Leningrad Cowboys - After Leningrad Cowboys Go America

After Leningrad Cowboys Go America

After the film, the band took on a life of its own, recording music, making videos and giving concerts. The band appeared in two other Aki Kaurismäki films, the Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994) and the Total Balalaika Show (1994), which is a film of a concert performed by the band and the full 160-member Alexandrov ensemble in Helsinki, Finland in June 1993. Kaurismäki also wrote and directed two videos featuring the band: their cover of the 60's folk standard "Those Were The Days" (1992) and "These Boots" (1993).

In 1994, the band appeared together with 70 members of the Alexandrov ensemble at the 11th annual MTV Music Awards, at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, where they sang the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic Sweet Home Alabama. The show was seen by an estimated 250 million people worldwide. That same year, the band and ensemble again joined forces for the "Nokia Balalaika Show", a concert held in Berlin. In 1998 they featured in the film L.A. Without a Map.

In 1996 the Leningrad Cowboys granted the Swiss-Italian singer-songwriter David Buzzi permission to write lyrics for the instrumental "Ten Lost Gringos" from the Go America soundtrack. This song was released in Italy and Switzerland in 1998 on the album "Il Diavolo Rosso: Romaneschi" with the title "Gringo".

Currently, the band has 11 Cowboys and two Leningrad Ladies. The songs, all somewhat influenced by polka and progressive rock, are performed in English and have themes such as vodka, tractors, rockets, and Genghis Khan, as well as folkloric Russian songs, rock and roll ballads and covers from bands as diverse as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Modern Talking, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, all presented with lots of humour.

Ten years after the Total Balalaika Show, on August 23, 2003, the Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov ensemble returned to the Senate Square in Helsinki with UMO and various international performers for the spectacular Global Balalaika Show, was released on DVD directed by Timo Suomi, on November 21, 2003.

In 2006 the album Zombies Paradise was released. This album features a hard rock sound, and draws influences from speed metal, groove metal, and industrial metal. However, covers of famous old songs sounds chaotically effective (especially "Manic Monday"). The album also includes the 1994 Studio version of "Happy Together" as well as a new 2006 version. The music video for the album's cover of the song "You're My Heart, You're My Soul" is an animated as a road-thriller movie.

One more show with the Russian Military Band was played in Finland on November 22, 2008. A newly-released publication, Bio-Book PRAVDA – The Truth About The Leningrad Cowboys also appeared. Promotional lines included: "Here it is finally, The Leningrad Cowboys book "Pravda"!"

October 2011 saw the release of the Kaurismäki Leningrad Cowboys features and short films as a box set by the The Criterion Collection as of their Eclipse series of releases. This month also featured the new album Buena Vodka Social Club, their first album of all-original material since 2000's Terzo Mondo.