Ra-Ra-Rasputin

More snow last night. But only about an inch, so the main effect was covering up the bumps and irregular mounds created by the intense shoveling and snowblowing of the last few days. Weather chronologists say that this has been the snowiest February on record in the Chicago area -- which was already the case by February 2.

So we turn to indoor activities. Lately we've acquired Just Dance 2, a Wii game. Usually I'm off doing something else when the girls or the girls and their friends are playing with it, but I can hear songs from its eclectic selection of dance tunes. The other day I was in the kitchen when I heard:

Ra-Ra-Rasputin
Lover the of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra-Ra-Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on

What? A disco song about Rasputin? One that manages to rhyme "Rasputin" with "queen" and "machine"?

Sure enough, the Euro-disco group Boney M -- the creation of a German producer -- released just such a song in 1978. If I heard it then, I don't remember, and I think I would have remembered a song about Rasputin, whatever the genre. With certain exceptions, Euro-disco did not play much on American airwaves at the time, and I wouldn't have sought it out in those pre-Internet days. The only song of Boney M's I vaguely think I heard back then was "Rivers of Babylon."

The video for "Rasputin" is all kinds of funny, often unintentionally. Sorry to say, however, that the male member of the group, Bobby Farrell -- wearing the faux beard in the video, which must have made the lip-synching easier, and dancing up a storm -- was in the news recently for dying. On December 29 (N.S.) in St. Petersburg, same day and city as Rasputin.

Naturally, the mad monk's famed death is mentioned by the song too.

Ra-Ra-Rasputin
Lover the of the Russian queen
They put some poison into his wine
Ra-Ra-Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
He drank it all and said, "I feel fine"

More than anyone would need to know about "Rasputin" is
here.