L'amour à la plage

More 10s from my Top 10 continued - "L'amour à la plage" ("Love on the beach") by French pop group Niagara (1986).

I've had a thing for French pop for some time, both French pop from Europe but also Québec and other parts of the world. Where and when did this begin for a little North Carolina po' white trash boy born in the 1960s? It could have been all those years ago, listening to Radio Canada International on shortwave radio as long ago as the early 1970s. It could have been the first time I heard "Soldat" by Vanessa Paradis playing in a shop in San Francisco in 1990. It could be after I read a review of Mylene Farmer's songs, "Je t'aime, mélancolie" and "Désenchantée," in the Village Voice in 1991 or so. It could have been when I heard "Marcia baila" by Les Rita Mitsouko, another group I remember hearing in San Francisco in the early '90s--but one that was always a bit too cool for me. I like my pop pure and unaffected--although it's hard not to appreciate "Marcia baila" all these years later).

Or it could be when I lived in Washington, DC, the center of the universe (hardy har har) in the 1980s. There was a radio station, WHFS I think, known for its new wave and "alternative" music but which on Sundays turned the broadcast over to international language and music programming for the expat communities in the DC area. There was a program that played great pop music from France, and because I didn't know a word of French at the time (and some might argue I still don't), I had no idea what was being played and by whom.

Sometime in the early 1990s, the Express clothing store chain released a French pop compilation cassette, which I bought on a whim to play in my Walkman. And funnily enough, it featured some of the songs I remembered from a few years before on WHFS. That was likely the moment when the connection formed between the musical memory and the practicality of titles and artists.

One of my favorites on that cassette--and one that I remembered from years before--was "L'amour à la plage" by Niagara. "C'est l'amour à la plage (aouu cha cha cha), mes yeux dans tes yeux (aou aouuu)."

It's the tail end of winter here in Toronto. As I write this, I'm staring out at Lake Ontario, catching a glimpse of a marina and possibly one of Toronto's beaches in the distance, listening to this song, and trying to imagine that my French pop fantasy-scape is just ahead on the horizon, just out of reach, but only a few sunny days away ....

And that's what I like about French pop: Hope for sunny days ahead tempered by a twist of winter's melancholia and life's disenchantment.

I'm still driving around Montréal

Or perhaps Paris ... at least in my own mind ....

Je reviendrai

Sometimes when I'm driving around the aesthetic dissatisfaction that is the 401/427 corridor in suburban Toronto, I tune the radio to Ici Musique, Radio-Canada's French-language music channel. While driving around listening to Francophonie and world pop sounds, I like to pretend I'm actually in Montréal.

Hearing something like this--"Ascenseur Tropical" by Quebec electro-pop group Le Couleur--almost makes me believe I am there.

Blue jeans sur la plage (Summer soundtrack #3)

From Québec avec summer amour, Les Hou-Lops (or, if you prefer, Les Têtes Blanches, which appears to have been an alternate name for the group), performing their non-iTunes available hit from 1965 or so, "Blue jeans sur la plage."

Don't call me bambola

No social commentary required for this one--I just love this song, "Bambola," by Montréal-born Italian-Canadian Betta Lemme. Thus the song is sung in French, Italian, and English.

I discovered this song on my new favorite internet-streamed radio station, "La Première," from--wait for it--Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, France's overseas territory, Newfoundland-adjacent. Seriously, the islands are reputed to be more Franco than North American and the music the station plays reflects the metropole. Et c'est magnifique!

If you need a summer hit for these cold winter months, voilà! Ici Betta Lemme, baby.

On the next episode of MadMen . . .

Don and Meaghan go to Paris and meet Serge Gainsbourg and Brigit Bardot.

No, not really, but I can dream.

Happy birthday, Ford Mustang. Leave it to the French and Serge to sum up your very American, very international appeal.

* * *

But my original idea isn't so ridiculous. Although I kinda suspect Brigit could manger Meaghan for le petit déjeuner.

A Parisian in America

The beauty of a lot of French pop--at least in my mind, at least in my ear--is that you never know if you're listening to something real or just some grand absurdist joke.

With Claudettes no less.

This is not a criticism, mind you. It's what makes--in my mind, in my ear--French pop so exceptional. Not to mention merveilleuse et extraordinaire et formidable.

Vraiment, you don't get this kind of crazy fabulousité in American pop, at least not in the mainstream (which, come to think of it, is what pop is). Maybe some in British pop--or at least from time to time. Maybe some others, too, like Norwegian pop star/DJ Annie back when she was doing "pop with jagged edges" like "Chewing Gum" and "I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me." Not so much nowadays. Can't see Katy Perry tackling this. Lady Gaga thinks she's Katerine, but she's not even close.

Anyway, chapeaux off to Saturday Night Live and their sketch "Les Jeunes de Paris" for introducing me to the psycho disco vision that is Katerine and Ses Claudettes Enceintes. 

Could it be that Americans are slowly but surely pulling our collective, national head out of our collective, national butt and paying attention to life beyond our borders? Or at least the kind of life that interests little ol' moi? Incroyable!