Numéro deux in the cartes postale summer series comes to you from the sunny south of France. Enjoy!

First Word

So, last week the French title songs that I playlisted were gathering in my head as we travelled south through the UK en route to La Belle France. This time they have been picked for various reasons related to our initial time over here and for some pretty spurious reasons at that, as you will see.

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Lavender Fields – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (2021)

After the sensory explosion of passing through the lavender fields of Provence last week, I couldn’t really pick anything else. We spent a couple of nights on a farm campsite right next to some lavender fields and waking to the perfume in the hot sunny air each morning was memorable. So, yes, I know that Fraser had a track from Carnage in his guest blog only a couple of weeks back but this one just had to go in.

I could shamelessly pilfer great chunks from an excellent piece Cave wrote about the song on his Red Hand Files Q&A website here but I’ll just let you read it yourselves as it tells you all you need to know about this “beautifully deep, sad and uplifting song”, as the person who asked the Q referred to it.

I will however quote the penultimate paragraph where Cave says: ‘Lavender Fields is probably best listened to without too much concern for what it is about, rather it is a song that has, built into Warren’s ever-rising chord sequence, the power to transport us — up and away, away.’

The final para talks about the incredible power of the live performance of the song which Cave and Ellis did on their Carnage tour with their ‘awe-inspiring’ singers, Wendi, Janet and T Jae. Having seen them do this in Glasgow a couple of years back (with Fraser and my friend Marion), I can attest that it was indeed amazing – much more powerful than the recorded version. “We don’t ask who/And we don’t ask why/There is a kingdom in the sky”.

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The Paris Match – The Style Council (1983)

So this is a (pinot noir) hangover from last week where Lynn was unimpressed by this song’s absence on the French titles playlist. Of course, I got arsey about it – yes me, really – and pointed out that the title is not in French (clue: it uses ‘The’ not ‘Le’). However, that point was subtly undermined when I remembered that The Paris Match was originally released in the UK in August 1983 as part of a four-track EP titled À Paris, as can be seen from the 12″ single cover above. Long Hot Summer was the lead track and the EP reached No3 in the UK, thanks in some part to the serendipitous timing of its release in the middle of a rare UK summer heatwave.

So with my tail firmly between my legs, here is Weller’s heartfelt ode to broken hearts and the capital of France, complete with his French lyric: “Je suis tellement triste naturellement/Et j’aime tant de garder ce sentiment”. All four tracks on the EP were recorded pre-heatwave in June 1983 in the Grande Armée Studios in Paris and only released in the UK – elsewhere it was simply Long Hot Summer with one of the other three tracks on the b-side, depending on where it was released. This was peak-period Cappucinno Kid Weller where his impassioned sleeve notes teetered on the brink of a slot on Private Eye’s Pseud’s Corner but we all loved them anyway – see the back sleeve to the EP here.

Those few of you who click that link will see that the recording notes state Paul originally wrote The Paris Match “for leading French Chanteuse Suzanne Toblàt, who recorded it with a French lyric, though it has yet to see a release.” I suspect some (cappuccino) kidology going on here as extensive Googling finds nothing on anyone called Suzanne Toblàt! What did happen of course is that when the Style Council’s first proper LP Café Bleu was released seven months later in March 1984, it included a very different, slower jazzier version, featuring Everything But The Girl’s Ben Watt on guitar and Tracey Thorn on lead vocal. Much as I love the work of Ben’n’Trace, it’s the original version on the playlist as that is Lynn’s preferred take on the song and mine too.  

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Say Hello, Wave Goodbye – Soft Cell (1982)

At the start of this week just gone by, we travelled from Provence down into the Camargue region, right on the coastline of southern France. It is Europe’s largest river delta located south of the city of Arles, between the Mediterranean and the two arms of the Rhône river delta. We were camped up way out on the salt flats and near the site we visited the amazing large pink lagoons that were being dredged for their salt. Outside this, it’s one large nature reserve with an amazing population of birds and there were avocets and amazingly white egrets everywhere. It also hosts one of Europe’s largest colonies of Greater Flamingos and Lynn and I hired bikes and rode along an incredibly rough track (for incredibly rough read sore on the arse), out onto the long curving sea dyke where the flamingos were wading and feeding. Although reduced in number and in their “pinkness” at this time of year, it was an incredible sight.

That evening I couldn’t get one of my favourite ever opening lines from a song out of my head: “Standing in the doorway of The Pink Flamingo, crying in the rain”. So this allows me to belatedly playlist this brilliant Soft Cell track on WIS. Released in January 1982, it was the third in a run of five top five singles from the band and in my view catches Marc Almond and Dave Ball at their creative peak. Lyrically, it is the seedy underbelly of 80s Soho (riffing on the Pink Piano bar) and I love the way Almond intones the words about this doomed affair. It’s real camp torch-singer stuff – listen to him reach down for the word ‘sliding’ on the line: “Under the deep red light/I can see the makeup sliding down”.

Under the guiding hand of producer Mike Thorne, Dave Ball’s layered synths swirl around the melody adding to the drama of the whole thing. I’ve playlisted the 7″ edit which is already over five minutes long but I bought the 12″ version with its glorious additional three minute clarinet intro played by Dave Tofani. An unusual instrument to hear in pop, it gives the song the Gallic feel that is implied by the beret-wearing individual in the graphic on the sleeve.

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Wild Horses – The Rolling Stones (1971)

When you say Camargue to anyone from the UK of my age or thereabouts, the conversation inevitably includes a reference to the 1960s European TV series White Horses which everyone (including me!) thought was set there.  Except it wasn’t – it was set on a stud farm in the former Yugoslavia and made by German TV!  Usually, someone will try to sing the theme tune which was a top ten hit in the UK for Jackie Lee in 1968, with its great muted horn intro and the “On white horses let me ride away” opening line.  Others, usually of a male persuasion, will go dreamy-eyed over the lead character Julia played by Helga Anders who sped up some pre-pubescent heart-rates back then.

Despite this false memory, the wild white horses of the Camargue were something we were keen to see. We came across several fields of horses on our travels which seemed to be in captivity, although they appeared just to be fenced from the roads and free to roam other than that. But while we were out on our bike ride to see the flamingos, Lynn spotted what seemed to be some fully wild horses grazing in the trees. Needless to say I whizzed by them but she stopped and got a couple of good pictures.

There was probably only one tune that could be playlisted on the basis of this story and track three from the Sones’ 1971 epic Sticky Fingers is duly chosen. The music was written by Keith Richards after spending time sharing guitar tunings and drugs with Gram Parsons and you can hear Gram’s cosmic American music influence in the chords and the way the song builds. Gram recorded the tune a year before the Stones when he was recording with the Flying Burrito Brothers but I think Mick’n’Keef’s recording has just got more grit to it in the vocal and the guitar playing.

Footnote: There is a great First Aid Kit song called Wild Horses II which tells the tale of a relationship slowly falling apart while on a road trip, with the brilliant illustrative chorus: “We played Wild Horses on the car stereo/You prefer The Rolling Stones’ and I like Gram’s”. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not happening on our road trip – I don’t think…?

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So Much Wine – The Handsome Family (2000)

As we drove west from the Camargue to Carcassone (via a lunch with our friends Moira and Michel who live in Juvignac), we found ourselves on La Route des Vins du Minervois on the plain of the Cote du Midi. We drove for miles and miles (well, kilometres and kilometres actually but somehow that doesn’t sound as good) and all the way we had vineyards on both sides of the road. And everywhere you looked beyond these vineyards they extended for as far as you could see perpendicular to the road. I now know (because I looked it up) that the grapes being grown include Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, Marsanne among many others. All I could think about was this area must produce so much wine. And, ping, into my head came track 5 on this week’s playlist.

The Handsome Family is an alt-country duo consisting of husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks who formed in Chicago but now work out of Albuquerque in New Mexico. They are perhaps best known for the brilliant Far from Any Road from their album Singing Bones, which was used as the main title theme for the first season of crime drama True Detective in 2014. They produce dark moody tunes, often with considerable black humour and So Much Wine from their 2000 album In The Air perfectly illustrates this. A brutal realisation of the end of a relationship with an alcoholic partner, it pulls no punches with its lyric: “I came back for my clothes/When the sun finally rose/But you were still passed out on the floor”

Footnote. The Wunderkid who is Phoebe Bridgers (part of boygenius and occasional vocalist with The National) has recorded a cover of this but I think it loses something from the male vocal version playlisted, where the relative surprise of the alcoholic being the female half of the relationship struck a chord with me.

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Give My Greetings To The New Brunette – Billy Bragg (1986)

The most spurious of all the connections is the final track on the blog which has only been chosen as it appeared on one of the many playlists that we’ve been entertaining ourselves during the forty odd hours of driving we’ve done since we left home over two weeks ago. A very familiar track to me (it comes from a period where the Bard of Barking was on top of his game), I decided to include it as, listening to it again this time far away from home, I was reminded of the sheer brilliance of his lyrics.

Brunette was released as the second single from “the difficult third album” Talking With The Taxman About Poetry in 1986. The first single had been the sublime Levi Stubbs’ Tears which will definitely feature in a future edition of this blog as I could write a book on it – you have been warned! It had reached the giddy heights of the bottom of the top thirty but the follow up did less well, stalling at No 58 in the chart. It features Johnny Marr on that jangly guitar and the beautiful voice of Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals. I bought the 12inch for its pay no more than £1.99 price and got four other tracks for my money – one of them being a great cover of Woody Guthrie’s incredible Deportees that Bragg recorded with the legend that was Hank Wangford.

Brunette is one of Billy’s classic love songs so I’m just going to let these picks from his wry and insightful lyrics convince you to clasp this song to your hearts as I did all those years ago. Firstly, the thrill of it all:

“(Shirley) It’s quite exciting to be sleeping here in this new room/(Shirley) You’re my reason to get out of bed before noon”

And then their compatibility, or lack of it…

“(Shirely) Your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle/(Shirley) We are joined in the ideological cuddle”

“The people from your church agree/It’s not much of a career/Trying the handles of parked cars/Whoops, there goes another year”

And finally, the hopelessly romantic:

Here we are in our summer years/Living on icecream and chocolate kisses/Would the leaves fall from the trees/If I was your old man and you were my missus

You’d never have thought I’d just met Lynn when this was released…

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Last Word

So it won’t have escaped your attention that the posts have increased in length this week as we’ve not been dashing about as much as we did last week. We’ve still done a lot but our campsites this week have had reasonable WiFi to type a bit in the evening sat in the warm dark air with a cold beer or two out of the van fridge. I could really get used to this, you know!

Picture of the week had to be Lynn capturing one of the wild white horses of the Camargue looking out through the woods where they were grazing. Amazing.

Songs all added to the Master a day or so early in case I forget again!

WeekInSoundMaster

AR