PARIS – There was a moment early in the opening act at James Hetfeeld’s Pub last night when Sophie Shiran made a snide comment about a guy just outside the doorway making noise as she prepared to play another song. She was pointing out how the guy making the noise happened to be her brother and you’d think the guy would have more respect than that! Actually, he did, as the two of them were putting on a very cool double-bill of a show in a neat cellar venue in a pub on the Boulevard de Clichy, called James Hetfeeld’s Pub, and the brother and sister acts turn out to be the perfect combination for an evening of musical variety and styles.
Sophie Shiran is the friend of my girlfriend Raphaëlle, and had it not been for the invitation that way, I’d no doubt not have had the cool evening I did last night with these two completely contrasting musicians, in this neat venue. Sophie Shiran specializes in singing her own songs and cover songs as a one-woman band using looping devices, vocal harmonising devices, pre-recorded tracks and live guitar playing, both electric and acoustic.
She has a wide range of styles and approaches, and added to the mix of the one hour show she has a dramatic touch, telling stories and acting a role that feels a little like theater or cabaret – which is no surprise, since Sophie Shiran is also an actrice and music hall performer.
Azul and Band With French Variety Music
By contrast, her brother, who calls himself Azul, is a traditional French varieté singer-songwriter in the vein of a Calogero or Pascal Obispo. He plays a mean rhythm and lead guitar and has a special quality to his voice – something sandpapery and smooth at the same time – and upbeat, uptempo songs that get the room moving.
He also plays with a group, or at least last night with a drummer and a bassist, the latter occasionally going quite mad and turning the bass into a bit of a lead guitar….
All together an interesting evening musically so see the huge contrast in styles and approaches of two siblings, who seem to have absolutely nothing in common in their musical approach, but both of which are valid and obviously came from the same source. The two acts as a double-bill meant spectators had an evening of variety – can you ask for more?
PARIS – Among the many touching and deeply emotional moments of Pierre Benususan‘s concert at the Essaion theater in Paris last night, was that accompanying the third or so piece this virtuoso guitarist played, when he recounted the story of how his career took off in the United States several decades ago. It was Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, who wrote a letter to the American authorities to back up his demand to be able to go and work in the U.S. Yes, Pete Seeger, who died last week at the age of 94 after one of the most important careers in American folk music.
Bensusan, who is celebrating 40 years of a career as a professional musician this year in CDs and a series of concerts around the world (of which the concert at the Essaion is his Paris leg – and there are two more to go, tonight and tomorrow night), is himself on a clear trajectory as a legendary musician. He finished his anecdote by talking about how he ended up at a festival with Seeger, dining next to him, and hearing the great musician say that music “needs musicians like you.” The anecdote was not told as a boast, Bensusan was clearly emotionally humbled by the presence of Seeger, and his words had clearly touched Bensusan. What Seeger may not have known, though, or what may not have been immediately apparent at the time, is that there are not musicians like Bensusan. There is only Bensusan….
Oh, there was once a Michael Hedges, who by the the way, once wrote a piece called “Bensusan,” and Bensusan himself, last night in Paris played a song he dedicated to Michael Hedges. But Hedges had his style, and Bensusan has his. This French troubadour, whom I have written about in previous blog posts, has developed such a massive repertoire of personal compositions and mixtures of styles, that I’ve never personally heard, seen or heard of another guitarist on this level and with this particular voice. And speaking of voices, Bensusan also occasionally uses his vocal chords, and last night in addition to some of the mad moments of guitar fingerpicking virtuoso stuff there were some mad moments of vocal scat in which Bensusan entirely looses himself in infectious pleasure – one of those fun moments being when for his first encore he returned to the mic and did a vocal scat without touching his guitar. For the second encore he returned, picked up the guitar, and said something like: “OK, with the guitar then….”
I’ve noticed that whenever I do a post about Pierre Bensusan I tend to write glowing accounts that could almost be taken for hyperbole. So I think I will cut this one short, and let readers make up their own minds about what a great guitarist this is – amongst his many laurels were Guitar Player magazine’s crowning him the greatest World Music Guitarist, in 2008 – by looking at a few moments I managed to capture on video last night.
Just Two Nights Left to Attend Bensusan’s Concert in Paris
PARIS – As it turned out, I could have played in all of the three musical locations that I visited in Paris last night – but I played in none of them. And as it turned out, I was just as happy with that situation as going somewhere to play myself, as my real idea was to take in three in one night for a completely different cultural experience each time.
The first was the one where, I will admit, the idea of playing there myself is greatly exaggerated. The only reason I mention it at all was that when I arrived at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore to hear Gary Lucas play his guitar and talk about and read from his book, Lucas actually had a guy singing with him in a vaguely Jeff Buckley manner. The guy, it turned out, was just someone Lucas did not know or had never heard sing, and he had asked in advance if he could join in and sing along when Lucas performed at the bookstore. Lucas agreed, and it was a cool effect and a nice little addition to a very cool presentation. So it occurred to me that perhaps if I had asked, too, he’d have given me a chance – even if it was a longshot….
Gary Lucas was at Shakespeare and Company to promote his book “Touched by Grace,” which recounts his experience working with Jeff Buckley, with whom he wrote a dozen or more songs, including the famous “Grace,” and “Mojo Pin.” But Buckley is not his only claim to fame as a collaborator. Lucas has played guitar or otherwise collaborated with a Who’s Who of popular musical geniuses – to say nothing of Leonard Bernstein – from Captain Beefheart to Patti Smith to Lou Reed to Iggy Pop…oh and even people like Peter Stampfl, of the Holy Modal Rounders….
Lucas played his Gibson J-45 in opening tuning, filling the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and its full-house of people with the ethereal sounds that are his trademark. I bought one of his CDs, which I will be including in my next Morning Exercise Music review. Oh, and I must add that I was just delighted that although I arrived a little late, and the bookstore was entirely full to the point that the front door could not be opened, I was ushered up through the first floor library by another door into the building, and led down to the back of the “stage” to listen to Lucas. That, by the way, is why you only get my videos of Lucas from off to the side of the musician, and from behind.
From the Books to the Taps, it Was Time for a Beer at the Open Mic of the Tennessee Bar
From Shakespeare and Company I headed over to the Tennessee Bar to check out the open mic. There, of course, I’d have been able to play if I wanted to. But I had that third date of the night coming up, so I just stayed and listened to a few songs – including by the mainstay of the Tireuse open mic, Wayne Standley – and also by someone else using a Gibson, similar to the J-45 of Lucas, but which was either a Dove or a Hummingbird, and they were also using it in a similar manner. But to slightly less effect. Still, it was an incredibly beautiful sounding guitar and nifty playing. Once I had assured myself that my favorite Thursday night was going strong, I finished my beer and went off to the third location.
This final stop of the evening bore no resemblance to the first two. I was invited to this one by a Brazilian friend, who said that she had a Brazilian friend playing Brazilian music in this hotel – the Hotel Athenee. I was a little confused when I got there, as I had for mixed it up in my mind with the Plaza Athenee, or whatever it is. But this was quite a posh joint as it turned out, with a long lobby cocktail bar room in plush furniture and walls covered with casting photo portraits of famous Hollywood stars from the past.
With a Final Glass of Wine at the Hotel Athenee and Brazilian Music
The Brazilian music was guitar and vocals, mostly bossa nova stuff, and it was a very cool and relaxed evening and foretaste of my imminent trip to Sao Paulo. My friend got up and did a song too, by the way, and she invited me to play, saying the mic was open…. So that’s how I tie in that final unforeseen possibility of being able to play in all three venues, had I wanted to. But there at the Athenee, I felt that the atmosphere was so laid-back Brazilian bossa nova style stuff that my own songs or covers would be far too big a contrast, although I was definitely tempted.
In any case, it was a really cool evening, kind of like an all you can eat buffet of different foods and sauces, on the Paris plate….
PS, It turns out that in arriving late at the Shakespeare and Company performance by Gary Lucas, and hearing him talk about about his singer as someone who just contacted him and he’d never heard of him before, I had no doubt missed a more correct introduction beforehand. I’ve since learned from a reader of this bog – as you can see in the comments below – that the singer was Tim Watt, and he is a musician who was already known to Gary, and the two prepared together in advance… So the very premise of this whole blog post was faulty, as I’d never have been able to play at Shakespeare and Company after all!! 😉
ABU DHABI – I have seen busier days at P.J. O’Reilly’s pub in Abu Dhabi. In fact, I usually don’t like being there alone when it is so busy that party-goers are bursting at every seam. Last night, I decided to drop in to see the regular Wednesday night act, Paddyman, in order both to have a nice night out, and also to seek an open mic or open jam session for myself. I achieved the former, but not the latter.
Paddyman is a one-man-band Irish phenomenon who has travelled the world playing his music in Irish pubs and elsewhere, usually with an Irish theme from the crudest to the softest. He also does most bar rock stuff you can imagine, in his own way, and, I noted, it is so fast-paced that he rarely ever finishes a song before segueing into another song. He also writes his own songs, both comical and touching.
He is now based in Dubai, and sings around the Gulf, from Bahrain to Dubai to Abu Dhabi, and other spots. A highly in demand Irish singer, carrying the home flames to the legions of expatriates of the region.
A High-speed Paddy in Dubai
His real talent is in getting the audience to react, request songs, sing-along, and generally turn the most staid Irish pub into a party. That’s pretty necessary in Abu Dhabi where, although P.J. O’Reilly’s is an oasis of merriment, there are certain things in the Emirate that seem not to be tolerated…such as taking videos of the performer.
So it was that I only managed to get a couple of snippets of Paddyman, and they are in no way representative of the raucousness of his act. I got told off by the security guard at the door, near where I was standing, and he said if I continued making videos I’d have to leave the premises.
Anyway, I thought I’d mention this, my first night out in the music of Abu Dhabi. Yes, this is expatriate stuff in an Irish pub, and not representative of the local music. But in other ways, it kind of is. Keep posted for further notes as to why….
PARIS – In retrospect, I see it as very appropriate that Garland Jeffreys performed his gig in Paris last night at the New Morning venue on the rue des Petites Ecuries. The street was created in 1780 and it was near the royal stables. The thing is, Jeffreys, 70 years old this year, appears to be at the start of a new morning of his life – and you can’t hold this royal stallion down!
As regular readers of this blog will possibly have noticed, I hardly ever go to concerts myself, since I’m always trying to find open mics and jams to play myself, and so I say, how can I go and watch someone else without having a chance to get up there myself! In fact, last night, I left the Garland Jeffreys concert at the New Morning saying, “If I can learn that much about performance and pop music by going to a concert, I want to go a LOT more often!”
I had been alerted to the concert by a friend – who does go to lots of concerts – and as I had narrowly missed going to Jeffreys concert last year due to travel constraints, I said, “Go!”
Noooo regrets. Garland Jeffreys is one of the most unique cult figures in pop music, and at 70 years old, he puts on a show that is so much fun, so cool, so audience-friendly, that I can’t imagine anyone walking out without being touched. Jeffreys is not the greatest singer in the world, his melodies and songs are not epoch making or breaking compositions of extraordinary originality. But all the parts of this guy come together to create a real unique experience. He IS a natural showman, he gives everything he has – sometimes too much for his own good, as when he jumped backwards off a box cube at the edge of the stage and narrowly missed – or actually beautifully hid – seriously damaging his shin on the corner of the box. He leapt the meter or more height from the edge of the stage to the audience on several occasions to be amongst the audience, hug and kiss the women, and generally whip up a storm of great vibes with the audience.
It was only in seeing Jeffreys that I could really feel as if I understood something about this guy I knew some stuff about – and knew some of his music – without ever really understanding what he was all about. In fact, again, he is the sum of many amazing parts. A unique character, cult figure, and really a consummate showman. He is also a kind of musicians’ musician: From Brooklyn, he majored in history at Syracuse University with Lou Reed before the latter formed the Velvet Underground. He was friends with Bob Marley, has played along with Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, John Cale and even Sonny Rollins.
Garland Jeffreys Started Way Back in the 1960s
His first solo album, Garland Jeffreys, came out at Atlantic Records in 1973. He has recorded several more, including “The King of In Between” in 2011 and this year, “Truth Serum.” In the last couple of years has been touring all over, and is in the midst of a 30-date tour at the moment – if I heard that correctly – and at 70 years old (I repeat again), he said he is now on what he calls “The 90-year plan.”
The latter means he wants to keep on playing and performing until he is in his 90s. This little bit I actually heard from him myself in a short conversation after the show. He came out to sign CDs for the spectators after the show and stayed for what I think was around half an hour. But an hour and a half or so after the concert he ended up sitting in the same restaurant around the corner from the New Morning where I was sitting with my friends. So I took the opportunity to speak with him briefly – he was sitting with a group of around 12 people, at least some of whom seemed to be simple fans – although he has many friends in France.
He appears, in short, to be going through a fabulous renaissance at age 70, and I didn’t see a single person in that full house of the New Morning who appeared disappointed. For me, the key to Jeffreys IS his personality, his personage, his true emotion, his character, his past, his outlook on life. At a time when Rodriguez has risen out of obscurity at 70 to be a star, there is one point of comparison with Jeffreys: They are both street poets, one of Detroit, the other of Brooklyn.
A Comparison Between Garland Jeffreys and Rodriguez?
But the comparisons stop there – as Jeffreys’ flamboyance – think Springsteen – is far from that. Oh, yes, Jeffreys has also been the subject of a documentary – directed by Wim Wenders and produced by Martin Scorsese.
The great news is that above all some of the recent songs were fabulous – we loved this song he did about his grandmother, also, by the way, which was very, very emotional.
With a background like this, with a talent like he has, the biggest question I think I would have after leaving the New Morning last night was not about Garland Jeffreys and who he is and what his talent is all about. It is why 90 percent of the spectators last night had grey hair! In an age when kids in their teens know more pop history thanks to YouTube and the Internet than that which I have spent a lifetime trying to absorb, why is Jeffreys not more on the radar with them?
NAGOYA, Japan – It was not the first time, and I hope it is not the last time, that I get to play at the Plastic Factory, in Nagoya. After discovering this wonderful venue in the Imaike neighborhood of Nagoya two years ago, I got to take part in a concert night last year with a bunch of other musicians, and this year I was invited at the last minute to play a brief set in the gig of a duo that call themselves Zengo Kankai.
The only catch was that it was a night of 80s music, as these guys specialize in that sound, complete with synthesizer and vocals, and if I was going to fit in anywhere, it had to be with 1980s songs. So it was that I did a little bit of quick research and discovered much to my own surprise that three of the songs I sing regularly are from the 1980s: “Mad World,” “Wicked Game” and “I Won’t Back down.”
So I got invited to play and sing, and the band very kindly opened the stage to me for the beginning of the second set. In the meantime, I had met an Irishman who, it turned out, loves the song “Only Our Rivers Run Free.” I love to take any chance I can find to sing that song, so after singing the first two of my 80s songs, I decided to be a bit of a shit disturber, and I sang first, a song that I myself wrote in the 1980s – in 1980, to be exact – and then I finished my four-song set with “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” from 1966.
Yeah, well, what the heck.
The Plastic Factory is a wonderful venue that I recommend to anyone visiting or living in Nagoya, and it can have some amazing theme nights as well as open mics, and some more quiet affairs that are still worth absorbing the atmosphere over. It’s also a great chance to go out into a little quiet neighborhood of Nagoya where you might not otherwise think of setting foot. But it’s close enough to the downtown area to make it possible to walk back to a central hotel even if you stay all night at the Plastic Factory and miss a metro….
PARIS – In 30 years living in Paris I never set foot inside the Hotel de Ville until last night. At the invitation of a friend, who is a friend of one of the band members, I went to see the African band Debademba in the great salon of the Hotel de Ville. The band was giving a concert to celebrate Ramadan.
The inside of the Hotel de Ville, in fact, is well worth a visit. It is massive and ornate and just…extraordinary. I have done no research on it, so I will leave this blog description as silly and basic as that.
There were hundreds and maybe even more than a thousand people present in the vast room for the music, which started with a maghreb band walking around playing drums and some kind of screeching horn. I did a bit of research on that, and thought it was something like a bombarde, often used in Brittany, but I could not really name it accurately.
But Debademba were just fabulous. The guitar player, Abdoulaye Traoré, is really strong, and the vocalist – who sings the guitar player’s compositions – had an amazing high-pitched, almost feminine voice. The music was a mixture of everything, with a strong overtone frequently of jazz fusion.
I had never heard any African music in concert that was like this, and it was very strong. The band was particularly good at understanding an audience, too, as just about every song was different, had a different tempo, mood, melody.
Steve Forbert today photograph by Alan MESSER [alanmesser.com]
OXFORD – It was September or October of 1976, and I was attending an open mic at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, about to take to the stage to sing something – I’m not sure what – when the MC woman announced the next number. A scruffy, thin, threadbare guy two or three years older than me took to the stage and greeted us in a raspy voice. He started strumming his guitar – I think it was a worn out Martin – and broke into a howling, haunting, high-pitched, emotional rendition of the Hank Williams classic, “I’m So Lonesome I could Cry.”
The room filled with his presence, and I felt a bolt of something overcome my senses and turn what was until then your average dreary open mic night – even if it was at the legendary open mic where Bob Dylan and all the other 60s icons got their start – into an electrifying experience that left me, for one, not just entertained but also mystified. What’s going? Who is this guy? What’s he doing to the room? Where did he get this voice? Can I find one of those somewhere? How does he do this? And why? What does it represent?
Those were the thoughts going through my teenage mind at this period in my life when although I would have loved to have “been a singer songwriter” I felt far, far from any such ambition. (I would later that night at Gerde’s give a terrible, shaky, non-rhythmic version of Raggle Taggle Gypsies or some other traditional Celtic song, and I don’t know what else – maybe a Bob Dylan, maybe one of my own songs.) So I had all these questions going through my head about who this guy was and what I was feeling in the room. He was clearly known to the MC, so he had been there a few times before – and perhaps even a lot.
I would see the guy, whose full name I learned was Steve Forbert, two or three more times, and on one of those occasions I found myself standing just ahead or just behind him in the line up outside Gerde’s where the musicians waited to sign the list before the open mic. It was cold, and I recall clearly the inner lining and stuffing of his jacket was bursting out at the seams.
I decided it was time to try to find some answers to those questions and I asked him how old he was and how long he had been playing in bars and open mics. He said he was 21 and had been doing it for a couple of years.
Of course, he was not from New York City. He was from Meridian, Mississippi, and his strong southern accent is apparent not only in his speech but in his singing. But I did not learn all that much more about him, and I left New York City myself with many questions about just what it was I had witnessed.
I would go through many travels and trials and spend a four-month period down and out in London busking in Marble Arch (where I would discover the beginnings of a voice), then rent a room with a well known American DJ in London, and spend a period in Iran during the revolution and then finally on my way back from the revolution in Iran, while taking a black cab from the airport to the home of my American DJ friend, I suddenly heard the voice in a song on the radio. It was now 1978 and I recognized the voice instantly and just waited for the DJ on that station to announce the guy’s name: Steve Forbert.
Forbert’s Alive on Arrival cover
He had just released his album “Alive on Arrival,” and this was a song from the album – although I cannot remember which one. Suddenly, however, I now had the answer to my questions of that night two years earlier: What I had witnessed in Gerde’s Folk City was quite simply a future giant of American pop music, who was about to go on a roll of about three years of success.
He was, in fact, greeted with the doubtful and unfortunate acclaim of being “the next Bob Dylan.” Like so many others. His song, “Romeo’s Tune,” hit No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980.
Sometime in the early 1980s when I was living in Toronto, Forbert came to do a concert and I may or may not have attended the concert – no clear memories – but I do recall being thoroughly surprised to discover that the liner notes of his latest album were written by that DJ friend of mine – Paul Gambaccini – from London, who, it turned out, was a huge fan of Forbert’s. How strange the way people’s paths cross, I thought.
Over the years I have thought back many times to that period in New York City at the open mics, and my meeting with Forbert. I moved to France and for many years ceased to perform in public until I started again nearly five years ago, once again at the open mics, but now feeling much better about my reception as a performer. One of the songs I would try to perform would be that Hank Williams song as I tried to reach the same emotional and melodic heights not of Hank, but of Steve Forbert. Another song I would occasionally try was “Romeo’s Tune.”
In neither case would I ever feel satisfied to have achieved that level of what I recalled from Forbert’s performance, or his recordings on his records, which I later bought.
Living in France I never had a chance to see Forbert again, but I always vowed to go to one of his concerts in England, should I be here when he did a concert. So it was that this weekend I noticed that Forbert was doing a small tour of England that involved not only the famous Glastonbury Festival today, but yesterday, an appearance in Swindon.
Swindon is a 50 minute drive from Oxford, where I am staying during my reporting of the British Grand Prix in Siverstone. So I bought a ticket online for his show at the Swindon Arts Centre, and after my day of work yesterday, I drove off to encounter Forbert again – after 37 years!
It turned out to be a small theater, and as I entered the room to take my seat 10 minutes before the performance was to start, there was Steve already on the stage, tuning up and preparing his equipment. He was up there for the full 10 minutes, just waiting for the spectators to enter and preparing. Now 58 years old, wearing jeans, T-shirt and another open-collar shirt over that, in full possession of all his hair, I felt instantly as if no time had passed whatsoever. Later, during the show, he mentioned there were CDs for sale and asked people to kindly not hold the cover up to his face – in reference to the fact that his youthful face on the CDs would be a contrast to the one he has now. In fact, he looks in great condition, physically trim and fit, and as I said, I had the feeling from my seat in Row F, that I was seeing exactly the same “Little Stevie Orbit” as I saw at Gerde’s Folk City.
The concert was, again, for me in particular a very emotional one, and one in which I was constantly trying to figure out what had changed in his voice, his delivery, his persona, his music. Had anything changed? If not, why was Forbert a big star 30 years ago and today known mostly to aficionados and grey-haired people walking down memory lane?
My conclusion, after two 45-minute (or more) sets of Steve playing his guitar solo and with no electronic effects and entertaining us purely with his magic, rhythmic playing, his harmonic and his raspy voice, was that not much had changed at all, in fact. Unfortunately, before the concert, his assistant announced that Steve preferred that no one make a video or take photographs. So I had to set my Zoom Q3 HD aside and not grace my readers with material to make up their own minds about his performance today.
But what I did come away with was the thought that Steve had not changed that much, but that I now had a new and different interpretation of his voice and of my own encounter with him playing 37 years ago before he became a success. What I realized was that his extremely distinctive raspy and emotional voice is one that may sound different according to the circumstances – be it live or recorded, with a band or solo, in a large room or a small bar – but that behind it all is the same “center” of Steve Forbert’s poetic, musical world.
And that world is all about, guess what? Our passage through life. I bought his re-released first album last night to hear its 11 bonus tracks – and they are fabulous, some outtakes and some live stuff from the time, as well as demo stuff – and on one of the songs I noticed the lyric about time passing and him now being “23 year’s old,” as if he was much older and wiser now…. And there was a lot of talk of this kind of thing last night, too, and I realized that he had not changed – Steve Forbert the observer of life is still there, and still Alive well past Arrival. If he had not changed, then perhaps popular tastes change; but that means they’ll perhaps come around again….
Forbert’s patter with the audience was a blessing, a brilliant way to connect, and I admired how he warmed up both us and himself through the patter, the songs, and as he did, his voice warmed up, got stronger, warmer. He had a constant, excellent, drole rapport with the audience, asked for requests – I asked for the Hank Willams song, but did not get it – and he played many of the old hits, as well as more recent stuff, including stuff from his recent album from last year.
It was admirable to see how he carried these two sets without a band and without electronic looping or other cheating gadgets: Just his own musical world and the songs his fans love.
After the show he came out to sign CDs and speak to the spectators. This gave me the chance to present myself and tell him about meeting him at Gerde’s 37 years before.
“Those were great days, weren’t they?” he said.
They were, I said. And he said something upon my departure about how maybe he’d go through another 35 years and we’d meet again. During the show he had mentioned visiting his dad who was 90 years old. So I told him that his dad was 90, and my dad was 88, and so we’d both get there, wouldn’t we?
During the show, by the way, he said if you don’t have the recent re-editions of his albums then you don’t have the albums, because he has added so many bonus tracks. I can confirm that the Alive on Arrival is definitely worth buying. I’ve been listening to it in my rental car driving around England and I realized that while we were fed the slick, well-produced 10 tracks of the original, there was a treasure trove of more raw but perhaps more pure gold in the outtakes and live stuff….
There is a kind of fad amongst many musicians in France to say that they hate the Fête de la Musique, that night on the 21 June where music is allowed in the streets, bars and everywhere and anywhere else and goes on all night long, celebrating music (and the first day of summer, usually). It started in France in 1982, and it has spread to other countries, but I think there is probably no other country and city, especially, than Paris that celebrates this musical festival with as much fervor. But a lot of musicians like to say they are not going to play or celebrate the music, and they hate the festival. I can understand that in some ways, but my own attitude now is that I play music every day of the year – or if I don’t, I don’t feel good – and so why would I be so contrarian as to say the only day I’m not going to play is during the day that music has its official celebration?
Still, in recent years I have been much less enthusiastic about going out on the Fête de la Musique in Paris quite simply because it can be an absolute mad house in the streets of Paris, and even violent and loud and disagreeable. And if the metros run all night and are free, well, they’re also full of rowdy people pissed out of their minds and carrying a guitar on your back – as I always do – makes you stand out even more, oddly enough, than you usually do.
Anyway, all of this build up is in order to say that I ended up finding the most wonderful alternative to the madhouse of Paris during the Fête de la Musique after I was invited by the young and up-and-coming French singer songwriter Melody Says – with whom I had shared the bill last fall on a boat on the Seine – to play in the first part of her show at a bar in her native Levallois, just outside Paris. In fact, she had invited me without telling me where it was, and I immediately accepted, and then found out afterwards that it was a 23-minute walk from my home. That, of course, meant that I would perform during the Fête de la Musique without having to fight through the hell and noise of the Paris streets.
It also meant that the gig itself would take place in a nice, calm, cool neighborhood pub, where, as it turned out, there were lots of locals and lots of guests and fans of Melody Says. And no wonder: Melody’s music is fresh with nice melodies, lively with moving rhythms and captivating with her lovely vocals. There is one wonderful song, “I Wish I Was Born in 1952,” that I particularly like, and I think it’s one of her most popular ones. But I kept wanting to interrupt her act and say, “Melody, listen, I’m sorry to have to break the news, but if you had been born in 1952 you would be hitting 61 years old about now, and I’m not so sure your future would be looking quite the same….” But then, who am I to say? Maybe it will – if she keeps up the melodies.
She had some interesting musicians with her too, by the way, with on bass a former bassist for Le Spark, and on guitar her producer Kenny Paterson, who it turns out – although I did not realize it last night – was a legendary engineer and producer from Scotland who has worked with bands like Texas, and INXS and John Martyn, and who today recorded Melody’s EP (in London), and worked recently as Pete Doherty’s sound engineer on his gigs. (Melody Says has, by the way, also toured a little with Doherty recently.)
I myself had a completely new experience as a musician working on the Fête de la Musique. When Melody Says asked me to play, as I said, I immediately agreed to do so. The idea was I’d play with my band. But here’s what happened: It being the Fête de la Musique, and me not really having any kind of permanent band (I play with several other musicians occasionally), I discovered that every one of the five or six or more musicians that I have played with were already performing in gigs around Paris in their own regular bands! I almost got one in the end, but he had a very non-understanding employer who would not let him finish work early for his music passion, even on this international music festival day.
So it was that I had to perform solo and act as the warm-up man before the real treat of the evening – Melody Says. Fortunately there was a kind of neighborhood feel to the pub, which, by the way, is called, The Last Drop, and so I found that starting the evening’s music with just my guitar was actually a great way to do things. I did shift from my original desire to play mostly only my owns songs into a decision to play some of the crowd pleasers too, some of the songs, like “Father and Son,” that everyone knows or can sing along with. And as it turned out, both Melody and her bass player joined me for several songs by playing on the drum set behind me. So I chose some very moving, thrusting rhythm songs for those ones and that got the audience warmed up a bit, and it was great fun to play with them.
So all in all it was actually a fabulous evening, and we finished it off by going to Melody Says’ place and doing a little rooftop jamming within sight of the Eiffel Tower and with my Gibson J-200 facing of with Melody’s Epiphone EJ-200, which is the Gibson clone and a fabulous guitar of its own…. Could it have been a better celebration of music in Paris – or rather, Levallois – than that?
PARIS – I love discovering new music venues, and a couple of nights ago I went to a friend’s concert at a place I had never heard of, in Paris, on the “other” side of the Sacré Coeur, and it turns out the bar has existed for music since 1984. How could I have not been there before???
Well, probably part of it is that I so rarely go to other people’s gigs and concerts, being always out doing open mics myself. And because I’m going out to open mics almost every night of the week, I’m always going to the same venues, and not making new discoveries. This bar is called Bab Ilo, and it is a small, cosy bar on the ground floor, with a basement room of the more or less classic Parisian style, where the stage is and the music takes place.
Bab Ilo Bar Was a Full House
It is a very, very cramped quarters in that basement room, and it would be fabulous for an open mic, but Bab Ilo is usually used to host jazz evenings, Latin music, comedy and other recitals. When I arrived for the show, I ordered a beer and paid my five euro entry fee, and went down the narrow staircase to find the room so packed that there was no sitting room – or at least, only on the floor, since all seats were taken.
That meant that I managed to catch only one bit of the first act on video, and the camera is CONSTANTLY moving as I evaded movement of people standing in front of me, and as I moved my body with the push and shove of other people’s bodies, etc. That one video was of the woman who organized the three-part concert, Jeanne La Fonta. She sings amusing, clever, sometimes tongue-in-cheek songs, recites poetry and other writings, and… well, you’ll see in the video. But don’t get sea-sick with my movements.
After her I managed to move down the room to near the front of the stage where I saw on the doorstep to some other room, and I then managed to get a seat at a table after all, as the evening progressed.
The Traditional Finnish Harp of Feather Feather
I also managed to get a few videos of the second group of the evening – although my placement was not perfect, and my telephone invaded the sound at one point. Called Feather Feather, this band features a couple of people singing and a guy on violin, and most interesting of all, the man who La Fonta described as “not looking anything like Pierre Richard,” who is a famous French actor – notably in the 70s – played a very cool and interesting Finnish harp-like instrument the name of which I forget completely…. But have a listen, because it is very cool.
