Back In The U.S.S.R. – The Beatles (1968)

Description

Additional information about this, The Beatles vinyl art.

The Beatles – The Artist

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the group were integral to pop music’s evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. They often incorporated classical elements, older pop forms and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways, and later experimented with several musical styles ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As the members continued to draw influences from a variety of cultural sources, their musical and lyrical sophistication grew, and they were seen as an embodiment of the era’s sociocultural movements. The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million records worldwide. They disbanded in 1970 and embarked on successful solo projects.

Back In The U.S.S.R – The Song

Back In The U.S.S.R. is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that opens their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as the “White Album”). It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. The song is in the rock and roll style and is a parody of Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.” and the Beach Boys’ “California Girls”. The lyrics transpose Berry’s patriotic sentiments about the United States to Communist Russia, as the narrator expresses his relief at returning home to the Soviet Union, or more formally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The song opens and closes with the sound of a jet aircraft landing on a runway, while the bridge sections feature backing vocals in the style of the Beach Boys and lyrics celebrating the girls from various locations in the USSR.

Russian Doll – The Shape

This record has been modelled into a typical Russian doll.  Matryoshka dolls, also known as Babushka dolls, stacking dolls, nesting dolls, Russian tea dolls, or Russian dolls, are the set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. The name matryoshka, literally “little matron”, is a diminutive form of Russian female first name “Matryona” or “Matryosha” A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure, which separates at the middle, top from bottom, to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on. The first Russian nested doll set was made in 1890 by wood turning craftsman and wood carver Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo. Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a sarafan, a long and shapeless traditional Russian peasant jumper dress. The figures inside may be of either gender; the smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby turned from a single piece of wood. Much of the artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be very elaborate.

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