Drag yourself to this!

What do plywood and the infamous U.S. duet Milli-Vanilli have in common? No, the duet didn’t start a plywood business after they were stripped of their Grammy a few years ago for lip-synching. The answer is that the group lost their Grammy for singing “to the accompaniment of plywood” (пели под фанеру).

Since plywood is a veneer over compressed wood, whether in furniture or other wood products, it is considered a cheap surrogate for the real thing. Which is why it became a popular slang word for lip-synching, vs. singing live – петь вживую. Someone guilty of “plywood singing” becomes a фанерщик.

In Russian practice, it is singers of cheap pop songs who are most often guilty of фанера. So lovers of true live performances, those who like to hear живая музыка have coined a perjorative name for cheap pop: попса. Singers of попса are called попсовики. Heavy metal fans, meanwhile, are called металлисты, and are the arch-enemies of попсовики – the two often get into ferocious brouhahas after concerts.

If you want to learn or practice music-related Russian vocabulary, there is no better place than Moscow’s Горбушка (named after the local Gorbunov House of Culture, which often hosts live rock or pop concerts). Interestingly, горбушка literally means “end crust” – the heel of the bread that devotees insist is the tastiest part of a loaf.

The Gorbushka is famous for its tastelessly cheap CD market. Lovers of good музон (slang for music) flock to the Gorbushka to buy pirated CDs (сидюки; old vinyl records were диски) made in Bulgaria and Ukraine.

“What are you looking for – медляки?” a vendor might ask you. Don’t be surprised: медляк derives from the simple word медленный (“slow”) and means a rock ballad a la Guns & Roses’ Don’t Cry Tonight. A good heart-breaking медляк, like perhaps George Harrison’s poignant While My Guitar Gently Weeps, is “plagued,” i.e. чумовой медляк (чумовой is Russian slang for “great,” usually applied to music).

A чумовой медляк is something which can make a young audience experience the feeling of тащиться – literally “to drag oneself along,” which is slang for enjoying something. Synonyms include отрываться, and балдеть.

A lead-guitarist like Jimmy Page or, say, Richie Blackmore, can make their audience “drag itself along” over long “соляки” or “запилы” (slang for long, poignant and breathtaking solo-guitar pieces). The former is not to be mixed-up with сольник, the informal term for “solo-album.”

Jazz lovers might have come across the term лабать – to play a musical instrument. So, whenever President Bill Clinton feels like playing his saxophone, he would лабать на саксе. Though it is unclear if afficionados would call him a true лабух (musician).

Indeed, public opinion in the U.S. seems to have been split over his virtuoso соляк (or was it a медляк?) with Monica Lewinsky. Especially when Clinton, like a true попсовик, didn’t give his testimony вживую, but sort of под фанеру, as it was recorded first on a видак (video).

But long before the U.S. Congress had acquitted Clinton, Russia’s women had forgiven him this – many have long тащиться от Клинтона. Local men in turn were dying to see Monica Lewinsky вживую, after Vagrius publishers invited her to Russia to promote her book Monica’s Story. But then the trip was canceled by the Russian publisher over NATO’s bombing of Belgrade. For the Russians didn’t seem to тащиться about this U.S.-orchestrated NATO соляк. In our view, not the best piece of сакс Bill Clinton ever лабал.