26 April 2013
Arriving and performing on the 92 year old Sedov sailing ship, and recently voted Russia’s “best band of the millenium”, Mumiy Troll, played their third and final Cape Town gig on Friday at Ragazzi, with the support of Long Time Citizen (and a huge crowd full of Russians!)
Ragazzi was packed pretty full, both upstairs and downstairs, and it wasn’t the usual Cape Town crowd…instead, the excited chatter before the show was mostly conducted in Russian. There was also quite a broad spectrum of ages in attendance which is always cool.
Long Time Citizen have increased in size since the last time I saw them; bassist Anton Marshall took over vocal duties from the laryngitis-afflicted Greg Donnelly, and they were joined by guitar demon Willim Welsyn and Lance Brandow on the drums.
Granted, the last time I saw them was over a year ago when they played a pretty chilled acoustic set, but still they were a lot punchier at Ragazzi than I was expecting and, I think, complemented the tone of the headliners pretty well.
LTC checked 2 or 3 times if Mumiy Troll had arrived yet, and when the answer was ‘nyet’, they apologised for them running late and kept playing.
When they finished there was a bit of a lull, during which I pointed excitedly at the setlist scribbled in Cyrillic on the floor and then at a printed sheet with more Cyrillic, tabulated and on a letterhead. I picked it up and said “Oh, I wonder what this says” and next to me, a girl leaned over and said, in a really great accent, “It is bill from a laundromat in Vladivostok! No idea what it is doing here, but see, here is pants and here is coat…I don’t know!” which was both totally bizarre and really cool.
Eventually the Russians did arrive, to much excitement from the crowd, but the wait was far from over…once they’d set up, 3/4 of the band sat around waiting for their vocalist for what felt like 15-20 minutes. It really wasn’t cool and everyone was getting restless, both in the crowd on the stage.
But when he arrived, Ilya Lagutenko received a hero’s welcome from the crowd, and 30 seconds into their opening song, his charm and charisma unleashed, all was forgiven (it was almost unjust how easy it was for him to get away with it).
I didn’t know any of the band’s music beforehand (and have no idea what they were singing about) but I was definitely in the minority – the crowd sang along to everything, danced and cheered – it was awesome! I really enjoyed the show and the music. Even though they were playing low-key gigs in SA, this band is royalty in their motherland and their experience shows.
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A really fun night! It’s always great to see an international act, and I really do hope we get more foreign vistors playing accessible club gigs like this in the future.
Mumiy Troll: website (English) | Facebook (English)
Listen to Ilya Lagutenko in studio for The Wrong Rock show on Bush Radio
Photos from MT’s soundcheck aboard The Sedov
