Just tangentially, I wonder to what degree big ensembles help/hurt with getting touring visas? For instance, it's my understanding that the Red Army Choir didn't have much trouble getting US visas, but Billy Bragg did.
Billy Bragg, bless his soles, gave me a look of loathing when I handed off guitars to him and sound checked, and stomped off stage after his set loudly cursing "fucking yuppies".
To his credit and defence, it was Perth in the 1980s. Boom years for unprincipled scumbags with hovercraft money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFOfd1QTW54 ... Kiss My Art indeed.
Maybe, or maybe ICE-as-ding-wie-scheint (& Donroe?) is just a sign that the descendants of Operation Condor supporters have started preparing to act domestically as well as in the near abroad?
I wasn't sure if Stefan-chan had found the no-longer-heim-weh too painful, or if he'd been suddenly confronted somehow with BR not necessarily being as new-world as it had appeared when he was fresh-off-the-boat, so I'm glad Mann went with the former interpretation. (and, for people who were raised on greek and latin examples, trolling from beyond the EXIT would've been nothing unusual?)
lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OxJKFEofL0 (could Sra. Oreiro be counted as an honorary [very-]west-slav, at least as part of the fin-de-siècle pan-slavic cultural heritage?)
Just tangentially, I wonder to what degree big ensembles help/hurt with getting touring visas? For instance, it's my understanding that the Red Army Choir didn't have much trouble getting US visas, but Billy Bragg did.