Music

Moondog was a blind American composer, musician, poet and inventor of several musical instruments. Moving to New York as a young man, Moondog made a deliberate decision to make his home on the streets there, where he spent approximately twenty of the thirty years he lived in the city. Most days he could be found in his chosen part of town wearing clothes he had created based on his own interpretation of the Norse god Thor. Thanks to his unconventional outfits and lifestyle, he was known for much of his life as The Viking of 6th Avenue.

Mikhail Krug was a Russian singer, one of the leading singers of the style of songs known as blatnaya pesnya (songs about criminals). A significant portion of Mikhail Krug's songs invoke the secret code of Russian prisons and the symbolism of prisoner tattoos. They describe the emotional emptiness and the despair of the prisoners who are separated from their families and loved ones. He also wrote many love songs, and songs about Tver. Krug liked to associate with criminal elements, which inspired his music and his diamond ring was a gift from the notorious criminal Khobot. In writing his songs, Krug used a 1924 dictionary of underworld slang, compiled by the NKVD. In the late evening of June 30, 2002, Mikhail Krug was fatally wounded in his Tver house by unknown intruders. He died in a hospital a few hours later.