Gimp's ear(s): Archived Recommendations
Sing Hosanna! A fabulously shpadoinkle musical update! And what a bloomin' shocker, it's about FRENCH music again! Breeeeaaaattthhhh annnnnnd relaaaaaaaaax. Mmmmmmmmmmmm....
Vinyl re-issues, my word whatever next? When CDs were introduced, vinyl was deemed doomed. But not in any old sense of the word, oh no. Doomed in the way Richard Burton says it in Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the worlds. DOOMED. And yet here we are in 2010, and for the past 12 months or so, Universal France have been re-issuing classic French albums on 180gram vinyl that is so sexy, you want to book a room with them.
All of them.
So imagine my semi-erotic disbelief at finding such vinyl in a few shops during a recent jaunt to Paris. Smashing. Formidable, even. Needless to say, I grabbed the sexiest ones as quickly as I could, and legged it to the nearest hotel to strip them naked and admire their luscious contours. Maybe one day I'll actually play the little blighters. Emphasis on maybe.
Okay, so description time! Some of the pics still have the 'back to black' celebratory sticker on the front, which indicates the record is a part of the 60th anniversary of vinyl. Bonnie & Clyde is the collaboration between Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot, some of the songs featured heavily in Bardot's legendary 1968 special, which, incidentally, is a joy to behold. That Bardot 68 special & Anna are the best the sixties had to offer... in any language.
Now then, Bonnie & Clyde features some filler pop songs aside some truly beautiful Gainsbourg magic. The main highlights here are the title track (HEY! Bonnie & Clyde), which is a classic duet, and Gainsbourg goes a bit vaudeville for Bubble Gum. On Face 2 is my favourite Bardot track La Madrague, followed by the Bardot-free Intoxicated Man, which is a beautiful solo Gainsbourg effort. Even Bardot's cover of Everybody Loves My Baby (sung in English) can't spoil this album.
Michel Legrand's Archi-cordes album is a Loooong lost treasure, a true Summer album. This is the type of album you play whilst sitting on the gazebo with a few friends (all un-married) enjoying an array of exotic drinks and spicy snacks. I'm sure every lounge lizard has heard Di-Gue-Ding-Ding, and if not, why not? It's a classic! As indeed is track 4, Come Ray and Come Charles, which I first heard many years ago on a compilation from those fine gentlemen who form The Karminsky experience. Manhattan Stroll also stands out, and the rest of the album is all lush jazz-orchestrations 1964 style. Essential listening.
France Gall started her career as a popular yé yé singer, and has had a long and rather tumultuous career ever since. Her third album 1968 found France Gall's career floundering somewhat, and despite great production from the likes of Alain Goraguer & David Whitaker, and two wonderful tracks by a certain Serge Gainsbourg, the album still failed to live up to expectations in France. The final track on the album La petite, which is a duet with Maurice Biraud, is about a young girl who catches the eye of an older man. Teenie Weenie Boppie is an anti-LSD track composed by Gainsbourg. Tracks like these were none too popular at the time, but it all seems rather tame today. Instead it's best to bring our attentive ears to Gainsbourg's lovely Nefertiti, or the fabulously groovy Made in France. 1968 is a great album, especially in Summer, just like Archi-cordes.
Nino Ferrer's 1972 album Métronomie is less of a straight-forward album & more of an experience. Ironically, the one track that doesn't really fit became a HUGE selling single. The success of the track la Maison près de la fontaine pretty much over-shadowed the album as a whole. Mr Ferrer can't have been too impressed with that, given his general contempt for the business he was in. That said, Métronomie is probably his best album, although, due to its early seventies production, does occasionally sound like Spinal Tap's Jazz Odyssey, heh.
L'amour a la papa was volume 3 in a 5 volume set of chansons with rather titillating covers. I'm unsure if the other four albums have been re-issued (I've seen no evidence of them), but this one is very good. This is more standard 1967 pop as opposed to the more creative, experimental Bonnie & Clyde album. And, yes Mr Gainsbourg features heavily on this one as well. The songs are sung by either Serge or Juliette Greco, with the orchestrations coming from a plethora of different composers. My word, it really is very, very French!
And finally... Bardot's divine B.B, from 1963, which was at the peak of her powers. Production is by Alain Goraguer & Orchestra, which gives the album a breezy, poppy quality. Je Danse Donc Je Suis is another of my all-time favourite BB tracks, and I must say that whoever is making the decisions at Universal France to re-release this lot, they certainly know what they're doing. At some point in the future, I intend to have a room devoted to music. On the walls of this room will be racks so I can place my favourite album covers on them... almost like a gallery. B.B will certainly be one of them. Just look Bardot here. Iconic.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a journey into sound... STEREOPHONIC SOUND.
Back in the days, second-hand shops had a plethora of records from a certain era. That era was the sixties, when stereo super sound was the in thing. Up until around 1958, records were released in Mono sound, but come the dawn of stereophonic sound, everything was to change. As a way to inform the public that they could now listen to stereophonic sound on NEWER, SHINIER stereo equipment, a plethora of compilation records were released, all with differing examples of the new stereophonic wonderment. So, as generations passed by, these records began appearing in second-hand shops all over the country. Some were good, and some were shite, but all representative of that particular era. The era of stereophonic sound.
I've included some examples on the right, showing the AWE & MAGNIFICENCE Stereophonic sound had on mere mortal beings. There were hundreds of these records released, but I only want to give a few good examples... The Sounds Exciting! cover is one of my all-time favourites :)
Now then, the cover above is well known amongst Rap music lovers, as it's been sampled many many times, by the likes of Coldcut, Eric B & Rakim and Bomb The Bass. This particular record has a certain Geoffrey Sumner introducing various examples of stereophonic sound in a very BBC English accent. Geoffrey guides us through various examples of classical music; Vera Lynn & Ted Heath (the big band leader as opposed to the former Prime Minister). The album also features realistic examples of Stereo in the form of racing cars and ,most famously, the train sequence. It is the introduction to this sequence that many, many DJs sampled: "This is a journey into sound... STEREOPHONIC sound..."
Now, I must mention that the classic first album from The Wiseguys, entitled 'Executive Suite' blatantly steals the idea 'pays homage' to the stereo sound albums of the 60s & 70s. It's a gem of an album. And the retrospective cover is jolly nice too.
Okay, story time! Not so very long ago, I was in 'Pivo', a Czech Beer bar in Edinburgh (and a very nice one too). As I was sat, cuddling up to a pint of delicious pilsner urquell, a track came across the speakers that caught my attention. It was a strange cover version of 'son of a preacher man'... it was groovy, certainly, but I couldn't figure out which language the lady was singing in. Hooked, I had to enquire... which got me nowhere. The barman agreed it was a fine track, but had no idea by who the artist was, stating it was "just a compilation they play". As it happens, it could (maybe) be possible the compilation was Cosmosonica: Crazy Covers by Tom Middleton. The problem with that compilation is that the tracklist is incorrect. The Version on Middleton's comp was definitely the track I'd heard in Pivo, but was credited to Sylvie Vartan & Axelle Red. This is wrong. For starters the track I'd heard wasn't a duet, and secondly, your honour, Sylvie Vartan & Axelle Red are big stars in France, and therefore sing in French. Sylvie Vartan is Bulgarian by birth, so maybe somebody got confused somewhere down the line.
Eventually, I found out that version was by Sylvia Vrethammar, a Swedish songstress who was quite popular in the 60s. Swedish, you say, rigggghhhht, that'll be the language, then. And with this info, I was up and running. Her cover version En Lärling På Våran Gård (Son of a preacher man) was on her 1969 Sonet LP 'Spotlight', which is currently out-of-print. En Lärling På Våran Gård was released as single (Sonet T-7766), and it is this that I sniffed out and eventually purchased. Lovely! I also made an mp3 copy, so I can listen to it on my phone when out and about. Smashing. I wonder what "I love it when a plan comes together" is in Swedish?
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