Leon Trotsky, What's in Yer Walkman?

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Stalin would be too easy -- I imagine his tastes would either (a) be pretty similar to Hitler's (and there's already a thread about that); or (b) utterly predictable and boring commie folk music (hello, Pete Seeger). And, if Vladimir Nabokov is to be believed, Lenin was a sucker for melodramatic and weepy symphonies (I Pagliacci and Bellini would reduce Vladimir Ilyich to a blubbering mess).

Leon Trotsky, though, now there's an interesting hypothetical. An urbane, sophisticated, well-read man with a taste for the finest of high art. What would he be listening to, if he were alive today?

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Saturday, 10 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

loudon wainwright 3

― Geoff, Saturday, 10 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'd be amused to see if he liked Stereolab or not.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 11 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Trotsky Icepick, haha. Or "No More Heroes" by the Stranglers.

― Andy, Sunday, 11 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

lev bronstein would be listening to divine comedy.

― keith, Sunday, 11 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Rap. He actually liked ukranian folk music. music of poor oppressed minority then = music of poor oppressed minority now.

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 11 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Rage Against the Machine. I agree with rap. Amorphis and Megadeth.

― A.W., Sunday, 11 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

He would probably have liked early sterolab, but not later as it lost "edge".

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the make-up...a group with a strong manifesto and the odds stacked against it.

― Ian M, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Limp Bizkit et al...the music might give him a headache but with his bald head and silly little beard he'd of fitted right in

― Mat O, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It would be hard to hear much new stuff having to, you know, avoid CIA assassins in Mexico for 60 years. Cafe Tacuba maybe? He'd dismiss Buena Vista Social Club as nostalgic regressivism, cynically marketed to the bourgeosie by a failed regime.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yep, proletkult part II.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

didja know that the prime theorist of proletkult wrote a scifi novel called Red Planet, which = Lenin's sister's fave book?

― mark s, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dude sinker, Kim Stanley Robinson was so not the prime theorist of proletkult. A little googling reveals that Bogdanov's novel was in fact named "Red Star".

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

mars = planet not star

― mark s, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

hence trotsky's disdain possibly

― mark s, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think it had something more to do with the veneration of the craptacular as "authentic" cultcha and the future of cultcha. Disdain of classiks & all. Eisenstein, on the other hand, did a marvelous film about space travel whose title escapes me at the moment, and which was rilly an allegory for progress & asperations towards such running into conditions of material scarcity.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Trotsky may have liked this taking sides from a little ways back :)

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

SIDE A
1) "The Internationale"
2) "The Internationale in Dub"
3) "The Internationale ('Doop Bop' Remix by Stereolab)"
4) "The Internationale (Extended 'Funky Drummer' Techno Remix)"
5) "The Internationale (Single Radio Edit)"
6) "The Internationale (Alex Patterson 'Ambient' Remix 37:00 minute version)"

SIDE B
Bootleg of Les Mysteres de Bulgares's "Live at the Tschernobyl Memorial Sewage Treatment Facility, Building 4."

― Lord Custos, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sterling: you're not thinking of Aelita are you? (Which sadly I have never seen, except little excerpts in Chris Marker's The Last Bolshevik, but which also I think Eisenstein had nothing to do with, so maybe not!?)

― mark s, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually, it could be that I just read about it in his Film & Sense and it was done by someone else. So probably yes.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also sounds like Melies' 190x "Trip to the Moon" which Eisenstein undoubtedly saw.

I very much wanted to see "Last Bolshevik" this year and of course did not.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Reminds me of underlooked soviet film circa 60s called The First Teacher which is about early Bolshevik work among women in the soviet east. Compare to U.S. backing of Taliban...

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Lord Custos,you made me want that tape!!!

― Damian, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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