Salut!

Cats on Trees: when French music travels - or deserves to

 

 

 

Concert debout, it said on the printout of the ticket. I saw that only after I had booked. The realisation that it would be standing room only for the Cats on Trees concert in Puget-sur-Argens, just back from the Mediterranean resort of Frejus, came too late to have second thoughts. I am glad it did.

The era of masks, the passe sanitaire - a QR code proving vaccination status - and now social distancing are behind us, even if Covid itself is not. Far too old to act like groupies or teenypop super-fans, we nevertheless avoided the claustrophobia of standing in the middle of a big audience at the Mas d'Hiver and stood within easy infection distance, directly in front of the quartet on stage. Again, I am glad - pending any positive test - that we did.

 

 

 

France's presidentials: Macron, Le Pen and simple lessons from Serge Gainsbourg's life

If I can work out a way of voting in the French presidential elections (for the first time, thanks to my new status as a dual citizen), I shall go faute de mieux for Emmanuel Macron, head and shoulders above the rest in terms of statesmanship and dependability if rather too right-wing for my own tastes. The impediment for me is that I am registered as a French voter in the UK but find myself in France. Proxy voting seems complicated to say the least. As this article for The National - thanks as ever to the editor for permitting its reproduction here - tries to explain, the far right polemicist Marine Le Pen is the main obstacle to what until recently seemed an easy canter to his second term.

Last night, I watched an absorbing France 3 documentary, slightly behind the 31st anniversary of his death, of the enfant terrible of French music, Serge Gainsbourg. There were some wonderful memories and insights from his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte's mother Jane Birkin, Jane's dad, Francoise Hardy and others.

But there was also a chilling reminder of what far right can mean in France. Those attached to it, and who would if still alive vote either Le Pen or - worse - Eric Zemmour, would doubtless agree with the hoodlums who saw it as entirely normal to prevent Gainsbourg performing because he - a Jew! - had created a reggae version of the national anthem, La Marseillaise. Me, I love it and I could never vote for anyone who wanted to suppress it ...

 

\\\

 

Lord Frost acclaims the honoured Brexit heroes. Is folk music the antidote?

In due course, this post will be about tempting you to explore the pages of my music site, Salut! Live

 

 

The new year begins with Lord Frost of Brexit loudly cheering, and welcoming honours for, the negotiating team that brought us what Boris called his amazing oven-ready deal, leaving the rest of us to suffer the predictable and predicted consequences of the worst act of national self-harm in living memory. One that the unelected Lord Frost saw for what it was when actually involved in a business sector - whisky - that earned export money.

But I shall refrain from naming the guilty individuals and can but guess at what turned the heads of this esteemed peer and that other born-again Brexiter, Liz Truss.

 

Bob Dylan at 80. An eloquent tribute to the iceberg genius

 

Today, as we have relentlessly and quite rightly been reminded, is Bob Dylan's 80th birthday.

A woman he once loved, Joan Baez, passed the same milestone in January and a British singer and musician from whom he learned a little, Martin Carthy, was 80 on Friday. Other notables born in 1941 range from the US politician Bernie Sanders and Swedish actress Ann-Margret and music industry figures including Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and Neil Diamond.

A good case can be made that the life and work of Dylan have had a greater impact on the world than any of the others I mention.

In a fitting climax to our Dylan at 80 series, Salut! Live wishes the rock'n roll beatnik bard a happy birthday and presents this compelling appreciation by my friend, Bill Taylor, a fine writer, photographer, supporter of Sunderland AFC and, like a former SAFC manager, Roy Keane, a lifelong Dylan fan ...

         Looking more like Vincent Price than Vincent Price, the iceberg that is Bob Dylan turns 80 on Monday.

         Cool, hard, diamond-bright and, just as 90 per cent of an iceberg is underwater, what you see with Dylan has always been a good deal less than what you get.

         Plus, just as an iceberg’s lifespan is as much as 3,000 years, Dylan seems to go on forever.

         His so-called Never-Ending Tour, an ongoing series of concert dates, began on June 7 1988. Even allowing for an inevitable pandemic hiatus, that’s monumental.

 

                                                            Bob Dylan's oil painting, Midnight Caller

. Image by Rowland Scherman

Lockdown blues, or any music that rocks your boat. Name your top 10 singers, male and female

Image: Jef Aerosol

 

Over at my music site, Salut! Live, I have been inviting readers to nominate their favourite 10 male singers and their favourite 10 female ones.

Any genre or mix of genres is encouraged. No one is required to share my own tastes and few will.

The comments you find at the two items linked above were posted direct to Salut! Live or transferred there after being left at Facebook or Twitter. Feel free to add your thoughts and lists at either web site or if you find references to this spot of fun on social media.

 

Leon Rosselson: 'no stamina for novels, I was meant to write songs'

 

Over at my little music site Salut! Live, I have been interviewing Leon Rosselson, who has been writing and performing songs for so long that some of his work was featured on the groundbreaking satirical programme That Was The Week That Was.

His latest album, Where Are The Barricades?, is also his last; at 82, he has decided to call it a day at least as far as recording goes. The full interview can be seen at http://www.salutlive.com/2016/12/the-big-interview-leon-rosselson-no-longer-turning-the-world-upside-down.html.

Rosselson is a political writer, a class warrior, a polemicist and a mischief-maker. Not all readers of Salut! would share all of his views or analysis, and some would share none.

After Cats on Trees, Come take note of Jain

My guess is that if you know who Cats on Trees are but do not live in France, and did not watch a subtitled French TV drama called Disparue when shown as Disappearance on British TV, you first heard about them here. That series used the outstanding duo's Sirens Call as the fade-out theme as the credits rolled.

And from the same south-western city of Toulouse comes my next French musical recommendation. Let us please hear it for Jain.

Dave Swarbrick, fiddler exemplaire. Gone before his time, gone now. Rest easy, Swarb

I reported the death of Dave Swarbrick, one of my favourite musicians, at Salut! Live on the day he passed away. Here are some additional thoughts, plus clarification of the geography and other factual details with the help of Swarb's widow, Jill ...

Cats on Trees, French music that travels - with an 'Irish-Cambodian accent'

Photo: Ana Bloom

What’s that song?

The question has been on lots of lips in France over the past few months as “that song” secures endless replays on radio. Though this may not be a sound recommendation, it even pops up in supermarkets as Jules, my friend in Paris, and I can testify from encounters with the audio systems while – new men that we are - we’ve been doing the shopping.

Herbie Hancock: magical potions from slavery's poison

Herbie Hancock's life story is more interesting than most however much or little you have listened to his music over a career stretching back to the early 1960s. I tried to capture a flavour of it in 1,500 words for The National*, Abu Dhabi since he will be playing at the UAE capital's Emirates Palace Hotel in March next year ...

Jazz pioneer, bandleader, composer, Oscar and Grammy winner, technical wizard, academic, philanthropist, Buddhist.

It’s a list that presents Herbie Hancock’s life in snapshot.

Sixty-two years after a boy of 11 astonished a youth concert audience with his virtuosity on piano, playing the first movement of a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the full inventory of achievements and attributes would be much longer.

A great son of Ulster: Neil Johnston RIP

Today I was going to forget about Lord Leveson, Mitt Romney and the Mormons and write a jolly little piece about the sudden congestion of French presidents on holiday in the Var.

François Hollande is taking the air - and keeping an eye on Valérie's tweeting - on the seafront of my own Le Lavandou, Nicolas Sarkozy is next door in Cap Nègre at Chateau Bruni and old Jacques Chirac is back supping his favourite apéritif, le Tomate (generous on the Pernod), to wash down shrimps, foie gras and salmon amuses gueules in Saint-Tropez.

This would all have amused Neil Johnston, about whom I have decided to write instead.