Hello brothers and sisters!

For videos please visit our new Blog at: http://persephonesbees.com/blog/

Last night I was watching a show on nature, it was about rain forests. There're plants and animals that human beings haven't even discovered yet. They were saying that a long time ago Darwin received a small orchid from a rain forest and that orchid was very unusual: instead of having its nectar on top of the flower, it has it on the bottom of a long stem. Based on that, Darwin predicted that in the rain forests there's a type of a moth with a 12 inch long tongue, a moth that can actually reach that nectar on the bottom of the orchid stem. Well, his friends were laughing at him at the time. And guess what? The whole show was about these scientists that live in the rain forests, not for a week or a month, for years!!! So, this one scientists out of England, he's been trying to track that moth and to prove that Darwin's theory was right. He found that small orchid, set the cameras next to it, and started waiting. He waited and waited and waited... and was about to get discouraged and give up, when... well it's a happy ending. The moth did show up and it had a very long tongue and it did eat the nectar on the bottom of orchid's stem. Darwin was right after all!! And you know what was going through my mind? The whole damn time I kept thinking that our idea of modern 'heroes' is pretty screwed up. Here we are, we know a lot more about Angelina Jolie and what she ate for breakfast than about this guy who's dedicating his life to an IDEA, to a small step towards any kinda progress in science. It made me sad, actually. But that guy won't be that entertaining cause he probably doesn't have a booking agent and a publicist and I bet he doesn't party with the right people, so what kinda news is that, right? He sits there and waits for the moth, when he could be doing drugs with Amy Winehouse, loosing weight, breaking up with his girl/boy friends and whatever else our modern "heroes" do so well in magazines, TV and Internet.


Yeah, there's little hope left for humanity, unless we entirely change our ways.


There was a lot more in that show last night and it will take the whole blog to talk about it, and won't leave any place for the important news, for Persephone's Bees traveling to Paris! Haha! - here I am contradicting myself again, and THAT, my dear friends, makes me a tortured artist, doesn't it? And the world needs those as well, so I guess that's my place in the jungle of life. I do my role well, and actually don't ask that much for it. And ... you have no idea what I eat for breakfast!


Anyway... Paris, here it comes. Yes, all those people were always right - Paris is the most amazing city in the world. Paris is romantic, Paris has taste, all of those things are true - I witnessed them myself, and all that was apparent from the moment I put my feet on its ground.

We arrived to Paris on Monday, and about 2 hours latter we were picked up from the hotel and taken to a TV station called Star Mag TV show. I want to attempt to describe the room and the audience (yes, there was live audience) but we have a couple of photos that will probably do it:







After we played I was talking to a girl who was in charge of all the performers and I was telling her about my obsession with French cinema, especially with the New Wave period, and she wasn't much into those movies but suddenly said: "Oh, by the way, Ana Karina will be here any minute. Would you like to meet her?" What? The first thing I thought of was my dear friend Tomas Logorecci, my first American friend, a friend I met in Monterey, an American intellectual who, in reality, is a walking encyclopedia. Tomas is a camera man, he worked for some really great Independent movie directors. Tomas knows everything about everything but especially about movies. Needless to say, he's pretty obsessed with the French director Godard, who Ana Karina was married to while acting in many of his movies. Yes, it was that Ana Karina, and meeting her was like stepping into a different era, an era that still had so much creativity and innocence. Our meeting wasn't brief, we actually had a conversation - she was real, unpretentious and still beautiful.




After that it went all crazy, constant radio shows, interviews, etc.

I think it was the next day, we were playing live at France Inter/Le Fou Du Roi Radio Show. It was a huge station, with a big live audience. It was there we first performed 'Comment Te Dire Adieu", a French cover originally sung by Francoise Hardy. Before we left for Paris, Marie, a beautiful French girl who lives here in SF, looked over our schedule in Paris and said "Wow, you're pl'ee'aying France Inter, eet ees a station for eenteelectuals". And it was. They had a huge round table set right in front of the stage where there were about 12-15 people sitting around and talking, live, on the air, just sitting around, having a discussion, laughing, the audience laughing with them. Us standing on stage, ready to perform when given a sign, suddenly everyone is laughing more and we hear a bunch of French but also "Persephone's Bees'. We were laughing, too, thinking they were laughing at us, but then turns out that they were discussing something and while the guy was laughing he made sure he introduced P's Bees, just to make us feel as though they were laughing at us. Good times, good times! Now I know how my mom feels when we're all sitting around the table, talking and laughing in English and she understands only occasional words, mixed with the word "mom". She constantly says "Are you laughing at me?", we go "no, mom, it'd be too long to translate!", so you're shit out of luck, as they say. Ha ha, yes, that's how I felt right there and then. But the most amazing thing happened at that station. We finished playing and I was on the stage putting my keyboard away when I looked up and there was about 25 little kids standing in line with little torn papers, they lined up for me to sign autographs, and when each of them came up and said "Je m'appelle...." with their cute little kid voices, speaking French, I felt like fainting. I was dying from all that cuteness:








Mostly we saw Paris from a van, going from one studio to another, here some pix of that, there're a couple of handsome fellas in the back of a van:








Vincent, our tour manager was driving us everywhere. Driving in Paris is tough, you have to be really good at that. Most of the time I didn't envy Vincent, and when he was trying to park I'd close my eyes really tight, not to see...








Waiting wasn't something we had to do too much of, we were running around all the time, but I like to take pictures when people are waiting: people slow down, they lie down, stare at the space, they become more human. There's a lot to photograph in that case. That's why I absolutely love The Moscow Subway, every face tells a story, or lots of stories, I should say.




Tom:


Mike:


Benoit Brayer, Project Manager, who was with us the whole time. We miss him:








Recording tracks for Le Mouv Radio show:










Gregoire, our label manager, who was also with us the whole time, and we also miss him dearly; with Tom:





More driving and arriving to another radio show. Europe1:













Interview was very interesting. I'll get to that latter because I was shocked and pleasantly surprised by French music journalists:




Outside oh Europe 1, discussing how it all went, standing close to our van with the whole crew.





Who said "What's the point of living if nobody's watching?" Ha ha, somehow writing a blog on myspace makes me think of that. Yes, what is the point? It's great to be famous and those that are, always complain about it from the unreachable top they're sitting on. But I often wonder why humans want the love of other humans so badly? Lots of famous people were and probably are known for despising humanity, but they still want to be loved by it. A Czech writer Milan Kundera (I'm not a big fan, but he's good) in his book 'Immortality' said that even though humans know they will die eventually and being famous really makes no sense, they gravitate towards fame because of subconscious desire to prolong their lives. I think I agree with that and it's kinda weird. Yes, who remembers some John Smith who was sitting in the forest and waiting for a moth? But John Lennon is still alive, even evil bastards, the ones that killed millions of people through wars are still remembered, taught about in schools.



So, does it matter how fame comes to one? Music, movies, writing, killing, torturing, destroying things? Does it matter if you're McCartney, Lennon, Lenin, Stalin, Obama, G.W.Bush, Clinton? It's all fame, different kind, but still fame.


Oh, Christ, have I departed!!! Where was I?


Ahh, right, Paris, my beloved Paris. I was mentioning journalists in Paris because we had lots of interviews taken there. I was amazed how easy and fun every interview was. The journalists knew our music to the last note and to the last word. Those weren't Q&As, those were conversations between people and nobody was trying to outsmart the other. I asked myself, I asked Tom, how come I've never had an interview like that in US? How come I always felt that every interview was about how clever and witty the journalist was or how cool the magazine is, but not necessarily about the artist or the art of making music.


Yes, the questions were very creative and therefore easy to answer.


When we were making 'The Notes From The Underworld', in the middle of making the record we realized that we're able to achieve one great thing, we're able to make music colorful, able to mix notes and words in such a way, where light was playing with dark, and dark was so tucked in deeply, so the listener could feel it on a much different level. One of the main questions in every interview in Paris was "How did you achieve such perfect balance between darkness and light? Was it intentional?" I almost fell of my chair every time! That question was never asked before, no journalist in US ever picked up on that very important dynamic.


That leads me to a very passionate man, Rod Maurice. Rod came over and did an interview with us, took pictures at the hotel and the next night at the show.
Rod makes every artist to draw him a picture of an owl. Here's what I made for him:




Here's the link to his page, there you can see the photos he took, but here's a couple:



















There're a lot more. Please, check his link or our MySpace page, under photos in the "Paris-09" folder



The hotel we were staying in was designed by Phillippe Starck. Listen to me talk, I've never even knew that hotels are designed by some fancy designers, ha ha, but I learn something new every day. Yes, the hotel was beautiful, but in that fancy new way. I like hotels in Buenos Aires, they can be just like dancing tango. Sexy? No, that's not what I was trying to say, they can be inexpensive but creative in a very bazaar and old way. I like that, it's also a little creepy. No, hotel in Paris was light and spacious and interesting. Inside the rooms they had masks, our room had super hero and d'Artagnan.


Welcome to the Hotel Mama Shelter:






The mirrors on every floor of the hotel were announcing our show next door at La Fleche D'Or:




The ceiling in the restaurant area:




Here's what's left of a man I picked up a night before:




Tom relaxing between things to do:




At La Fleche D'Or:


Fans are waiting, the curtain is still down:





This next series of photos is amazing. They were taken by Damien, this photographer blew my mind. Many people do the talk, but can they walk the walk? Damien did the talk, about this and that, how he loves to shoot film because the photos have special depth. I thought, well, ok, this guy is either a true artist or... Well, Damien is a true artist, I absolutely admire his eye. Please check the rest of his photos on MySpace.com/persephonesbees, it's under "Pics" in a folder "Paris-09". But here're a few:














Me boots, by Damien:








The next show we did was at the PopUp, it was a private show. I still not know what that means:) but it was in a beautiful old theatre, it was packed with very fashionable people and it was awesome. You can watch videos taken by a fan of this show at our new blog here:


http://persephonesbees.com/blog/


But here's some photos taken inside of PopUp:










Don't know if I ever revealed that I've always been madly in love with stairs, door knobs, doors, windows, alleys, street lamps, benches. These amazing stairs led to backstage area, where we hung out for a while, long enough to take one million pictures:











Between the sound check and actual show at PopUp we got to walk to Notre Dame. Do I really need to say anything? Those that saw it know what I mean, and those that didn't, need to see it. Photos never do the justice to the great pieces of architecture:





Inside:


Computer screen kinda bugs me:)


I took this photo for my friend Christoff, he loves Merry Go Rounds, this was on the way to Notre Dame:




Back to the club:





Photo by Damien

Well, that's about it, kids, stay cool, enjoy spring, Persephone is back, she's gonna give you Joy and Prosperity. She's Generous, Kind and Sensuous, but don't you mess with her cause you'll be messing with Nature and trust me, that's a lost battle.

P.S. I'm gonna share little artsy fartsy photos I took of Paris. As I said I'm in love with alleys and benches and knobs, so here it is:

This American girl looked very French, 60-s French, she came to the show ..and I sneaked in a few pics:








































Au Revoir!!!

Ladies and Gens! No more looking in vain for lyrics to Persephone's Bees' songs on Internet, reading wrong interpretations, awful translations, haha, sometimes they're pretty funny! By popular request we posted all Persephone's Bees lyrics on our website www.persephonesbees.com including Muzika Dlya Fil'ma in Russian and the translation of the song in English (translated by our dearest friend and a very talented poet Aleksander Kogan). Thank you all again for your love and support. Stay tuned. P's Bees

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

Yeah, exactly, let's hope it's a good one, without any fear!!

Hello everyone, Angelina here. When I hear John Lennon's voice and the sound of his solo records, I have huge nostalgia for my childhood, for that huge reel to reel player that never worked properly. Oleg (my brother) and I had to put an eraser on for it to keep turning. And yet, we listened to lots of music. My first introduction to The Beatles was the Double Fantasy record by John and Yoko, on one of those reel to reel tapes. I didn't know what it was, who it was, but as a child I was very intrigued by that record and listened to it over and over and over again. My favorite part was the sound of the record, John's voice and Yoko's frog sounds on one of the songs - I laughed every time I heard that.
But enough of that. I'm here to tell you we've been in the studio making a new record!!
Composing a new record, I should say.
Initially, we were going in to make demos before we go into the studio with the producer, but when we finished a couple of songs, Tom and I looked at each other and said 'well, this is gonna be great, let's make a record on our own as we always wanted to do!'.
And so, the process began, and, while in the studio, I started to read two books. One is the book by producer Phil Ramone 'Making Records' and the other "Thoughts on Art" by Leonardo Da Vinci (it's in Russian - not sure what exactly it's called).
Anyway, Phil Ramone's book helped me to understand the process of making a record a lot better (Tom turned me onto this book), and the one by Leonardo reflected my own thoughts on my personal relation to the art in general. Both books are saving my life.
The thing is I never understood why when we record, not when I write the song, but when we're in the studio finishing writing, arranging and recording it, I feel so psychotic as though my soul, my heart, my mind are turned inside out - it's all raw, and it hurts. The feeling evolves to an extreme amount of joy, making me high, joy that is hard to describe, that beats any feeling in the world. These two extremes had happened to me when we worked on our own before we made a record with the talented producer Eric Valentine, then while we were recording with him and now, while we're producing our next record.
Well, Phil Ramone has answered my puzzle by describing his experience working with great names like Bob Dylan, Elton John, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra and many others. He says that the fears and anxieties that build inside of an artist during the recording process are very real and very normal. Then he explains: take our normal every day insecurities, multiply it a hundred times, and you'll get an artist in the studio.
Brilliant. These are the kind of things that aren't advertised in the media, so as a musician you're on your own, figuring out all of it.
Anyway, here's a thought on Leonardo Da Vinci. Some of our songs are taking extra long. Just when we're about to give up and say 'ok, this is good enough, let's stop now' we say, well, actually we feel that the song demands more, let's see what it wants from us. BHAM! the song finishes itself in no time and we feel satisfied as though the truth has happened. I swear, this thing called P's Bees music has the life of its own, it is definitely alive and it doesn't follow us, we follow it!!!
Anyway, then, when I have doubts, I ask myself "should the process be faster?" My brother gives me Da Vinci's thoughts on art, and there it says: never release an unfinished peace of art into the world. If anyone points a mistake in your work or you see it on your own, take the time to correct it. You won't be able to cover your incompetence with the next peace of work. And if you say that it's taking too much time to perfect it, and you could be producing a lot more and making more money, then you must understand that you don't need that much money to cover the needs of your life; and if you desire too much money then you won't have enough time to spend it all, so it'll end up going to someone else. But if you continue to learn to properly finish your creations, you'll leave art work that will give you a lot more honors than money.
It's hard to translate but I think I got pretty close.
Well, anyways, Merry Christmas everyone and Happy News Year!
I want to thank all of you who's using our music to your own homemade videos posted on Internet, especially the really unusual ones, like the boy who made his own day TV show dressing as multiple characters.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4wdnzsuo78
It's really awesome!
Would like to thank the TV show 'Weeds' for asking us to record the theme song for one of their episodes, REI for requesting a special song for their Winter campaign, which was really fun to record, BCBG, and many others who worked with us this year.
In September, I sang with a friend's band in New York "The Phenomenal Hand Clap Band", and was asked numerous times what happened to Persephone's Bees and why "one of the best bands in the world" (not my words!) isn't playing New York?
Well, ladies and gens, once the record is done you won't be able to stop us!!!
Also, 'Notes From The Underworld' ended up in Europe, all on it's own, words of mouth that we were always so lucky with.
Soon, Discograph, our label in France, is releasing the first PBees Record in three European countries: France, Switzerland and Belgium.
Below I'm gonna post the pix from our last trip to Russia - we played a huge party in Moscow on Halloween. After playing in Russia I visited friends in Germany, and went to Hamburg, hoping to see some Beatles memorabilia, but it was so cold I got out of the car for a few seconds and decided to come back in the summer!
For your enjoyment we posted Sleigh Ride on our page, recorded at the Talking House Studios, and!!!! I found this heavy metal remix of City Of Love. We have lots of great, strange, psychedelic remixes of that song which I'm gonna post randomly here and there.
Also, I posted lots of P's Bees shots, it was hard, I had to go through thousands of fotos, I think we're the most photographed band after The Beatles. Haha, are you going to buy our records now and burn them cause I made this statement? I hope so! Please buy them and burn them! What were those people thinking after Lennon's statement that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus? They bought their records and then burnt them? Didn't they realize how much money they were making for them? If you hate someone that strongly, you'd not want them to make all that money, would you? I think that's retarded, and funny!
That's about it for now. Enjoy the Holidays, enjoy each other to the fullest - that's what we're here to do anyway!

Angelina

P.S. Wall-E by Pixar is such an amazing animation! Watched it twice and still thinking about it, I loved how hearty and kind and human the movie is. My little nephews turned me onto it, but I ended up loving it more than they did. Go figure. And!!! Deadwood. Watched the second season again. I've never told you that I actually was invited to the Deadwood set, I went and walked in Deadwood! They built the whole town outside of LA based on the original place, and I watched them film the show - when it was time to leave, I didn't want to go - I wanted to live in Deadwood!
The show is amazingly clever, and at first I thought it shows us how America and the whole modern world was built, but then I realized that in the face of a small town the creator of the show exposed the human nature and how society is formed and WHO ends up at the top. Fascinating, to say the least, but a huge reflection of the real world right in front of us in it's glory, scam, beauty and lies. Well, as I said in the beginning of the blog with John Lennon's words: A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year


Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

Ciao!

Ang Mike Tom in the studio:


Tom playing guitar:


Drew, engineer's assistant:


Prarie Prince came in and played drums on a couple of songs:


My bro Oleg came in and played an accordion on a song called 'Liars'. Thanks Mom for all those accordion lessons that he used to hate so much! :)


Tom with another hat obsession:


JJ thru the glass - our hands on machines, our fabulous engineer and friend.


Just a beautiful shot of some of the gear we're working on:




Angelina:


Tom blue in a face, playing hard:






Russia, Halloween show with French DJ David Guetta:




Backstage, Tom (P's Bees), Michael (Richard Thompson, John Cale from Velvet Underground) and Xan (Cake). Michael and Xan came to play with us in Moscow.

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Bottle of vodka (was everywhere!) and us.


East meets the West, with fans and friends backstage:










The next day we were taken to a private villa party, outside of Moscow, in a limo! I call it - plastic coffin on wheels. :)


Ang and Tina Turner:


After the private party, at about 5 am we formed our own party at some restaurant/bar where we had borsch, other yummy Russian foods and more vodka. Our promoter Dima, the person who loves us and believes in us is on the left.




Moscow architecture, on stantciya Bellorusskaya. Old:




Soviet era, but same Russian blue sky:


Symmetrical empty bottle collector:


Berlin, a place where people sit at the cafes and restaurants all day, all night, all day after that, and all night after that. A place with great museums, tasty cold meats, deliciously smelling breads, and beers. A great place to walk:






While there I had a chance to visit Pergamon museum, marble Altar with The Battle between the Gods and the Giants:




A wall from the streets of Babylon:


The details on this statue were mind blowing:


My favorite church in Berlin:


On the way to Reichstag:


Reichstag:


Hamburg:


Can't you tell by this water how cold it was or it's just me?








New York, The Phenomenal Hand Clap band:


Back to California:






San Francisco:


Where even manekens look gay:)