Perhaps it's the recent conclusion of the Eurovision Song Contest (even if it was won this go-round by Serbia, not exactly a French-speaking nation) and a rush of stars-in-my-eyes memories of the Serge Gainsbourg-penned, France Gall-sung, "Poupée de cire, poupée de son." (Editor's note: I'm assuming--in fact, I'm hoping and praying--that France Gall was a much better singer than the clip indicates. She sings this ditty like an over-Red Bullied, playground-grande-fatigue-suffering, and tone-deaf child. Admittedly, the cover by Dubstar, featuring French musical warhorse Sacha Distel, sounds better to contemporary ears.)
Or maybe it's the fact that when I was in Baltimore in early April, I had a "French martini" (chambourd, cranberry juice, Stoli raz--yum!) at this little Mediterranean boîte, Casbar on Charles Street, and have never quite recovered. Mind you, not so much from the kick-in-the-head hangover but, instead, from the I-need-an-AA-meeting-stat! sensation I get whenever I think about that drink and crave another round. With the tab preferably being picked up by Olivier Minne.
Comme si, comme ça, qué será será. I may be in through the out door of Hollywood rehab centers because of that martini, but my semi-obsession with all things French keeps on keeping me high.
But what gives? There's so much going on in the outer world, as well as my inner world, that I feel I should write about (grief, politics, religion, gardening, origami) and yet the most I can focus on at the moment are Etienne Daho's plus grands succès, Mylène Farmer's provocative, expletive-fueled hits, and, mais oui, Moroccan hip-hop in the comely form of Ahmad (or Ahmed, depending on where you read) Soltan.
Coca-Cola and surfing on the beach at Casablanca. It's jihad with all the trimmings, innit?
I blame it all on Radio France Internationale. I am a frequent listener via the internet to RFI Musique and at work am often mentioning it to others as an interesting "station" to tune into during the day. Naturally, given my rather odd sensibilities--très Vidal Sassoon with un peu smidge of Gore Vidal, I suspect--they ignore my suggestion.
Most of the music is not in English (nor is it solely in French--you're likely to hear Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, Arabic, and songs in other languages--shocking, I realize, to we monolingual United Staters), so there is no distraction from hearing lyrics in my native language while trying to do my work. In fact, it is a nearly all-music channel, so there is little "text" in any language to distract.
Nonetheless, the music tends to be upbeat and often poppy, often with a worldbeat flava, so there is the distraction of catchy tunes wafting from my computer speakers into my rather cluttered mind. And the distraction can sometimes begat more distraction, leaving me wanting to know more about the song, the artist, the meaning of the lyrics, and where to find the music for sale or available for (legal) download.
This quest for physical representation of the hit in my collection has led me to some intensive web-searching gymnastics over the years--and I do mean years, as the right song may stay in my head for that long and, with some luck and carefully chose search terms, will gradually reveal itself line by line, note by note.
* * *
A case in point.
Sometime before I left San Antonio in 2004 (perhaps in 2002 or 2003), I kept hearing this lush, aural soundscape in heavy rotation on RFI Musique. Try as I might, I could not grasp a lyrical line to hang onto. When I do, I generally then take the lyric, slap quotation marks around it, and Google it, nine times out of ten coming up with an artist, a title, or at least a lead that eventually places me at the scene of the song.
But this tune--all swirling strings and dub effects (men chanting, a woman sighing sensually)--gave me nothing to work with. Other than the realization that what I was trying to identify was a tasty slice of French electronica. And the French create electronica almost like we crank out American idols. So I had some work ahead of me.
I web-surfed but, honestly, how do you create search terms for a sound? Especially when you're not versed in such a language (I mean music, not French necessarily) or even sure what you're listening to?
Eventually, in fall 2005, I posted a description of the song to a French music group in Yahoo, hoping that someone would identify it for me. My description went like so:
This is a very lush, electronic tune, awash with strings (very 1950s and dreamlike) with a dubbed, breathy, orgasmic female vocal, backed by a vocoderized and dubbed male voice speaking certain phrases. What are those phrases? Well, my French isn't good enough to identify any lyrics unfortunately, but this "song" is more like a musical soundscape, not a traditional verse-chorus sing-a-long song. It's very ethereal and trancelike, and I'm sure it's some DJ hit, rather than a well-known singer/artist.
I didn't receive a response to my query, but I was closer to an answer than I knew, which I only realized earlier this year.
One morning, I was driving to work and popped in a new CD I purchased over the internet--the Belgian group Hooverphonic's No More Sweet Music. (Editor's note: Hooverphonic is one of my favorite groups, but this CD hasn't so far been released in America. Thus a little more debt for me with Amazon dot pick-yer-internet-country-domain-abbreviation.) It's an odd little collection this one, consisting of two discs, one entitled "No More Sweet Music," the other, "More Sweet Music." Each disc features the same songs but in often radically re-recorded versions. These are not boring ol' DJ remixes but variations, interpretations. One version of the song may be more electronic and beat-heavy; the other may be more ballad-like. But the styles are mixed on both CDs, so you don't end up with one designed for your glowstick pleasure and the other for your chillout session. Instead, each interpretation makes you appreciate the song and listen to it more closely.
Anyway, after listening to the "More Sweet Music" disc the previous day, the following morning, after I ran out of range of XPN, I inserted "No More Sweet Music" into the player. And on Route 15 somewhere south of York Springs, all was revealed: The opening, swirling strings from the mystery soundscape began emanating from my car's speakers.
Well, almost all was revealed. Not quite Eureka! it would turn out. While the strings were the same, nothing else in Hooverphonic's version sounded like the song I remembered hearing on RFI Musique. Perhaps the version I had heard on the radio was a remix of the Hooverphonic tune?
I didn't have the time to surf the web at work--nor, of course, would I ever do this for personal business, I can assure you. So I had to wait until I arrived home later that evening. I checked the Hooverphonic website, but no, this tune, entitled, in fact, "No More Sweet Music," had not been released as a single. No single probably equals no remix, I figured. Hmmm. So. What now?
I checked the liner notes. Hooverphonic's "No More Sweet Music" featured a sample of a tune called "Lujon" by Henry Mancini. And so apparently did this mystery song.
So don't bore us, get to the chorus--after a while, I wound up in Wikipedia in an article on sampling in music, then found a link to a list of songs sampled by artist, and voilà! I discovered that "Lujon" had been sampled by Sergio Mendes and Erykah Badu in their hit, "That Heat," and by French DJ Dimitri from Paris in his song, "Souvenir de Paris."
It took some further surfing to find a free mp3 on the web to reconfirm that this was indeed the mystery tune. (Editor's note: I'd point you to it, but I can no longer find it.) It took still further surfing to figure out on which Dimitri from Paris disc I could find a recording of this song. And that search wasn't as easy as it sounds as I could only locate one recording, a Japanese pressing of Dimitri's Sacrebleu album, that featured the song as a listed bonus track. (Other discs may or may not have the tune as a hidden bonus track.)
So electronic, check. Strings in a 1950s' style, check. Lush, check. DJ hit, check. Male voices? Actually dubbed male and female voices speaking phrases you might here on a Paris street. The erotic, female moaning? Actually, a dubbed female voice chanting "Paris" (Pah-ree) over and over again, both quickly and slowly.
Not bad for four to five years' work. But this is the sort of search gymnastics I'm willing to contort myself through in the name of (pop) art--mine or, in this case, someone else's.
Bend me, shape me, give me a higher credit line, please.
* * *
Oh, I have other examples. There are a couple of tunes I remember hearing on shortwave radio from Europe in the mid- to late '70s--via the "DX Jukebox" program on the English service of Radio Netherlands, transmissions from the German service of Deutsche Welle, or heavily jammed broadcasts from the Russian service of Radio Free Europe. ("'On Broadvey,'" as the DJ used to say in those Cold War-era commercials on U.S. TV.) I'm still trying to track these down.
A soul-gospel shout-out with the chorus, "You + Me = Love, I believe!" You can't even imagine how badly a search engine accepts plus and equal signs.
A very Munich-in-the-disco-era tune, featurng a cooing female voice singing "Fly, fly, butterfly" over again, with a man's voice coming in after the female voice intoning "butterfly" in a breathy but masculine refrain. And, no, folks, it's not "Fly, Fly Butterfly" by Arabesque or "Fly, Robin, Fly" by Silver Convention. Been there, done that already.
A bilingual French-English tune from the late seventies with the chorus, "Do you speak French? Do you want to speak French? Well, parlez-vous, français!" The song features a male voice speaking words in one language, with two or more female voices responding with the translation in the alternate language. Example:
Man: "Taxi."
Women: "Taxi!"
Non, mon frere, it's not the Luxembourg entry for 1978's Eurovision Song Contest, "Parlez-vous français" by Spanish girl group Baccara. I'm way ahead of you here, both in trying to identify these tunes as well as in the realization of the enormous mounds of steaming, craptastic knowledge I have in my head about totally useful pop cultural moments.
Further, I realize I should be spending my time more wisely. I should be writing. I should be vacuuming and doing dishes. I should be caring for the infirmed in a field hospital in Gabon. I should be single-handedly stopping global warming. I should be figuring out what I want to be when/if I grow up. I should be trying to make that blasted origami lion I've now ripped to pieces twice, thick-fingered Vulgarian am I. I should be praying that at least a few of my wildflower, sunflower, herb, and tomato seeds germinate in this lifetime.
But instead, thirty years on, I find myself trying to recreate in my CD and mp3 collection an exact aural replica of the 208 Radio Luxembourg playlist circa 1977.
As well as the RFI Musique playlist circa 2007 it would seem.
Oh la la, indeed.
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