Salut!

A great song for D-Day. Bravo. Jim Radford for The Shores of Normandy

I heard this song, great words set to a familiar tune, for the first time today, during France 2's coverage of the D-Day commemorations ... this is how I described it at salutlive.com

Forgive me for being late with this but, come to think of it, the timing is right.

On French news this lunchtime, amid generous and impressive coverage of commemorations on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, this song popped up. I realise the story may well be old news for some.

Meet Jain, a French singer whose music travels

Buy the album using Salut!s Amazon link - just click on this caption

Over at Salut! Live, you will find - at this link - a transcript of the interview with the French singer Jain on which the following feature, for The National, Abu Dhabi, was based ...

Sometimes a city gets under the skin.

So it was for Jeanne Galice, a French teenager in her final year of high school at the Abu Dhabi Lycee. Eight years on, Jeanne is Jain, an exciting young talent demonstrating that French pop and rock can travel after all.

And in the most striking song of the follow-up to a successful debut album, Jain pays tribute to a city that gave her both pleasure and inspiration.

She already knew Dubai from her childhood. But Abu Dhabi left a special mark on a girl already convinced, for all her sensible plans to study art, that her future lay in music.

An A-Z of music from Altan to Zimmerman

Over at Salut! Live, I have been running a series comparing and contrasting different versions of the same songs. It has reached number 39 with a friend's look - below - at three interpretations of Birmingham Sunday, which tells of the horrific Ku Klux Klan killing of four girls at a Baptist church in the 1960s.

You do need to have some liking for, or interest in, folk music, roots music, the blues or vaguely related forms. Move on if not. But if that is for you, or you have a sense of musical adventure, take a tour though the archive at http://www.salutlive.com/cover-story/. And read on - it starts with an explanation of why Salut! Live has not been updated for some time ...

Image: by Appalachian Encounters (Rhiannon Giddens) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Johnny Hallyday nous quitte. A musical Englishman mourns

For those who appreciate non-corporate, independent music - not just folk - I marked the death of Johnny Hallyday by reproducing in full an essay written 10 years ago (for that site) by Robb Johnson, a challenging left-wing British singer-songwriter. I thought it was an excellent appraisal of a man whose work had somewhat passed me by. Me? I salute the voice, the style and the huge esteem in which Hallyday is held in the francophone world. Read this: http://www.salutlive.com/2017/12/johnny-hallyday-est-mort-the-essential-essay-on-a-french-rock-legend.html I have never been a fan; he was as corporate as any other. Yet Robb's words, which shall be published here as well as at Salut! Live, will encourage me to delve more deeply into the Hallyday legacy. France knows his place. See the welter of coverage at FranceInfo. Even if you do not read French, you'll get the idea. There will be a day of "popular hommage", a parade on the Champs-Elysées, a burial in the French Caribbean.

The cynical British view - "famous rock star not many have even heard of"- has a germ of truth but is reduced to rubble by what follows ....

Cover stories: Dylan, Steeleye Span, Ralph McTell, Iris DeMent and Ed Sheeran challenged

Buy this early Dylan masterpiece at https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000024RQ/salusund-21

If my websites - okay, blogs if you must - began with Salut!, they do not end here. I try to avoid posting too much about football, folk music or the North East since they are covered adequately in their own habitats (except for poor, neglected old Salut! North and its infrequent memories of/thoughts on the North East).

But amid all else, I am keen to push Salut! Live a little. I have put a lot more effort into it of late and this has been rewarded, if only modestly, by an increase in readership.

Kate Middleton v Middle England: foie gras choice ruffles feathers

It is unlikely that the Wearside forebears of Kate Middleton had strong views on whether it was appropriate for a prince's bride-to-be and probable future Queen of England, or anyone else come to that, to eat foie gras.

But there was strong rent-a-quote response the other day to news - news? - that young Kate had chosen to eat the delicacy at a lunch that included Camilla Parker Bowles among the guests so was always bound to provide plenty of scraps, if not a great deal of meat, for people in my trade. It was a case of Middle England, and the prohibitionist food lobby, on the warpath

My purpose is not to stick up for everything that happens in the name of putting tasty food on our plates, but to pledge solidarity for once with a member of the royal entourage. As observant readers of Salut! may have noticed, I am also fond of foie gras and have said so publicly on more than one occasion.

So this little posting from the site's history is dedicated to young Kate, little though she may feel in need of my defence of her right to select freely from a menu placed before her eyes at Koffmann's Restaurant. Some of it has no direct relevance to the present controversy, but the first part certainly does and I think it kinder to the reader to leave the piece intact ...