 70s and 80s (reputedly, she was Brezhnev’s number one singer). She died in 2009 at the age of 80 after a long and distinguished career as a folk singer, having reached the rank of People’s Artist of the USSR.
BMD
