Woman. Legend. Blog. - American cynicism. Russian fatalism. Nutella.

Update! My dad just called me and told me that President Medvedev was ALSO at the concert. My dad and the president of Russia rock out to the same music.

My dad loves Time Machine (Mashina Vremeni, which sounds much different in Russian), the Beatles of the Soviet Union. Every experience he has had since 1973 revolves around Mashina Vremeni. Their music was at first passed around on bootleg tapes because subversive rock and roll wasn’t allowed in the USSR. (Side note: I think it’s hilarious that Time refers to](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_Pugacheva) as henna-haired.) They were one of the reasons he learned to play the guitar, and they continued to be an important part in shaping his life, especially when he got to see them live, twice in Russia.[Update! My dad just called me and told me that President Medvedev was ALSO at the concert. My dad and the president of Russia rock out to the same music.

My dad loves Time Machine (Mashina Vremeni, which sounds much different in Russian), the Beatles of the Soviet Union. Every experience he has had since 1973 revolves around Mashina Vremeni. Their music was at first passed around on bootleg tapes because subversive rock and roll wasn’t allowed in the USSR. (Side note: I think it’s hilarious that Time refers to](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_Pugacheva) as henna-haired.) They were one of the reasons he learned to play the guitar, and they continued to be an important part in shaping his life, especially when he got to see them live, twice in Russia.](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/veekaybee/wlb/gh-pages/assets/images/2010/04/DSC01328.jpg)

They’ve shaped my life, too. All of their songs not only sound good (which my mom would deny, having heard each one at least three times a day for the past 25 years), but have really deep life messages that translate over and across time. When I was a moody sophomore in college and I’d drive back and forth, from my parents’ house to Penn State, leaving warmth and comfort for really hard exams, lots of loneliness, and a roommate that blogged about how loud I chewed (true story), I’d play them on my iPod.

One particular favorite was this one, called “Conversation on a Train” and is about how two passengers get on a train and start talking about the train. One passenger says, our life is a moving train and we’re all passengers, and the other says, we’re all machinists and control the train. Basically it’s an allegory about how some people control life and others let life control them. The song ends with both getting off the train and going their own way.

Here:

and this one, called “Bonfire”, which is about how each person’s soul is a bonfire and some of us burn it up all at once in a blaze of glory and burn out and others glower long into the night. The guy singing is Andrei Makarevich, the lead singer, who my dad spotted at a concert once, despite never having seen his face due to the bootleg tapes.

and when I did really well on an exam, I remember playing this song and feeling a complete release from stress. It’s called “People in Boats,” and it’s about how this guy keeps walking towards the shoreline, almost losing all hope, but in the morning finally sees it. And then, when he gets to the shoreline, he says that the world isn’t all that bad, and that he feels light and his boat can float past shores and islands.

Each one of their songs has allegories to life in general and are really nice to listen to.

Last week, they were playing at the Listner Auditorium in GW University, and my dad went to see them with his friend. He’s been psyched about it for two months. My dad is very hard to please, and when I called him for him to report back he said that they “didn’t put 100% into the show”, and that the show was “ok.” I’m sad that he didn’t get to have the experience he’s been waiting 25 years to have, but happy that he got to see the group he grew up with and that made such a formative part of his adult life. It’s like if I got to see Nutella in concert.

My mom, on the other hand, is not happy, because she has been having to hear about Mashina Vremeni for the past 25 years and now will have additional material to loop through. So far, I’ve been hearing about this concert, which was “ok,” for the past week and a half.