The Virtual Stoa

NME (and everyone else) report that the Sex Pistols’ classic single God Save the Queen is going to be rereleased by Virgin Records on 27 May, just in time to top the charts for the Golden Jubilee on 3 June. It was probably always going to happen, but it is still very good news.

And, pleasingly, the BBC, reporting the news on Thursday, still refuse to admit that it went to number one last time around:

“In 1977 many radio stations were banned from playing the record but that did not stop the song officially reaching number two in the pop charts. At the time some people claimed sales figures had been massaged in order to prevent the single reaching the number one spot in time for the jubilee.”

Best of all would be if Rod Stewart could rerelease his “official” number one single from 1977 “I Don’t Wanna Talk About “/”The First Cut Is The Deepest” for a 25th anniversary outing, and we can find out which record has borne the test of time the best.

No weblog last week: too busy. Let’s start the new week with a handful of news clippings, and first with this one, about mummified communists, from Agence France Presse on 28 Feburary:

Lenin remains could remain in mausoleum for another 100 years: expert

The embalmed remains of Vladimir Lenin, which have been on display in a Red Square mausoleum since 1924, will be presentable for at least another 100 years, a Russian expert revealed.

The mummified corpse of Soviet Communism’s founding father “is in a very good condition and could stay in the mausoleum for 100 years with the appropriate care,” said the deputy director of the Russian centre for bio-medical technologies, Yury Denisov-Nikolsky.

The specialists of the centre “are doing all they can to preserve the remains of the Guide of the International Proletariat for a long time”, he told the RIA-Novosti news agency Thursday.

The mausoleum was closed Thursday for six weeks “for preventative work,” according to the Kremlin administration cited by the Interfax news agency. This will consist of “examining Lenin’s corpse,” Denisov-Nikolsky said.

The debate over the future of Lenin’s remains has quietened down since Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was opposed to attempts by liberals to remove Lenin from his symbolic resting-place just under the Kremlin walls and bury him. The Communists are fiercely opposed to the initiative.

A recent poll showed that 66 percent of people in Russia viewed Lenin’s role in the history of their country as positive.

Mr Denisov-Nikolsky seems keen to do Fidel Castro, too, when the time comes.