Creativity Quote by Marc Almond

Almond’s line lands less like a treatise on Russian commerce than a musician’s field note: the sudden realization that “the deal” isn’t primarily a spreadsheet event, it’s a social audition. He stacks ordinary verbs - meet, go through, shake - to stress process over product. The repetition mimics the treadmill of introductions, dinners, small rituals, the unglamorous work of being judged. In that cadence you can hear the mild exasperation of someone used to Western-style formality where a contract can substitute for chemistry.

The subtext is about power, not politeness. “Etiquette” here isn’t napkin placement; it’s a gatekeeping system that tells outsiders, especially touring artists and their teams, that access runs through relationships. A handshake becomes a compact symbol for an entire ecosystem of trust, hierarchy, and informal enforcement. Almond’s blunt finish - “whether they like you or not” - strips away the fantasy that professionalism is neutral. Liking isn’t a bonus; it’s infrastructure.

Context matters: for a British pop figure navigating post-Soviet and late-Soviet cultural circuits, Russia could feel both intensely hospitable and intensely conditional. This is the era when business often blurred with patronage, personal networks, and the kind of soft leverage that doesn’t show up in email chains. Almond isn’t exoticizing so much as translating: the emotional truth of doing business where your reputation walks into the room before your proposal does, and where the “handshake” is less quaint tradition than a test of who counts.