Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Spanish Dance Troupe

The only real problem with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci is their name. It’s pretentious to start with, and when you find out that the last word is pronounced “monkey,” it’s insufferable. They have no connection to either Arshile Gorky, the Armenian-American abstract expressionist, nor to Maxim Gorky, the Russian novelist. Actually, they’re a Welsh pop group, folky and psychedelic. Although their recordings are all very sunny and shimmery, they have a much harder sound live, or at least they did when I saw them in 2002. They’re a great live band, anyway. This song comes from an album with the same name; the Blue Trees EP and How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart are also very good. I don’t know what’s up with Wales and Scotland, but they seem to breed a disproportionate number of good bands – Super Furry Animals, the Beta Band, Belle and Sebastian, and so forth.

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci	“One Year the Milkweed,” by Arshile Gorky	Maxim Gorky

Psoy Korolenko – Pizza

I don’t really know what’s up with Psoy Korolenko. He’s a current Russian folk singer, I guess, and he really likes pizza. My friend James’s Russian teacher played this song in class, even though it’s in English. Even if it isn’t much of a language learning tool, it is completely amazing, which I guess is better in the long run. Some of the songs on this site are in Yiddish, too, so I guess he’s Jewish. There’s not much to the song; it’s just a list of the pizzas of the world: “The pizza from Rome, it tastes like the Pope; the pizza from Milan, like La Scala; the pizza from Verona is like Shakespeare, the pizza from Sicilia is like Mafia.” And on and on and on. It’s three minutes long, but they’re the longest three minutes ever, and needless to say, totally great.