RWF: "Na beregu na beregu na beregu NEBA!"

Then came what was described in the programme as the ‘climatic moment.’ We’d been speculating about this for a while. They drew a white curtain across the stage and then started counting down the new year, which seemed a bit strange at a quarter past 5 in the evening, but whatever. Then a big Russian flag was projected onto the curtain, the Russian national anthem was played, and there was fake snow everywhere. It was actually quite touching in a way, I think it was because of all the people singing the national anthem and everyone waving their little plastic Russian flags.

Mr Comedian came out after that anyway, with a bottle of vodka, and then led everyone in a bit of a singalong of a song that went on forever.
And then, after a big huge intro of guitars playing something we didn’t really recognise…

“Heavy clouds no rain, and every move causes pain…” Aaaaggghhh, it was Dima! For so long we’ve been saying how good it would be to see him, but we never thought it would happen. From all the videos we’ve seen, he seemed like such a good live performer, and he really is. Never Let You Go was great to sing along to, I think I must have deafened the guy in front of me by the end of Dima’s set, and possibly caused a few injuries to a couple of others too…Anyway,it was a really good performance,complete with an impressive series of Dima jumps :)

We said about a week ago, that as long as Dima sang Ty Dolzhna, we didn’t care what else he did. So when he suddenly launched into “you should have written me a letter…” we were quite excited. Thankfully he didn’t do the whole English version and was interchanging between that one and the real Ty Dolzhna, which was a bit confusing when you’re trying to sing along, but it was wonderful.


In fact,if you listen quite closely,you can hear us singing the English chorus towards the end.We've always 'given it large' to this song,so being amongst thousands of Russians wasn't going to stop us!

Number One Fan was next,which again was super,I almost can't believe I didn't like that song when it first came out,it's really good!The "they call me Dima Bilan,Dima Bilan,D-D-Dima Bilan" bit still makes me laugh though.
I think Nevozmozhnoe Vozmozhno was next.Another great,bilingual performance.Very energetic.

When Kak Romeo started,we weren't quite sure what it was,although the violinist who had just come on stage should probably have given us a clue.I've never really liked Kak Romeo to be honest,but it's far better live than it is on a CD player.It really shows off Dima's great voice,and although all the big lively singalong songs like Nevozmozhnoe Vozmozhno and Number One Fan were fabulous,it was nice to hear something slower as well.

Possibly our second favourite Dima song after Ty Dolzhna was next.We weren't really expecting him to do Eta Bila Lyubov,so it was a nice surprise.I've seen videos of him doing this one live before,and he always sings it really well and full of emotion.I seem to remember him singing the chorus about 86 times at the end.Not that we were complaining :)

The last song seemed like a bit of a strange choice actually.I thought he would have saved one of the big songs like Ty Dolzhna for last,but instead he did Na Beregu Neba/Between the Sky and Heaven,which again has never been one of our favourite songs,although now I realise it's probably quite a nice chillout song.The performance was cool,Dima's backing dancers,who were fabulous throughout,had odd silver masks on for this one,which made it all very arty and nice.The ending of it was funky,sort of turning into a bit of a freestyle type thing with Dima repeating "na beregu" over and over again... But it was all good.

And then,after saying a few quick-fire words in Russian,Dima ran off and the curtains were shut,to get the stage ready for DJ Lupin.But we didn't bother staying to watch him.We fought our way through the disippating crowd of Russians,went and bought a shashlik and some other bits,and then made our way back home.Very happy indeed.

At the time,even when Dima was on stage,which was what we were looking forward to for weeks,it was only afterwards when we got back to Surrey and looked at the photos and videos that I realised what a fabulous day it had been.As clichéd as it sounds,there's bits that I'll remember for a very long time to come.So,in true Mastercard advert style...

Guildford-Waterloo return ticket- £11,30
Obligatory purchase of Russian doll related merchandise- £12,00
Having the best weekend ever in the company of super-fabulous Russian stars- Priceless!

RWF: "It's not the same without Dennis is it?"

The Russian National Dance show was next, which as I expected, was super. Lots of fabulous colourful costumes, oh, and they danced a bit to Vdol Pa Peterskay, which made me and Keira very happy, seeing as we love the version of that song that Prohor did, and listen to it quite a lot.

Ken Livingstone came on next. But he didn’t dance. Or sing. He just talked for what seemed like ages about bridging the gap between Russia and Britain, and then went on about fascism, although I’m not sure why. Either way his involvment would have been far more interesting if he’d have given us a chorus of Ty Dolzhna.

There were rock bands next. Sankt Peterburg were OK actually, we liked their lead singer because he was the most smiley person we’d ever seen. Zemlyane though, were awful. Well, maybe not awful, but just boring. And it was strange hearing Russian songs that we couldn’t sing along to. They really did seem to be on stage forever though. And my legs were hurting so much at that point, which didn’t help.
Then it was pop time.Kuba were next. They were on Fabrika Zvezd Series 2 apparantly. They were shockingly bad. Don’t know if it was the Hello Kitty guitar or the angel wings or the fact that they just couldn’t sing and kept screaming that put me off of them the most. They seemed to be on for ages too. I don’t think any of the crowd liked them actually, it was all pretty silent when they were on.

Fabrika were on next, doing Pro Lyubov to start with. I like that song. And then they did one that I didn’t know, and then Ne Vinovata Ya, which me and Keira like because they did it on Fabrika Zvezd with the Chelsi boys and Prohor and Dima. It was good, although there were a few sound issues at times, but we couldn’t help ourselves every time a certain bit came up, “aww, it’s not the same without Dennis is it?” “aww, that was Dima’s bit.” It was quite cool to see them though.

RWF: "Russians are strange people"

Squashed between Keira and 3 Russian men yesterday evening, I had an epiphany- Dima Bilan is amazing!

We’d been planning to go to the Russian Winter Festival for a while, since we knew it existed really. And when I found out last month that Dima Bilan was going to be there, we started getting pretty excited.

When we arrived, it was ridiculously exciting to hear Nevozmozhnoe Vozmozhno coming from the speakers on the stage. Apart from hearing The Ark a few times in a few shops in Norway, this was the first time for years that I’d heard a song I really like being played in public, which was super :)

We got there really early, considering Dima wasn’t going to be on until 5.40, but once I’d found a good spot near the front and in the middle of the stage, I wasn’t going to move. This was fine during the first lot of performers, a sort of modern folk type group and the wonderful Baikal Ensemble (who were from Eastern Russia, so a bit more on the oriental side of things), but I thought it might have been a bit of a mistake when the Aquaaerobik Project came on.

Being fans of Fabrika Zvezd, we’re pretty used to crazy stage set ups and performances, so we weren’t shocked whatsoever when this ‘Project’ came on stage wearing brightly coloured, skin tight plastic suits (one of them with a shoe attached to his head) and playing giant plastic guitars to the sound of generic electro music and the woman screeching quite unintelligible words. I don’t know, they were different I suppose, but not really my thing.

Then there was 5 minutes of time filling, when some girls from Ukraine and the Baltics were up on stage answering quite stupid questions from the most irritating presenter in the world. She was even more annoying than the woman from Fabrika Zvezd, and that’s saying something. When finally asked “who’s your favourite artist here today?” the girls all responded “Tiiiiiiiishman!” cue disbelieving looks between me and Keira, thinking they must be either joking or mental for clearly not loving Dima Bilan as much as us.

I was quite excited about seeing Mark Tishman actually, I didn’t watch this series of Fabrika Zvezd, but I thought it would be cool to see someone from it. He’s gorgeous in real life, he looks so much like Prohor Shalyapin. The first thing he said in English was “Russians are strange people,” which I thought was quite amusing, and then he went on to talk about the concept of Old New Year and why it’s good to have celebrations because of the ‘deficit of love in the world’ or something like that. Anyway, then he sang a song that he'd written himself,called Yarkim Plamenyem, it was rather Prohor-esque and lovely. Then he did the beautiful I’ll Be Your Angel, and another one that I didn’t know the name of. He was fabulous though, although it was only him on stage, he was a good performer, doing lots of interesting, flamboyant hand movements. It was good, if there’d been anyone else on stage with him I don’t think it would have worked as well. So yes, I can see why the Baltic girls were so excited about him now, hopefully he’ll have a good career and maybe, mmm…come back to the festival next year perhaps? : )

Russian Winter Festival

This weekend has been one of the best weekends ever.After a vodka fuelled,singing filled Saturday night,me and Keira went up to London on Sunday to see the Russian Winter Festival,which was a celebration of Old Russian New Year,as celebrated on the Tsarist calendar.The next few posts I do will be all about our big Russkytastic adventure,along with some pictures and videos that Keira took.I have neither the required patience or coordination to keep my arm suitably mobile in the air for so long,so she was in charge.The results are pretty fabulous.