WASHINGTON, June 28 (by Karin Zeitvogel for RIA Novosti) - When Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of the Russian Federation in late 1999, his popularity at rock-bottom, a group of high school friends from America’s heartland who were looking for a name for their band finally found it.
They called themselves “Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.”
“Boris Yeltsin had just resigned from office, so his name was all over the press,” Philip Dickey, the lead singer in the band, told RIA Novosti before going onstage for a gig in Washington this week.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about him for some reason. You had comedians making jokes about him, newspapers, tabloids. I guess we felt a little sorry for him, and we thought it would be a good band name, and that’s when we came up with ‘Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin,’” Dickey said.
More than 13 years later, “Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin” – which Dickey says is probably the longest band name in the world – is still making albums, with a new one, “Fly by Wire,” featuring the silhouette of the Kremlin on the cover, due out in September.
SSLYBY from Brook Linder on Vimeo.
They also still have a soft spot for Yeltsin.
The band’s ties to Russia led in 2007 to an invitation to perform at the Afisha Picnic festival, near Moscow.
“We went to Moscow right after Boris Yeltsin died in 2007, which is sad because when they invited us to play the festival he was still alive, so we thought maybe we can meet him when we go over there but that didn’t work out,” Dickey said.
Then, in 2012, the band from Springfield, Missouri, was invited to play another gig in Russia.
But this invitation was different, because it came from the Yeltsin Foundation, which is based in Moscow, and carried the blessing of the US State Department. The members of “Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin” were named US cultural ambassadors for the day of the gig in January this year in Yekaterinburg.
The band performed two shows in Yekaterinburg, one in a large stadium, rock star style, where “we were doing everything we could to win over the audience, which is kind of stressful when they’re not familiar with your music,” Dickey said.
But from the stage, the band could see Russians singing along to the tunes, Dickey said, “and a girl had taken the train from St. Petersburg… She’d been on a train for 28 hours just to get to our show.”
The following day, “Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin” played an acoustic gig in a school, and then answered questions from the audience of young Russians.
“That was a really neat day. We got to interact with these kids who maybe had never gotten to interact with… I don’t want to say ‘celebrities’ but just, like, American artists, musicians and stuff. You could tell it was a neat experience for them but we thought it was even cooler for us to get to hear about their lives,” Dickey said.
“Then we looked outside and there were these little cute Russian kids cross-country skiing during recess. Not like here at all,” he added.
Thanks to their unique band name, members of “Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin” have learned not only about a different culture but also about the man who was Russia’s first post-communist president. But none of the tidbits of knowledge delves into his political career.
“He blew off part of his thumb when he was a teenager after breaking into a stockade and stealing a grenade. It was the first time he tried to start a revolution,” said guitarist Will Knauer.
“He was good friends with US President Bill Clinton,” said Brook Linder, who produces the band’s music videos.
“We saw pictures of them just chillin’ out,” he said.
And Dickey offered up the information that Yeltsin and his wife Naina were keen tennis players.
Linder tagged along for the band’s January 2013 visit to Russia, and captured key moments on video.
A 20-minute film entitled “Discussions with Russians,” chronicling “Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s” trip as US cultural ambassadors to the homeland of the late Russian president who is the inspiration for the band’s name, is due to be released this summer. In the meantime, fans can watch a trailer here.
Discussions with Russians - Trailer from Brook Linder on Vimeo.
