Галя, ходи [Galja, hodi] [2018 version] [English translation]

I've been told since childhood –

Freedom grows out of the power of the law,

But I think it is the other way around -

Our rock-n-roll has flown out of the freedom.

It was as an immediate birth,

Like an injection directly into the heart;

It was as having your eyes pepper-sprayed,

Like a mouth-to-mouth CPR.

It felt as if it was only a void before us,

But the price of nostalgia is a copper coin.

It was like a fight of one vs. three,

Like a fall from the fifth floor balcony.

Inside the thrashed foyers a radiator was the warm throne

Of the pauper kings of rock-n-roll,

That declared an intifada against the assholes.

The kings, who knew that if a half-truth

Constitutes a big truth for everyone,

It's still an enormous lie on our waves.

We’ve learned to stay unbothered by this zoological horror

That surrounded us.

We’ve learned to ignore that the time of crooked mirrors

Had frozen on everyone's clocks.

And we knew, that rock-n-roll

Is these several moments spent outside;

It is the infinity that you haven’t yet played.

Yea-yeah, hali-gali,

Yea-yeah, Galya, move on.

We had our revenge against the dream,

We were killing its material forms in ourselves,

Not giving a tinker’s damn about the old Sov state

Or the new economical reforms.

We were young, so juvenile,

Not yet trashed with money, popularity or booze.

We were opening skies as they were the tin cans,

And every one of us was infected with a virus of rock-n-roll,

With the strawberry fields of rock-n-roll.

But our fingers were broken in cop shops,

We were expelled from the future and from the Komsomol,

They burned our hair, but we forgot fear.

And some rap heroes,

With their glamour babes,

In their overstuffed rides,

Never-freaking-ever saw such spring

Or the knife fights in battles of such scale,

That left us dying out.

I’ve always been asked: - What attracts you to this chimera?

But I do recall, how good was it back then –

We saw a brother in everyone.

We were the last generation,

That rhymed “Love” without swearing.

In every girlfriend we saw a dancing hetaera,

We drank oceans from the puddles,

We squeezed out from ourselves both slaves and acne alike,

We knew that our music

Is these few years spent outside;

Our rock-n-roll pride

Was devouring electricity

In the Leningrad rock club.

Yea-yeah, hali-gali,

Yea-yeah, Galya, move on.

And so, I’ve lived to hear these words:

“I grew up on your songs

I grew up on your songs

I grew up on your songs”.

Yeah, I become hard-boiled, got bronzed.

Nashe Radio still gets me on air,

But insomnia is eating me up at night –

The inspiration is gone,

And I, by the way, become wiser than before,

Thanks to the limitations of my being.

Yesterday I was patiently getting slizzard with some pathetic dumbfucks,

They were trying to fit a halo on me

And were begging me to go preach from the choir,

But I have such yearning in my soul,

That it seems it is a high time to carry my stuff out:

Legs first.

YouTube fattens on the desk,

Observing the global chaos.

How did this happen, that we, once the extreme individualists,

Are merging into happy masses,

Lining up in front of the cashiers?

And what’s next?

To raise one mill for the retirement?

To become utterly dissolved in the fishing?

To find a young one on yet another garbage party?

And to step out.

But when destiny will invite me

To the last farewell supper,

When it would lit up candles, and when lamps would go dim,

I will recall something,

I will not forget, how some time ago we sung

In the barracks, prisons and hospitals;

I will recall faces so dear to me,

Faces that really depended on me.

And I hope that those falling in our steps also know

That if you are surrounded by the dull logic and outward calculus,

Then rock-n-roll is always: two times two equals three.

Yea-yeah, hali-gali,

Yea-yeah, Galya, move on. [x3]