Scattered … That’s where I am these days. Completely to the wind all over the west coast.
If I’m not in the middle of packing up some 250 boxes of household items, records, and books, and moving from an island in the Puget Sound back to my native LA, I ‘m sitting in a van doing a small tour back up the coast to the northwest. (Of course, first I welcomed the movers to LA, found a change of clothes, found some musical gear, bid a big hello to all my newly-arrived-to-LA crap, then said goodbye to my wife and son and hit the 5 freeway north in a van with six other band members. It’s hardly a coincidence my life is so scattered. “Can I discharge myself now, please, sir?”
Side note (about the 250, maybe even 300 boxes): there wasn’t really a problem with our last house, the rooms were great, yard was huge, but the very large basement looked kind of sad and a little desperate until I filled it with crap … oh how the basement purred once it was full. So 1,100 miles and a semi-truck filled with 11,000 pounds of personal possessions later …
Truthfully, yet not exactly, the biggest excuse for not writing this week about my nearly, yet not necessarily, favorite subject (7 inch 45’s--I had promised something for the good people at Amoeba at least a week ago): cable was finally installed in our new house and just in time for the Tour de France.
For me, July is inevitably about my birthday, BBQ’ed sausages on the 4th (just meat--none of this mango/pesto/tofu stuff, save those ingredients for a smoothie) and bicycle racing in France. My money for the 2007 Tour was on Alexandre Vinokourov. He would have been my choice to win the Tour last year but his old team, Astana-Würth, was ripped to shreds after five of its riders were implicated in the “Operación Puerto” doping case and scandal, leaving Vinokourov with only three teammates and for the most part a team without a pot to piss in (pun intended). Last year Vinokourov was never accused or implicated in the doping scandal, however as of this morning all that has changed. On Tuesday Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a banned blood transfusion after winning last Saturday’s time trial, prompting him and his team Astana to pull out of the Tour de France. I’m broken hearted once again. “So it ain’t so Vino.”
Anyway. . . back to the business at hand. And my aesthetic point of view.
” Well, I’ll get to the Dutronc singles another day. Gainsbourg is too easy. And as for Brigitte Fontaine, well, buy me a Renault, a pack of Gitanes and a one way ticket to Paris and I become that unhealthy fan/stalker who loves Brigitte Fontaine a bit too much (I’ll go into detail about some of her records later, but always under safe, intelligent, respectful and loving conditions)."
anyway, this song, “L’Orange,” is a freak show. Gilbert Becaud is the legendary "Monsieur 100,000 volts" (real name François Silly) who also sang and co-wrote the original version of “What now my Love.” But this song!! Surprisingly up-tempo and almost a little too rocking for Becaud, who is very much the straight French pop singer. Here though, it’s those whacked background singers that just make this record so bizarre. There are notes everywhere--god forbid a little space! There are background singers everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, and right about the time you figure nothing else could happen…WEOW!!! A soprano sounding more like Fay Wray than Maria Callas belts out!
What’s the song about? Stealing an orange (though don’t quote me on that, my French is surprisingly bad considering my wife and son both speak French, blinding me to their conspiracies). I’ve seen this song listed on a Becaud CD collection, but I have no idea if it is this exact recording. I hope it is—wow, Monsieur 100,000 volts!!!! Take a bow!
I see “L’Orange” in its post-modern context and Gilbert Becaud as a product of his era, and in fact a product of the 60’s Situationists: “the ethical problem is one which arises in experience both as a reproach against the inadequacy of our relation to an environment and as a demand to act.” In fact, I believe those are the original words to “What Now My Love.”