Articles Written By: Sky

French Teachers Only

  • Posted on 08/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Intriguing idea, splendid concept: Every year the French embassy in Berlin, the Bureau Export and schoolbook publishers Cornelsen cooperate when issuing another volume of their FrancoMusiques compilations. The artwork of the meanwhile fourth installment in the series may be a bit run-of-the-mill, but the content offers a fine panorama of most recent French pop, featuring tracks by everybody’s darlings like Zaz and Yelle, but also smashing stuff by lesser known artists, e.g. the gorgeous melancholia of L (see mp3 below), the hypnotic electro pop of Slove, or the fulminant flow of Parisian rappers Sexion d’Assaut. Plus, the compilation is for free and can be ordered here, though – sorry, letdown of the week – only by teachers of French living in Germany. You’ll surely find a trick to snatch a copy.

L – Mes lèvres

Hot Hausfrau Entertainment

  • Posted on 07/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Once the famous Blue Note label was home of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, or Thelonius Monk. Nowadays, its catalogue features jazz artist impersonators like German so-called entertainer Götz Alsmann. On his new album In Paris, he covers songs by Trenet, Aznavour, Montand, and others, in some rather remarkable style: The band, featuring an extraordinarily obtrusive vibraphonist,  swings like a red hot hausfrau changing a vacuum cleaner bag, while Alsmann himself buoyantly chuckles and chortles, guffaws and giggles his way through the chansons, his personal highlight possibly being his version of Serge’s early tongue-in-cheek ditty Cha Cha Cha du Loup – now sounding like Chester the Molester on the loose at some German primary school.

Götz Alsmann – Der Wolf tanzt Cha-Cha-Cha

The Alsmann Treatment

  • Posted on 06/11/2011
  • /Under Video

On his new album “In Paris”, German entertainer Götz Alsmann gives a lot of classic French tunes a quite special treatment. On his version of Charles Trenet’s La Mer, he sounds every bit as brisk and snappy as Hauptmann Ernst Jünger when he played the piano for the rest of the German Kommandostab at the Parisian Hotel Majestic in 1941. The only difference probably is that Jünger had a more trendy haircut, and a significantly groovier swing.

Aznavour Toujours

  • Posted on 01/11/2011
  • /Under Musique

One of Frank Sinatra’s most famous live recordings starts with the words: „We will now do the national anthem, but you needn’t rise.“ That could as well be the introduction to the new Charles Aznavour album, Toujours. Aznavour’s songs had and still have anthem quality in a national sense, reflecting state, sense and sensibility of his country. Toujours mirrors even more: Un homme de 87 ans whose reflection still shows Charlie, his alter ego in Truffaut’s 1962 Paris noir Tirez sur le pianiste, all the desolation, longing, and heartache, blended with the picture of the French big league entertainer who even balanced most embarrassing moments with … well, style. You won’t get more Gallic sweep, pathos and sentiment for your money this year. As for Tu ne m’aime plus: 10 handkerchiefs.

Charles Aznavour – Tu ne m’aime plus

Bonus: The German version of Aznavour’s early 70s Les plaisirs démodés, beginning as a stroboscope disco funkfest, evolving into sublime adult pop and finally into a spoken word oratorio, rugged individual style.

Charles Aznavour – Tanz Wange an Wange mit mir

No Strings Attached

  • Posted on 04/06/2011
  • /Under Musique

„G-strings are not required in Quebec“, Margaret Dragu and A.S.A. Harrison write in their knowledgeable Revelations: Essays on Striptease and Sexuality. „In 1979 over a hundred strippers were charged with nudity for removing their G-strings, but the attorney general did not sign the orders.“ Among those exotic dancers well may have been Montreal’s one and only Rina Berti, „the singing stripper who is still talked about in Miami Beach and farther“, though her website doesn’t reveal any information about her former avocation. Sadly, the website also doesn’t tell about her musical outings, among them the French-Canadian cover of the Bee Gees’ 1977 club smasher Stayin’ Alive and a red-hot menopausal disco version of Light My Fire, both proving all-too-well that there are few differences between pop and burlesque shows, surely related art forms traditionally announced in the same mode: Bonsoir tout le monde, ce soir chez FS je vous veux presenter la belle Rina!

Rina Berti – Viens dans mes rêves
Rina Berti – Light My Fire

Blank Generation

The so-called Relax series is the chillout compilation line of German dance/ house producers Blank & Jones, Café del Mar style. Relax Volume 6 also features a French language track for summer patios and Freixenet ads – a cover of Francoise Hardy’s Comment te dire adieu by Gallic schlager starlet Berry which brings to mind some all-too-fitting words by T-Bone Burnett: “We live in an age of music for people who don’t like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren’t that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music’s annoying, or at the very least they don’t need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.”

Berry – Comment te dire adieu

Bâtard Pop XXI: In Bed with Bonnie

  • Posted on 02/06/2011
  • /Under Musique

Mash-up time again: On I’m in Love with Jane Birkin, a skateboarder and bootleg artist hiding behind the moniker B.A.R.T.O. & His Pop Orchestra fuses Serge & Jane’s immortal cunnilingual dialogue with Beres Hammond’s reggae tune I’m in Love – a daring, but smoothly executed operation. Another Gainsbourg aficionado is Nantes-based dancefloor entrepreneur and DJ John Poincarré: his amalgam of Serge’s Bonnie & Clyde (pic: Brigitte B. as Bonnie) and the Beastie Boys’ hiphop classic Body Movin’ feels like a first-class pas de deux, gangsta-style.

B.A.R.T.O. & His Pop Orchestra – I’m in Love with Jane Birkin
John Poincarré  – Bonnie’s Body Movin’

FS Rerun: Clare Torry

  • Posted on 02/06/2011
  • /Under Musique

„I think she only did one take. And we all said, ‚Wow, that’s that done. Here’s your sixty quid’“, Roger Waters remembered quite ungentlemanlike about Clare Torry, the sadly unsung chanteuse who did the orgasmic wordless vocals on Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky – arguably the best song on 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. Soon after Clare was hired to do background vocals for Serge G., as well on the acridly funny Rock Around the Bunker as on L’homme à tête de chou, his histoire maudit of a sadistic murderer, including Ma Lou Marilou, with Clare adding a few moments of big-eyed innocence to Serge’s half-erection porn funk.

Serge Gainsbourg w/ Clare Torry – Ma Lou Marilou
Serge Gainsbourg w/ Clare Torry – Eva

Pink Floyd feat. Clare Torry– The Great Gig in the Sky

FS Rerun: Le Grand Jeudi

  • Posted on 20/05/2011
  • /Under Musique

Gimme a board, messieurs. Pour les grandes vagues et les surfer garcons (et filles), here’s a twangy big-ninth-version of Charles Trenet’s „La Mer“ by Psycho Tiki entrepreneurs The Aquamarines, and the probably most liquid version of Serge’s & Jane’s „Je t’aime (moi non plus)“ ever heard, performed by Berlin’s number one surf guitarist and lounge expert Kahuna Kawentzmann – the German „Kawentzmann“ translates as a rogue wave you shouldn’t even try on a Big Wednesday, got my drift, kids? Wet name choice, and even your girlfriend may get instantly … okay, forget about that. Both tracks from the stunning compilation „Beyond the Sea – The Surf Instrumental Bands of the World Fearlessly Expand Their Repertoire“. For now: Wahini!

Aquamarines – Beyond the Sea
Kahuna Kawentzmann – Je t’aime

Extra: The original “La Mer” plus a few cover versions, including Cliff Richard en francais, Kevin Kline’s fine cover from the movie “French Kiss”, and a very charming mid-60s bubblegum adaptation by Francoise Hardy.

Charles Trenet – La Mer
Cliff Richard – La Mer
Dalida – La Mer
Django Reinhardt – La Mer
Francoise Hardy – La Mer
Kevin Kline – La Mer
Bobby Darin – Beyond the Sea
Helen Shapiro – Beyond the Sea
The Three Suns – Beyond the Sea

The Way Serge Was

  • Posted on 18/05/2011
  • /Under Musique

Would you buy a used Jane Birkin record from this man? Berlin-based guitarist Kristof Hahn, who has played with the likes of Alex Chilton, Tav Falco, or Chris Spedding, is now touring with US 80s noise legends The Swans and hitting Munich tomorrow, May 19th; the pic actually is from the tour poster. Living in the Rue Verneuil of his mind, Hahn also has quite a francophile schtick that can be heard on his recordings with Les Hommes Sauvages, and he’s also a great storyteller, provided that you speak German: Four years ago, he told a few Serge Gainsbourg anecdotes during a gig in Vienna before continuing with a solo version of Serge’s Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais – deadpan humour plus some sharp, grungy licks the original song lacked for a few decades.

Kristof Hahn – Je suis venu te dire …

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