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Ecoutez Encore! Chanson Volume 2

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Mikethep’s Chanson thread is extremely enjoyable. But it’s got a little top heavy with YT clips.

Nothing for it but to start Volume Two! Particularly so as Paris has a new tourist attraction. The former home of French pop’s enfant-terrible, Serge Gainsbourg, is now open to the public and tickets for visits are selling like hot croissants.
What a very remarkable chap he was!

“In this “very arranged mess”, as Charlotte calls it, of objects – furniture, photos, album covers, a collection of police badges – it is as if Gainsbourg has just popped out for another packet of cigarettes. The window and skylight blinds are closed, giving the place a tenebrous air. The house is like the man: dark, brooding, chaotic and a little rough around the edges.
No 5 bis rue de Verneuil, with its graffitied and sticker-covered exterior walls, sits uncomfortably among the bourgeois neighbouring houses and flats in the one-way street. Gainsbourg bought the two-storey property in 1969 and lived there with Birkin until 1980, when she left him, and then until his death in 1991. He once said of it: “I don’t know if it’s a studio, a museum, a salon or a brothel.”

Allons les enfants de la Afterword!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/01/a-salon-a-studio-a-brothel-inside-serge-gainsbourgs-paris-home?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR1KOG0XL4hhlU6OMCfxAYR6srupLm3XIioPlDQwFHputBAjjYQfxBHB0jo

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  4. Here’s a handy list of French language hits in the UK.

    https://www.euronews.com/culture/2022/04/20/touts-les-hits-french-songs-that-made-it-big-in-britain

    The most obvious perhaps is Je t’aime… Moi Non Plus – Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg.

    The notes inform us that…

    “This breathy ode to lust was originally written by Gainsbourg for French actress Brigitte Bardot but hit the #1 spot in the British charts in 1969 with English singer and actress Jane Birkin. Banned in a number of countries for lyrics such as “I go and I come, between your loins” and “you are the wave, me the naked island”, ‘Je t’aime… Moi Non Plus’ was the first foreign language song to reach the top of the British charts.”

    Top of their list was Vanessa Paradis’s Joe Le Taxi.

    A very sweet tune.

    “The singer and the song which set a million teenage boys’ hearts racing, ‘Joe le Taxi’ peaked at #3 in the UK chart back in 1987 – long before Vanessa Paradis was an award-winning actor, singer, model, or married to Johnny Depp. With its moody saxophone and sparse production values, ‘Joe le Taxi’ tells the story of a real-life Portuguese taxi driver in Paris — Maria José Leão dos Santos — who fled her homeland due to her sexuality.

    The track paints a picture of a Joe as she navigates the night listening to vintage rock, mambo and rumba in between picking up customers. No wonder music lovers were so enthralled by the song – Paradis’ biggest hit in the UK and the last biggest French-language chart success.”

    Vanessa reminds me of the lovely Alizee. How did we get through a whole thread of chansons without mentioning her?

    As far as I know, she has now married, had 2 kids and returned to her native Corsica where she runs a dance studio.

    But in her heyday, she was quite ridiculously popular both in France and Latin America.

      • Very glad to hear you are a fan @Dai.

        I was extremely impressed by how knowledgeable Alexis Petridis is about SG’s music. He’s a real musical polymath and his comments made me want to dash off and listen to all the songs.

        There are an amazing number of cover versions of Serge’s songs.

        https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprises_des_chansons_de_Serge_Gainsbourg

        Something I wasn’t expecting to find was one by the great Malian singer, Salif Keita.

        In fact his 1998 album, Sosie, was all cover versions: his tribute to French chanson.

        Here’s the track list.

        https://www.discogs.com/master/1344520-Salif-Ke%C3%AFta-Sosie

        And another track.

        Perhaps not so surprising. Salif spent a lot of time in Paris in the 80s and it was there that he recorded the magnificent Soro which put him on the world music map. (Produced by Ibrahima Syllar. A new name for me this morning).

        “Keita had decided to move in a different musical direction on Moffou. Unlike his 1997 album Sosie (which featured his own Malian take on French chanson) or his 1999 opus Papa, recorded in New York with guitarist Vernon Reid, which actually harked towards electro beats and urban Western rhythms, the Malian star decided to make Moffou a 100% African album – and one that was entirely acoustic. “I wanted Moffou to be a really simple album,” Keïta says, “I’d recorded a series of sophisticated electric albums in response to demand from producers who wanted to give my music a more commercial edge following the success of Touré Kunda and Mory Kanté in the 80s. After that I ended up wanting to go back to my musical roots. I knew I wanted my next album to be completely lucid, traditional and acoustic. ‘Moffou’ was a way of marking my break from France because I’d been living in Montreuil for around ten years or so and then I suddenly upped sticks and moved back to Bamako. It got to a point where I just needed to go home. ‘Moffou’ was the start of my new life.”

        http://www1.rfi.fr/musiqueen/articles/060/article_7218.asp

        Moffou opened with a gorgeous duet with Cesaria Evora from Cap Verde, who also spent a lot of time in France.

        Two of the greatest African voices together!

        The club kids among you will know that Moffou was later remixed and reissued leading to great success on the international club scene.

        This article by Pierre René-Worms (Translation : Julie Street) from the RFI Musique site was a real ear opener.

        “It is rare for an album to enjoy two distinct and separate lives. But that is exactly what has happened with Keïta’s ‘back to his African roots’ classic Moffou, which is currently enjoying cult status on the world’s dancefloors. Could this be the start of a new trend, we ask, with veteran world music stars reaching out and trying to attract a younger, urban following in clubland? First there was “Papy” Manu Dibango (always a pioneering force on the world music scene) re-emerging as a dancefloor hipster thanks to DJ Gilbert’s remixes of his work in 2001. Then it was the turn of Cape Verde’s “barefoot diva” Cesaria Evora who, much to her surprise, found herself the queen of clubland last summer thanks to Club Sodade. The compilation gave Cesaria’s nostalgic morna a new twist on DJs’ turntables, taking her acoustic style (popular in local bars in her native Mindelo and prestigious concert halls the world over) to a new following of trendy young things on the dancefloor. Now the “Malian Caruso,” Salif Keïta, finds his traditional African sounds reworked by leading French and Anglo-Saxon mixmasters such as Martin Solveig and Charles Webster.

        This may appear to be a paradoxical move for an album on which Keïta ventured back to the traditional Mandingo roots of his ancestors. But there was no stopping Mandingo rhythms from going 21st century when combined with infectious electro beats. Young music fans rushed out to buy Yamore (Keïta’s duet with Cesaria Evora) and clubbers were soon going wild for Martin Solveig’s remix of Madan. Indeed, house music fans and FM radio stations (not renowned for giving any significant airplay to ‘pure’ world music sounds to date) went so crazy for Madan that Keïta’s record company has been inundated with at least 60 requests to use the track on forthcoming compilations. “That’s what gave us the idea of taking things a step further,” explains Patrick Votan, Keïta’s artistic director at Universal Jazz, “Following the success of Madan we decided to ask electro artists who are close to the African scene such as Osunlade, Doctor L and Frédéric Galliano to work on remixes of other tracks from the album. We also got major mainstream electro stars such as La Funk Mob (the defunct duo of Cassius Philippe Zdar and Boombass who got back together for the project), Charles Webster and Luciano on board the project in the hope that this would take the work of Salif Keïta, a unique and original artist, to the ears of a new public.”

        The resulting compilation, Remixes from Moffou, features three different versions of Moussoulou (by Parisian DJ Ark, Yoruban mixmaster Osunlade and American turntable whizzkid Charles Webster) and three new reworkings of Madan – which means that five versions of the song (including Keïta’s original and Solveig’s first mix which launched the remix craze in the first place). Other highlights of the album, featuring contributions from eleven remixers from across the world, include La Funk Mob’s surprisingly slick pared-down mix of Ana Na Ming which instils the song with a peaceful, almost unreal quality. This certainly fulfills the remixers’ mission of adding a new dimension to Keïta’s haunting originals.”

        Are there any other great African singers who have had “hits” in French?

  5. The RFI.FR site is an absolute treasure trove.

    So many interesting articles that (with the help of Google translate or a dictionary) will enlighten our explorations of Francophone music.

    How about this article about Jacques Prévert? The poet who re-invented French popular song in the 1930s and 40s.

    https://musique.rfi.fr/chanson-francophone/20170410-jacques-prevert-inventeur-chanson-moderne-poesie-montand-kosma

    Best known for his song, Les Feuilles Mortes, which became that great international jazz standard Autumn Leaves. Talk about topical!

    Our pal Serge wrote a song about that song:

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/serge-gainsbourg-la-chanson-de-pr%C3%A9vert-lyrics.html

    And now in English

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/la-chanson-de-pr%C3%A9vert-pr%C3%A9verts-song.html

    So….Another thread about long-dead French blokes?

    No way! This is a thread with its finger on the hot, sweaty pulse of modern Gallic pop.

    This morning’s discovery is a sizzling, stomping hit from Juliette Armanet: Le dernier jour de disco.

  6. Having spent all the morning listening to and thoroughly enjoying Salif Keita’s album. Mouffou, I was rather chuffed this afternoon, on arrival at my daughter’s “dance” class to hear that one of the tracks that had been chosen was Midan from that very album! Her dance teacher and I seem to be on the same page.

    A wonderfully joyous uplifting track!

  7. I was pottering about this morning and tumbled across this list of Essential Paris Albums.

    https://www.treblezine.com/24237-10-essential-paris-albums/

    The likes of Francoise Hardy, Daft Punk, Django Reinhardt, Joe Dassin and Dexter Gordon, rubbing shoulders with left-field artists I’ve never heard of: Mr Oizo, Ruth and Brigitte Fontaine.

    Brigitte sounds like a very fascinating character. Here’s what they wrote about her:

    “Born in Morlaix, but having spent much of her career based in Paris, French art-pop singer Brigitte Fontaine has done it all. That’s not all that far from the truth, really; her collaborators throughout her 50-plus-year career are both numerous and wildly diverse, including the likes of Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Grace Jones, Archie Shepp and Jean Claude Vannier, who famously arranged many of Serge Gainsbourg’s most celebrated works. Her most breathtaking work, however, finds her working with a jazz collective from the United States—The Art Ensemble of Chicago (who the same year had released another French-recorded album, Les Stances a Sophie). The marriage of Fontaine’s subtle, ethereal vocal style against Art Ensemble’s avant garde pop (filtered through a jazz lens) is simultaneously foreign and fascinating, beautiful and distant. It doesn’t take long to warm up to the percussive thrum of “Leo,” the baroque immediacy of “Tanka I,” or the sprawling noir of the title track. Comme a la Radio is pop unbound, roaming free with inspiration, its backdrop the Paris seen by so many as an artistic ideal. ”

  8. Just stumbled across this very comprehensive list of music venues in Paris. They’ve even divided it up into different genres!

    https://parisjetaime.com/eng/article/concerts-outside-concert-halls-a034

    You want chansons? Off you go to…..

    “Trois Baudets, Lapin Agile, Théâtre Essaïon, Lapin Agile…

    French chanson takes many forms ranging from solo artists to neo-musette formations, ballads and protest songs, and can be heard in lots of places around Paris. At the Trois Baudets, a venue that encourages young French talent and promotes French chanson. Over at Vieux Belleville, chanson is decidedly retro with the live accordion and barrel organ playing of Riton la Manivelle, whilst at the Lapin Agile, the oldest cabaret in Paris, popular songs of Paris of yesteryear are always a great success!”

    Anyone want to join me at Les Trois Baudets on Wednesday evening?

    https://lestroisbaudets.com/

    Suzanne Belaubre is playing. Sounds promising and very 2023.

    The site has even got a list of places to buy music.

    https://parisjetaime.com/eng/article/where-to-buy-music-in-paris-a035

    They’ve even listed the address of the Edith Piaf Museum, house in the apartment where she lived

    https://parisjetaime.com/eng/culture/musee-edith-piaf-p1069

    “The famous singer lived in this little apartment in the Ménilmontant district at the start of her career. Here, you can view a display of numerous personal objects from the artist, a collection of earthenware, and of course her famous black dress that is synonymous with the artist, who was nicknamed ‘The Little Sparrow’. ”

    Other than the childhood homes of Lennon and McCartney in Liverpool, how many musicians are honoured by a museum in the British Isles?

    Poets seem to do better. Wordsworth, Burns,

    • I went to the Lapin Agile once years ago. It’s in Montmartre, and there’s an actual vineyard on the other side of the street. I can’t remember what I saw of course.

      I spent 6 weeks of my short and doomed university career in Paris, notionally doing a French language course paid for by the good burghers of Southend-on-Sea. The money was enough to get me a hotel room in the Latin Quarter, which soon became a dormitory for all manner of wastrels, hippies, poets and floaty girls, until I was busted and chucked out. The Rue de la Huchette was nearby – a narrow street containing cheap Algerian couscous joints and boîtes. I and my new friends spent a lot of time in the latter, making a beer last all night, listening to chanson both live and on record, and hoping to meet Juliette Greco, and if not her someone who looked like her. It’s a tourist trap now of course, but back then (mid-60s) it was exactly the Paris I’d always dreamed of.

      There’s a marvellous book called A Narrow Street by Elliot Paul (The Last Time I Saw Paris in the US), which is all about the Rue de la Huchette and its eccentric denizens back in the 20s. Paul was an American who lived in Paris in the 20s and 30s, and got to know James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. It’s one of the best books on Paris I’ve ever read, and available in Kindle. He also wrote several amusing crime novels – The Mysterious Mickey Finn, Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre and Murder on the Left Bank.

  9. My quote of the day comes from an obituary written by that enfant- terrible of the French cinema, Jean Cocteau.

    “Her voice, slightly off-key, was that of the Parisian street hawkers—the husky, trailing voice of the Paris people. She was of the animal race that owes nothing to intellectualism. She incarnated herself. She flattered a French patriotism that was not shameful. It is normal now that she should crumble, like the other caryatids of that great and marvelous epoch that was ours.”

    He is describing Mistinguett (Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois; 5 April 1873 – 5 January 1956), a French dancer and singer who in her heyday was the best-paid female performer in the world.

    She never married but she had Charley Aznavour (13 years her junior) as her toyboy for many years.

    Best known for this song which became a jazz standard.

    Toyboy Charley led to this very entertaining article.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/may/09/eric-cantona-film

    “Can you imagine if Margaret Thatcher’s funeral were to be attended by some ageing and unashamed toyboy of hers in the manner of Mitterand’s mistress and second family, present on equal terms with the premier’s wife at his interment? No, neither can I. The notion of Mrs T in any kind of (non-ideological) sizzling clinch simply assaults my senses – notwithstanding Mitterand’s own remark that the Iron Lady possessed “the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe” – but I still like the idea on principle. Thus it’s nice to see Hugh Bonneville as a starchy Brit being won round to Gallic notions of l’amour by an arty film director (Eric Cantona, in his second major film role of the summer) in the upcoming French Film.

    It’s depressing to compare English and French notions of love as they’ve been depicted in the movies over the last century. In the 1930s and 40s, when Jean Renoir and his ilk were gleefully depicting characters with wives, husbands, mistresses and kept boys, all leaping in and out of bed with one another, British movies scarcely went near the bedroom, while all movie marriages were stolid, emotion-free and as susceptible to change as the rocks of Stonehenge (Exhibit A: Brief Encounter).”

    In 1959, when Joe Lampton’s girlfriend in Room At The Top gasped, “Wasn’t it wonderful, Joe?” after a riverside tryst, British critics got all excited about how “frank” and “daring” the movie was. Over in France, a year later, in Tirez Sur Le Pianiste, Charles Aznavour’s prostitute girlfriend scrambled across their bedroom, her splendid breasts exposed, and no indigenous critic saw fit to mention it. This was four years after Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman, which excited sexually timorous British and American males mainly because (as one of cult cartoonist Gilbert Shelton’s Furry Freak Brothers later phrased it), “You could see her nipples through that sweater the whole time!” This made the Brits look like Neanderthal man on the scale of sexual development, while the French were already well past Homo erectus. They had Brigitte Bardot, all bullet bras, curves and sculpted blonde coiffage. We had, uh, Valerie Hobson and Liz Fraser…”

  11. We’ve meandered a little from Chansons but no great harm in that.

    Here’s a man who really loves Paris singing a cracking pop song about it.

    What a very entertaining chap!

    Here’s Jonathan back in 1982 playing a few songs at Houba Houba in Paris. He is such a Francophile.

    As we’re talking about Paris in more general terms, I have to post some music by the Tunisian oud maestro, Anouar Brahem, who lived in the city for several years. Here’s the title track of that marvelous album Le Pas du Chat Noir.

  12. One of my old pals is currently in Paris, and having read my comment on FB about the new Gainsbourg tourist attraction, now hopes to visit it.

    He commented that one of his favourite French songs is this gem by Jacques Dutronc (Francois Hardy’s husband).

    The flute takes it all to a very special level. Played by Roger Baudin, it was an afterthought!

    Voted the best French-language single of all time in 1991.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_est_cinq_heures,_Paris_s%27%C3%A9veille

  14. One of the first artists that got mentioned when we started to talk about chanson was Barbara.

    I mentioned her to a pal this afternoon and he sent me this remarkable story about Barbara and the song Goettingen.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21126353?fbclid=IwAR02L3aNX5-HlwAgwQMSmnNvd3yd6EvkDJJ88_gbipdkoyfguMtZntUdMbY

    Here´s what British music critic Norman Lebrecht had to say about her:

    “Soft, silky and confidential, her voice never rages like Piaf’s nor goes Gitane-blue like Jacques Brel’s, her patron. Her songs stroke the brow and disturb the unconscious. Like Mahler and Freud, she quotes a hint of nursery rhyme to evoke innocence and its corruption. Yet she is never harsh or cruel. Her greatest love – “ma plus belle histoire d’amour,” she would assure adoring audiences – “c’est vous,” her voice breaking on the last monosyllable. For Barbara, music was the element that bonds the lonely to the whole.”

    https://songoftheweekblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/song-of-the-week-35-gottingen-barbara/

    The Song of the Week Blog is well worth a look.

    https://songoftheweekblog.wordpress.com/

    Some old favourtes, some I’ve never heard of-

  16. Most of the chanson clips we’ve had here have featured one solitary artist siging a song.

    @hubertrawlinson treated me to this on FB yesterday: The Full Chanson Monty!

    This make Busby Berkely look rather restrained and lack lustre.

    On the subject of balls, this is a gem..

    I half expected The Cheshire Cat to appear on the dance floor!

  18. I mentioned Amelie-Les Crayons earlier and have now discovered that she has recently done an album and tour with Django-inspired, gipsy jazz band. Les Doigts de l’homme.

    Very fine they sound together too!

    https://www.ladepeche.fr/2022/05/24/toulouse-amelie-les-crayons-chante-avec-les-doigts-de-lhomme-10316104.php

    Here’s the album.

    The newspaper article mentions that she’s also been working on a set of songs to accompany a children’s book written by a childhood friend: La Bergère aux main bleus. (The shepherd with blue hands).

    https://www.editions-margot.com/node/93

    While we are bingeing on Amelie, I must post this splendid version of a favourite song.

  20. Today I stumbled across Frenchy, a rather agreeable album of Francophone classics by Thomas Dutronc. That’s Francoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc’s son, along with guests such as Diana Krall, Youn Sun Nah from Korea, Iggy Pop, Stacey Kent, Hailey Reinhart and Jeff Goldblum!

    I’ve learnt a new word: Thomas is a “jazz manouche” guitarist. That’s gipsy jazz as created by Django Reinhardt. (Les Doigts de l’homme mentioned above are also jazz manouche.)

    An album that would be a great ice-breaker at a party. Some great songs which he performs rather well.

    Thomas and Hailey Reinhardt with that wonderful Jacques Brel classic.

    I’m not ashamed to indulge in some serious French nostalgia.

    • Thanks for keeping this going, KFD! That’s some pedigree Thomas has got there…also on this album is a rackety cover of La Vie en Rose, featuring none other than top beardy Billy Gibbons, channelling his inner Louis Armstrong…

  22. I saw Martin Carthy on Saturday in conversation plus some songs. At one point he was trying to remember the title of a song sung in French he’d liked. He and his interviewer couldn’t remember it so I spoke out and suggested ‘Les Trois Cloches .’
    “That’s the one ” then came the follow up “What was the name of the group that sang it?” A bit of a pause then I replied “I think it was something like Les Compagnons de la Chanson”
    “That’s them, with Edith Piaf, thank you”
    Anyway here it is.

    • That is impressive @hubert rawlinson! What a memory! And what an interesting track. DuCool is a bit like you in having a mega-memory. He can doubtless remember the set list from when the Dead played the Rovaniemi Palladium back in 1971.

      • Sadly, the Dead never played Finland (or indeed Norway).
        The one time that the band set foot on Swedish soil was for the Stockholm gig at Isstadion on 13 October 1990.
        It was, by common consent, one of the worst shows in the long – mainly glorious – history of the Grateful-Goddamned-Dead!

    • That’s a wonderful clip, Hubert. The singing is superb.

      My mental picture of Piaf is of the wee Sparrow of the the Pigalle, almost solitary on the stage, singing her heart out, brimming over with vulnerability,

      But here she is with a sizeable number of beefy backing singers providing considerable moral support. As the Queen of Broken Hearts she really had to get rid of them!

  23. I mentioned my interest in modern French pop on Facebook and got some excellent suggestions.

    Chatelet Les Halles By Florent Pagny.

    Here are the lyrics in English.

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/ch%C3%A2telet-les-halles-ch%C3%A2telet-les-halles.html

    He is very popular. Odd we haven’t mentioned him yet.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florent_Pagny

    An old school friend, who lived in Paris for a few years, suggested Telephone, an enormously popular rock band,

    Indochine was also recommended.

  25. You will be interested to hear, @mikethep, that I got a mail yesterday from your brother-in-law in Sussex, who responded to a comment I had made about chanson, by telling me that they have been to see this local Lewes chanteuse a few times and rate her rather highly.

    Easy to imagine that she would be excellent live.

    And a pal in Stockholm responded by sending me this playlist.

    Give this track a try! Excellent song and enjoyably quirky video.

  28. Wonderful choice, Hubert.
    As you may remember, my daugher and I saw them live this summer and loved the gig.

    The hits keep coming!

    A wonderfully catchy song by an artist I’ve never heard of.

    A rather effective protest song.

    Pourquoi la rue est à toi?
    Homme, oui j’ai le droit
    De n’avoir peur quand résonnent mes pas
    De marcher seule quand minuit a sonné
    Si tu me croises, tu me laisseras passer

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/homme-man.html

    Why do you own the street?
    Man, yes, I have the right
    To not be afraid when my footsteps resonate
    To walk alone when the clock has struck midnight
    If you come across me, you will let me pass you by

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/homme-man.html

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