Gogol Bordello

Gogol Bordello is a Gypsy punk band from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, formed in 1999 and known for theatrical stage shows and persistent touring. Much of the band's sound is inspired by Gypsy music mixed with punk and dub. The band incorporates accordion and violin (and on some albums, saxophone).

The band has appeared in a number of popular films, most notably in 2005's Everything Is Illuminated in which the lead singer, Eugene Hütz, co-starred with Elijah Wood in a dramedy and adventure story about the Nazi purges in Ukraine. The entire group was present for one shot in which they played a brass band in a set that included the Star Spangled Banner. They also played the traditional Yiddish tune "Bublitschki". Gogol Bordello contributed the song "Start Wearing Purple" to the film's score. The band also has their own documentary called Gogol Bordello Non-Stop. This documentary was filmed in 2008 and follows the band's progress. In 2012, the band recorded a song titled Let's Get Crazy for Coca Cola's Euro 2012 advertising campaign.

Start Wearing Purple

"Start Wearing Purple" is a song by gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, written by frontman Eugene Hütz. The song was packaged as a double single along with "Sally", and released as the band's second single in February 2006. It appears on their third album Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike. This version is a re-recording of the initial one which was featured in the band's first album, 1999's Voi-La Intruder. It also appears in the soundtrack for the 2005 film Everything Is Illuminated, in which Hütz stars as Alex.

Music video

The video starts with Hütz wearing ladies shoes, and singing and dancing in the streets. Then we see images of the band and lots of people dancing around, while consuming copious amounts of alcohol.

Composition

Hütz said in an interview, "It's one of the very few songs I wrote for a girl. I just moved in with my girlfriend in New York. We had a neighbour: an old woman who was always dressed in purple head to toe. She was clearly bonkers. So whenever my girlfriend and I had an argument and she would start screaming at me, I would say: you might as well start wearing purple now". In another interview, he stated that the song was written around 1995.

Star

A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, and the brightest stars gained proper names. Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations.

For at least a portion of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core, releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Once the hydrogen in the core of a star is nearly exhausted, almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium are created by stellar nucleosynthesis during the star's lifetime and, for some stars, by supernova nucleosynthesis when it explodes. Near the end of its life, a star can also contain degenerate matter. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, metallicity (chemical composition), and many other properties of a star by observing its motion through space, luminosity, and spectrum respectively. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star, including diameter and temperature, change over its life, while the star's environment affects its rotation and movement. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (H–R diagram), allows the age and evolutionary state of a star to be determined.

Surname

A surname or family name is a name added to a given name. In many cases, a surname is a family name and many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name". In the western hemisphere, it is commonly synonymous with last name because it is usually placed at the end of a person's given name.

In most Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries, two or more last names (or surnames) may be used. In China, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Madagascar, Taiwan, Vietnam, and parts of India, the family name is placed before a person's given name.

The style of having both a family name (surname) and a given name (forename) is far from universal. In many countries, it is common for ordinary people to have only one name or mononym.

The concept of a "surname" is a relatively recent historical development, evolving from a medieval naming practice called a "byname". Based on an individual's occupation or area of residence, a byname would be used in situations where more than one person had the same name.

The Band

The Band was a Canadian-American roots rock group, originally consisting of Rick Danko (bass guitar, double bass, fiddle, trombone, vocals), Levon Helm (drums, mandolin, vocals), Garth Hudson (keyboards, saxophones, trumpet), Richard Manuel (piano, baritone, drums, vocals) and Robbie Robertson (guitar, percussion, vocals). The members of the Band first came together as they joined rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins's backing group, the Hawks, one by one between 1958 and 1963.

In 1964, they separated from Hawkins, after which they toured and released a few singles as Levon and the Hawks and the Canadian Squires. The next year, Bob Dylan hired them for his U.S. tour in 1965 and world tour in 1966. Following the 1966 tour, the group moved with Dylan to Saugerties, New York, where they made the informal 1967 recordings that became The Basement Tapes, which forged the basis for their 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink. Because they were always "the band" to various frontmen, Helm said the name "The Band" worked well when the group came into its own. The group began performing as the Band in 1968 and went on to release ten studio albums. Dylan continued to collaborate with the Band over the course of their career, including a joint 1974 tour.