How "silly servants" are self serving

Well it's been an awful long time since I sat down and have written anything regarding music in Ukraine, but that shouldn't surprise anyone, as not much really changes around here. Sure, Haydamaky were off touring in Europe and are back in Kyiv in the days to come, but have a full line up for the months ahead. Mandry played he Mississauga Convention Centre on the outskirts of what used to be Toronto, near Ukrainian Christmas. I'm pretty certain that Foma played a few seasonal tunes as a few weeks before that he was sitting with us at Kupidon and played a few seasonal pieces.

Mandry and VV were supposed to be playing in a project together with Capartiana called the "Dnipro-on-Thames" has hit a little bit of a set-back from what I hear from good sources, but it the project is going ahead, but on a different time table.

Nevertheless, based on the information I have from various sources, there are many different projects, that even the Minister of Culture, an old acquaintance of mine, is not certain about supporting. However, some the industry insiders have mentioned that the Minister is not averse to receiving nice little amount of cash into his personal pocket, somewhere around 20K USD, for making a personal appearance in the company of certain business interests during the city of Chernivtsi's 600th Anniversary celebrations in October of 2008, however, no one in the media or otherwise can substantiate this as being fact.

Whether this hearsay be true or not, it seems to me that government types in Ukraine don't change even with a so-called new group of people in key positions. Or maybe the old show biz expression "It's not who you know but who you b***!" is more befitting of what I want to share with you next.

It appears that back in December of 2008 a young "pretty boy" singer by the name of Alex Luna, (Alex Tyshchenko brother of Svitlana Loboda, of Russian pop-music fame VIA Gra) managed to get to use the Kyiv City hall premises for a private debut video release called Svet Luny. This did not escape a number of different local media outlets, nor did it escape the attention of Riffmaster who himself still lives in a communal apartment with is wife and young son, so they decided to find out just what it takes to get use of the Hall of Columns as shown in this report on STB.

So it seems that Kyiv's Mayor, so dearly referred to as Lyonya Kosmos by so many in the nation's capital, also isn't sure who gets the right to sing in the Hall of Columns. So there you have it folks, its not who you know... is who you ....But it in the report there is clearly a text with the name of Putin highlighted. So the question remains... Who's city hall is it anyway?