Nikita Khrushchev
Captain Xanadu and His Orbiting Orchestrions
1) Born in Kalinovka (1894)
2) The Miner’s Son (1908-1918)
3) Red Youth (1918-1934)
4) In the Party (1934–1953)
5) First Secretary (1953)
6) De-Stalinization (1956)
7) The Hungarian Revolution (1956)
8) Peaceful Coexistence (1957)
9) The Space Race (1957-1961)
10) The Kitchen Debate (1959)
11) The Shoe-Banging Incident (1960)
12) The Berlin Crisis (1961)
13) The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
14) Retirement (1964)
15) When I Am Gone (1964)
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV Captain Xanadu and His Orbiting Orchestrions
From the village of Kalinovka to the corridors of the Kremlin, from the launch pads of Baikonur to a dacha garden at the edge of history, Captain Xanadu And His Orbiting Orchestrions present Nikita Khrushchev: a space-age lounge portrait of the Soviet Union's most colorful, contradictory, and consequential leader. Fifteen tracks of vibraphone shimmer, muted brass, and cocktail-hour sophistication carry the full arc of one extraordinary life: the miner's son who toppled a god with a four-hour speech, put the first sounds and the first life and the first man into orbit, and then stood at the edge of the abyss and stepped back. Along the way: a model kitchen becomes a Cold War battlefield, a shoe becomes a diplomatic incident, and the fate of civilization is argued out above a kitchen sink. Nikita Khrushchev treats its subject with wit, warmth, and unflinching historical honesty. The man was complicated. The music is anything but.
Pour yourself something cold. The space age is waiting.
