Cool French Girls

It’s hard to explain why I think the French have a virtual monopoly on producing cool girls, whose coolness and a certain level of fuck-you-but-I-can’t-be-bothered insouciance remains unconfined to any one field of work  (musicians, journalists, fashion bloggers, actresses, lawyers- that’s how varied it gets), but it’s really hard not to be in awe of them. And if I tried to post about all of them, it’d take forever- so I’m sticking to two.

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Françoise Hardy – Comment te dire adieu

Françoise Hardy (on the bike up there) was someone I discovered via a fashion magazine, following which I went on an mp3 hunt- and found that, quite at odds with the cigar-raspy alto I’d expected,  her voice is actually on the softer side of the spectrum..

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The other Cool French Girl of this post is actually half Brit, and one of those rather rare things- a singer and actress who is really good at being both (most recent evidence: 5:55 and The Science of Sleep, plus a Best Actress award at Cannes for Antichrist this year).

Charlotte Gainsbourg- Elastique

It’s one of her very early songs, and I rather like the breathiness of her voice- it’s a bit like her mother’s but more natural, somehow.

And here is the video for Elastique…she looks like such a kid here..

If Music Was A Country, It’d Have A Flag At Half-Mast Today..

He was pretty much the first person whose music videos I ever got to watch, my first ever concert (which I spent getting mildly irritated at the opening acts), and that (twelve years? fifteen years?) old tape of Bad sitting in my cabinet of junk is most definitely going to get an airing today. And a listen, if it’s up for that too.

Michael Jackson- Beat It

Easily, IMO, his best song ever.

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And now for a bit of gangster (never gangsta…it makes all the difference)

Michael Jackson- Smooth Criminal

Aux Armes…

I’m not big on national anthems. The only use I’ve ever seen in knowing what they are is as the answer for a once-in-a-blue-moon quiz question, but the French one, La Marseillaise, has had permanent dibs on my soft corner ever since I first gave it a proper listen, at the start of the 1998 World Cup finals (and later, when I realised it was the intro to All You Need Is Love).

This may seem like an odd niche for Zonuts to be dipping into, but I blame a recent bout of Asterix-reading for the fact that it just won’t get out of my head. And I recommend looking up a translation of the lyrics, they are not only beautiful, but also somewhat…bloody (no offence to any French people who find this- I just mean there are literal references to blood and slit throats, is all)

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Édith Piaf- La Marseillaise

My favourite version, not only because it’s Piaf, but because of the sheer joy she seems to take in singing it. I’m not sure when this was recorded, but if I didn’t know better, I’d have said it was sometime during the WWII occupation of France. If you download/listen to nothing else in this post, don’t pass this one up- unless you have it, of course.

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Serge Gainsbourg- Aux armes et cætera (reggae spin on the national anthem, that earned him a few death threats once it was out)

I’m not massively fond of this, partly because I first heard it when I was in the grip of an ‘I-hate-reggae’ mood, but it deserves better than to be heard under such circumstances.

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Cassandre Berger- La Marseillaise (from the film La Môme a.k.a. La Vie en Rose, lip-synched by Pauline Burlet, the child actress in the clip. By all accounts, it’s a real-life incident…the life being that of Édith Piaf)

La Marseillaise (Casablanca). Probably my favourite scene.

Two Chumps

K and C

This post is going to seem a bit old-chestnutty (we already have an Oasis post in the archives), and the pic probably seems befuddling. But the two chumps in it have been my best friends in this place for the better part of the last five years, and it seemed a tiny bit appropriate to dedicate a post to them, for the following reasons:

a) I only started talking to them because a friend told me they were Oasis fans, which, four years ago, in a sea of people whose favourite bands were all called Angelic [something] or Demonic [something]- Bangalorean metal fans, honestly- was really rare. In fact, if it hadn’t been for that little piece of information, we would never have bothered to revise our initial impressions of each other (mine of them : insufferable yuppie and insufferable brat respectively. Theirs of me: rude bitch). Not that we were wrong – K and C were practically Tweedledum and Tweedledee back in the day, and yours truly was a complete misanthrope- but..

b) C -the one on the right- has a birthday today. He’ll make fun of me if he finds out about this post, but happy birthday anyway, C.

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Oasis- Acquiesce

Included here for no other reason than the fact that I love hearing Noel and Liam on the same song, and K and C once used ‘agree’ and ‘Oasis’ as clues to guess this in a round of What’s The Good Word.

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Oasis- Columbia

Definitely Maybe is one of the very few albums I actually own, and screw whether NME/ the Guardian commentators think it’s cool or not, it’s amazing. And this is perfect for times when I want my brain fried.

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Oasis- Digsy’s Diner

Underrated, silly, awesome fun. Though the mention of lasagne does make me feel like running off to a place where I can get some.

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Oasis- All Around The World

Insanely long. Maybe too long, really, like most of Be Here Now. But, like K said many years ago, the line “you’re lost at sea, well, I hope that you drown“, it lives…

Chello

I mean, I really like the piece (who doesn’t?), but he has a point.

The Field

I just heard a recent album by this band and I dig the sound.

Really long tracks (with plenty repetitive hooks) that build into a rich and heavy layered mix which just sounds dreamy :)

(Edit: Horrors, I can’t embed videos from pitchfork – Follow the linky)

The Field – Leave it [mp3]