Red and Purple

The iron curtain did many cruel things to those caught behind it in the nations perverting socialism. Amongst the terrible wrongs was the way that - cut off from the West - heavy metal took a firmer grip on young minds. Perhaps it was the heavy basslines allowed the music to carry further into Eastern Europe; maybe it was all a terrible joke at the expense of youth on the part of Brezhnev. Whatever, heavy metal remained popular in the East in a way it never quite managed to do in the West. While social democrats grew up and pretended they'd never liked the Maiden, former Communists tend to still look on the metal scene fondly.

Which is how presumably Deep Purple came to play a gig for Gazprom head Dmitri Medvedev. In the Kremlin.

Of course, it's questionable if Deep Purple really should have been paying court to Medvedev and Gazprom while the company is bullying Ukraine and threatening to cut off the gas - although, according to The Times, the Purple bought Ukraine a stay of execution:

Gazprom had set a deadline originally for Monday night, but pushed it back 24 hours. Some observers said that it had been reluctant to spoil Mr Medvedev’s evening by starting a dispute with Ukraine during the Deep Purple concert.

It's almost a Partridge Family plot - "curse you, your music has distracted me and I forgot to cut off the gas supplies to 46 million people..."