Crimean separatists get their own pop star support

You'll recall a couple of weeks back Eurovision winner Ruslana got a role in the new Ukraine government.

That doesn't mean that the entire world of Eastern European pop is supporting the smaller nation. Oleg Gazmanov, a Russian pop star, has appeared at a Moscow rally supporting the campaign to attach Crimea to Russia.

This is Oleg:

Looks more like one of those doctors who appear with their shirts off in airplane in-flight magazines: "Dr Smith is sixty but still takes his shirt off in magazines".

Oleg's official biography says that he likes his music to "unite people of different nationalities", although it turns out he's just as okay with that being done at gun point, too.

This is the song that Oleg performed at the rally, with what the uploader insists is an English translation of the lyric...

Gentleman Offices
Under the taut nerve chord of faith
I sing this song to those who give up careers
Life is not regretting his chest substituting for Russia her!

Those who survived in Afghanistn, his reputation did not make a muck of thsoe who did not make a career of Soldiers' blood.

I sing the offices who took pity mothers, returning them back to the living sons!

Officers, offices, you heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

Gentlemen, Offices, both to save your faith?

Dug graves on your souls wheezing!
What are we brothers have done - could not save them, and now they are forever in my eyes we look!

Once again the guys go, dissolving into the sunset
Russia called them both happened more than once

And once you leave, may, directly at the sky, and from above forgive us!

So where are you going? May, directly at the sky and from above forgive us!

Officers, officers, your heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

Officers, officers, your heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

I'm sure if you lobbed Paul Hardcastle's 19 into a machine translation it'd seem just as odd, but I really do love the way Oleg makes it clear that he's only endorsing the guns under the hearts of Officers (Russian), just in case there were any Officers (Polish), say, who were drawing strength from this.

Nice to see, by the way, that Russian popular TV not above forcing veterans of war into studios to provide a bit of backdrop for a musty old song.

Crimea giver

They're trying to suggest it's the dawn of a whole new model for the music industry, and so it may prove, but for now, Crimea's plan to give away its next album for free sounds slightly less than dawn of a new era and more of a stunt.

The idea is to reach "as many people as possible", says drummer Owen Hopkin, with those people, once enslaved, forming a hardcore of gig-going, t-shirt-buying, somehow-persuading-businesses-to-licence-music-ing fans:

"We want to harness the power of the internet. If it's on there for free we'll reach more people than the orthodox route of selling the record."

Well, perhaps. Although it doesn't automatically follow - after all, there are hundreds and hundreds of servers full of free music which remains untouched.

What's different with Crimea, though, is they have made the Top 40 under their own steam (or rather, that of Warners). The new approach is a novel way to try and get round having been dropped; its success will depend to a large extent on how much money the band is hoping to make with its music. But before anyone has downloaded a single free track, they've managed to generate a shedload of free publicity.