Originally posted by johncorrigan
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Is that track really from the late 1960s? While the accompaniment has exactly that vibe, this is surely rap before rap, and it also reminds me of something else more recent that I can't quite identify. That she should also have had success in the punk/indie era isn't a surprise. That avant-gardism which was much more common to the late 1960s and the late 1970s than was often fully comprehended at the time. Here, Velvet Underground springs to mind as a common sort of thread - and I suppose Ms Fontaine might have been a French Nico of sorts.Last edited by Lat-Literal; 06-12-17, 11:50. -
A bit of a ramble. Yes - I can recall the very large posters of him that seemed to be everywhere in France. Apart from 1975 and 1977, I didn't set foot abroad until Summer 1989 when going inter-railing so I suppose it must have been that year. As it happens, that was the year of Mano Negra's "Puta's Fever" and probably "Mlah" by Les Negresses Vertes so I had something of a new awareness about how French music could be defined as cool, although "selling" those bands to mates at the time was difficult. They mainly wanted the English language. With a few exceptions - eg the electronic German bands of the 1970s - the musical "Continent" was generally regarded as nothing more than Eurovision and often frowned on in that way. And in that context, Hallyday was an enigma for us all. There were probably sniggers about how he was trying to be another Elvis or whatever and an inability to get our heads around just how and why he was so huge in France. It seemed to accentuate the eccentricity of the French somehow. What needs to be borne in mind is that we would have been aware, just, of the novelty hit by Gainsbourg and Birkin but we were too young to have experienced the Francoise Hardy phenomenon. I doubt in spite of his brief resurgence in the early 1980s that we knew Dutronc. Everything in the 1970s had been so British, American and West Indian that all else until the early/mid 1980s was viewed as way beyond the mainstream.Originally posted by johncorrigan View PostAfter the news this morning, only one place to start for a French Wednesday. R.I.P. Johnny Hallyday - a rather curious French icon.
The timelines are significant. When I think of the sort of French artists who began to grab my attention in the early 1990s in addition to those I have mentioned, it's an odd collection. Many came to me via whatever the MTV equivalent was that was beamed into Geneva - Leo Ferre (a celebration of the sixties' anarchist following his death), MC Solaar (the French having a plausible attempt at rap), the French Tunisian Amina Annabi (which was via Eurovision and also via film), Laurent Voulzy (in a late almost Pet Shop Boys sounding electronic period), Liane Foly (cocktail jazz), Magma (a curious prog-jazz outfit courtesy of snooker player Steve Davis) and especially Stereolab (electronic experimentalists who did have a British indie following and who we saw live). And what is perhaps most significant here apart from the sporadic nature of it all and also, actually, the clear British and American cross-references in many of them is the ethnicity in several. This then was both a part of the start of a defining of one's own world music and the idea that it didn't all have to be from outside Europe.
In contrast with a Manu Chao or a Helno, lead singer of LNV, or an Annabi or even a Solaar, Hallyday was very French. He seemed to belong to an era when it would almost have been possible to believe culturally that there was no one of a North African etc background in Paris or Marseille. So he could have been lumped in with Hardy and Gainsbourg in that sense though not so much with Ferre who was the epitome of an outsider and harked back to an even earlier time. But, you know, I can recall so well which posters stood out to me more than a full decade earlier from the windows of the 68 bus as we travelled up to family from the suburbs. Smaller, they were of Bob Marley and Joan Armatrading. I can never hear either without recalling those on the outskirts of "diverse" Brixton. So, yes, those gigantic Johnny H posters in '89 as well as being enigmatic did suggest that France before 1990 had not quite got into the business of diversity in pop music culture. That was the impression and I think it was right although there may have been huge posters of Phil Collins in Leicester Square for all I knew. Still, I wouldn't knock it overtly. That is then and especially now. It was what it was. And what one can see today is there must have been a certain light rebellion in his American leanings given the insistence for a very long time of French Governments not to officially incorporate non French words in its language. He may tbe best remembered not so much as a throwback as a sort of document on how the French moved rather more slowly than the British and Americans in some respects in a long period of substantial social change.
RIP Johnny Hallyday.
Last edited by Lat-Literal; 06-12-17, 18:59.Comment
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......there was a rather good cover version of Hallyday's "Quelque Chose de Tennessee" by La Feline at the end of R4's "The World at One" today:
Here they are doing a passable "Johnny Remember Me":
And here's the original of ".........Tennessee":
(1985?.......all a bit Springsteen, with admittedly some gospel looking people in the film : more American in spirit than French, though, I'd suggest)Comment
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C'est Noel Mamie - Henri Salvador
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Nice.Originally posted by johncorrigan View PostC'est Noel Mamie - Henri Salvador
Daniel Mantey - Allons Voir ce Divin Gage
(Jean-Francois Dandrieu, c.1720)
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At least I think it's Wednesday...the death of French singer France Gall was announced this past week. Among other things she inspired the original version of 'My Way', when fellow singer Claude Francois wrote 'Comme D'Habitude' after the break-up of their affair.
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I have been reading up on her as while I knew her name I didn't really know her. Her Eurovision moment was five years before the first one I watched. Clearly there was a lot more to her than that event including many links with Serge Gainsbourg. Very French, I would suggest, and her passing will be felt in France, not least following the death of Johnny Hallyday.Originally posted by johncorrigan View Post
My favourite "My Way" is the Gipsy Kings' Ai Mi Manera (Comme D'habitude):
Perhaps weirdly, I am aware of Frida Boccara's rather good - actually, classic - "Un Jour, Un Enfant" which apparently came joint first in 1969:
Strange fact of the day: David Bowie said that in 1968 – the year before Paul Anka acquired the French song – his manager, Kenneth Pitt, asked him to write English lyrics for "Comme d'habitude" but that his version, entitled "Even a Fool Learns to Love", was rejected. It has been argued that the unfinished work would later inspire his 1971/2 hit song "Life on Mars?"Last edited by Lat-Literal; 10-01-18, 23:24.Comment
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Decided to have a look in Jonathan Ward's 'Excavated Shellac' as recommended by Mr Global Truth under France and came up with this fantastic piece of Breton Piping from 1927 - seems to be played accompanied by a bombarde an oboe-like reed instrument.
Mm Le Guennec et Le Bouc – La Gavotte de Guémené-sur-Scorff (apparently it's a village).
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Meanwhile, in the Paris Metro....
The flag of Paris:
that city motto quite appropriate at the moment
"she is tossed by the waves but does not sink"
(hmm, hope ff isn't checking..)Comment
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Nice one, Lat...looks like Brittany is tossed by waves and not sinking, too, like Paris...I like that Parisian flag by the way, Monsieur GT! Let's celebrate that city further with spring in the air right now.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View Post
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The only person to my knowledge who has appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest (for Luxembourg, 1964) and performed with both Peter Paul and Mary (1962) and Bob Dylan (1984). Aufray, 88, translated many of Dylan's songs into French : their appearance on his 1965 album Aufray chante Dylan helped form the tastes of the new French generation:
Hugues Aufray
Jonquilles au Printemps:
Des Jonquilles aux Derniers Lilas - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5g71aMQUSo
Des que le Printemps Revient '64 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mR4h0-4H88
(I like the flag too)
Last edited by Lat-Literal; 14-03-18, 19:55.Comment
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Soleil de Volt the latest from Baloji is getting a fair amount of airplay at the moment, and I can see why.
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Baloji? Or Baluji?Originally posted by johncorrigan View PostSoleil de Volt the latest from Baloji is getting a fair amount of airplay at the moment, and I can see why.
Not French, but then again it's not Wednesday either... still a master of observation
Anyway to both.
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Farewell to the first winner of Eurovision (Switzerland, 1956), Lys Assia, 94:
Refrain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyqIPvOkiRk
This was her attempt at representing Switzerland again in 2012.
Although being the best Eurovision song ever recorded by an 88 year old, it wasn't selected:
C'etait Ma Vie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irouCtF445I
Last edited by Lat-Literal; 28-03-18, 18:58.Comment
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