Chansons d’été (1): Peter Blegvad

Same day, same label. Kew. Rhone. by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad was issued simultaneously with the Sex Pistols’ NMTB in March 1977 – art project sophistication vs. »the Bay City Rollers of outrage« (Tony Wilson), the first a commercial, the second an artistic failure. Cartoonist, singer/ songwriter and guitarist Blegvad studied with avantgardist US writer Gilbert Sorrentino, was obsessed with Marcel Duchamp, and worked with Marxist prog-rockers Henry Cow, John Zorn and XTC’s Andy Partridge. His most well-known songs might be Daughter and Blue Flower, one of his finest still is Côte d’Azur, a highly intricate and ironic chanson d’été by someone calling himself »a dilettante, a polymorphously perverse, a perpetual amateur« – doubtless an easygoing and supersexy combination.

Peter Blegvad – Côte d’Azur