Hello Pom, Tom Waits didn't make this up. This poster (or at least its slogan) was used in Soviet. The history of Soviet jazz is as strange and complicated as the history of Russia in XX-th century. At first jazz was accepted partly because it was proclaimed as protest music of the poorest black people who are still suffering in the capitalistic hell. The other reason was that this music was new, and the whole idea of the revolution aimed to destroy old order and to build the new one. (For example, one of the most famous quotes was "to kick off Pushkin of the ship of the present".) But very soon Soviet official art became conservative in all possible ways. There was no more space for jazz in that situation. It was the time when that slogan was born. The other one said that "jazz is the fat people's music". By that time jazz was "ideologically alien element" to socialist realism, which was the only acceptable form of art. That's why jazz musicians in Soviet Russia or even their listeners were associated with anti-communist movement both by themselves and by authorities. In post-Gorbachev era this situation changed. There are no barriers for jazz in Russia now except financial ones. Even though jazz musicians are still far from radical political ideas, some of them are much closer to communist or socialist ideas as they were before. As an example, I would like to mention saxophonist Sergei Letov. One of the leaders of Russian creative jazz, who played with Sergei Kuriokhin, "Tri O", Valentina Ponomareva, Sainkho and others, Letov now stays on socialist positions. He is not, though, as strong as his brother "Russian punk" singer-songwriter Egor Letov, who turned from being anti-communist to become radical communist. Sunday, June 9, 2002, you wrote to me: P> There is a great interview of Tom Waits in the Onion: P> http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3820/avfeature_3820.html P> Where he quotes a Soviet propaganda poster of the 1930's that says: "Today you P> will play jazz, tomorrow you will betray your country." Of course, he could P> very well have made this up, but it's a great quote anyway. NP: DJ Logic "The Anomaly" (CD) -- Best regards, Peter Gannushkin e-mail: shkin@shkin.com URL: http://www.downtownmusic.net/