The tunes in this carte postale were inspired by our last full week in France, spent in the slightly cooler climes of the north west of the country. Enjoy!
Tellin’ Stories – The Charlatans (1997)
Our week began in a small town east of Nantes called Saint-Julien-de-Concelles where we touched down in a campsite next to a small lake with the intention of going into Nantes to see the city. But fate intervened. My old mate Mark had made me aware that Chod and Eilidh, our mutual friends from Glasgow, were travelling down the west of France in their van en route to Spain as we were travelling north. Through the miracle of WhatsApp, we connected and they arranged a pitch on our site for a night. We had a brilliant catch-up as it was some 6 years or so since we had seen them.
They arrived mid-afternoon and by 4pm the four of us were huddled around our camping table with cups of tea and the blethering began. This blethering carried on into the early evening when the vin was opened but was put on hold for an hour until we each made some food. We soon reconvened with more wine and the blethering intensified as darkness fell. Chod is one of my favourite story tellers, an incredibly funny bloke with a wicked sense of humour. Since we last saw them in the French Alps in 2018, he has been through extensive treatment for cancer and, although physically impacted, he was still the same hilarious raconteur with the same lust for life he always had.
So, although probably not to Chod’s musical taste, I’ve gone for a first appearance on the blog for The Charlatans and the title track of their highly successful fifth LP which was a hit single for them in 1997, complete with it’s Christine Keeler sleeve. Band leader and all-round good guy Tim Burgess wrote the lyrics and several of them strike a chord with me about spending time with old mates. Lines like “Live for the day” and “It’s just about knowing where you come from” resonate and that chorus “I’ll be there in the mornin’/Can’t you see I’m tellin’ stories” stands out. I think the message from all this nonsense is that if you have someone you’ve not seen for a while then make the effort and get in touch and arrange to meet up to tell a few stories. You’ll not regret it!
Wash In The Rain – The Bees (2004)
Before we left the site at Saint-Julien-de-Concelles, we had a stroll around the lake and there were several family groups coming together to barbecue and have their Sunday lunch on picnic tables, which had been located across some beautifully planted parkland. Kids were running around playing, older folk sat on the benches chatting and those doing the cooking did so as only the French can – with much animated talking and waving of arms. There were boards explaining the ecology behind the planting of the park and even though the lake was used for watersports (Lynn rented a paddleboard for a short turn around the small islands), the whole thing felt very relaxed and chilled. In one quiet corner there was an area set aside for bee hives to assist in the pollination of the wild flowers and as we watched from a safe distance hundreds of worker bees flew in an out the hive.
The connection to playlisting a single by The Bees from 2004 is pretty tenuous and I must admit that, after their second album Free The Bees, I lost touch with this band from the Isle of Wight. Their first record Sunshine Hit Me was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2002 but it was their follow-up that caught my ear, particularly lead single Wash In The Rain, which got plenty of airplay and even reached 31 in the UK singles chart. It has a sunny, sixties pysch-pop sound to it which I found hard to resist when set to a jaunty beat with a hook chorus. Quite what the lyric “When you’re holding out/You can wash in the rain” actually means, I’m not too sure but, hey, it can mean what you like, can’t it? A nice piano part hammers away throughout and the guitar solo hits the spot too. Their last recordings were in 2011 but there are rumours of a new record coming this year.
Shipbuilding – Robert Wyatt (1982)
On Monday we ventured into Nantes to see a few things. It was a successful trip despite the best efforts of the local authority to frustrate us by having height restrictions on every city Park & Ride on the city’s impressive public transport network meaning we couldn’t get the van in. Nantes is France’s sixth largest city and, like Bordeaux, is an old port situated at the start of a major river estuary out into the Atlantic, in this case the Loire. Most of the Loire’s river channels have been reclaimed in the city leaving only two major channels which form the large Ile de Nantes between them.
Lynn was keen to see the artistic project called Les Machines de l’île which is a kind of steam-punk park located in the former shipyards whose slipways, steel dock bases and sheds are all still in place. It blends the invented worlds of Nantes-born Jules Verne and the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci with the industrial heritage of the city and is great fun. There is a 12m tall Great Elephant which walks about the site squirting water at delighted kids from its mechanical trunk. You can also climb aboard the Marine Worlds Carrousel with your kids and pull the leavers on three decks of fantastic sea creatures as they rise and fall with the waves.
The exhibition and machine workshops are housed in the massive old construction sheds and images of the artists/engineers building their machines are interspersed with images of men fabricating ships in the early part of last century. These images reminded me of Stanley Spencer’s paintings of shipbuilders in the Lithgows Shipyard in Port Glasgow on the River Clyde and the excerpt from Riveters that was used to illustrate the sleeve of Robert Wyatt’s Shipbuilding. Writer/producer Clive Langer had written the song with Robert Wyatt’s incredible voice in mind but could not get a lyric he was happy with. Langer played the tune to Elvis Costello who quickly produced what he considers to be his best lyric set against the backdrop of the Falklands War and the irony of re-opening shipyards to send the shipbuilders’ sons off to war. Robert Wyatt was approached to sing it and, with Steve Nieve on piano and Mark Bedford from Madness on upright bass, this stunning single emerged on Rough Trade Records in August 1982, among all the victory parades and flag waving. It didn’t chart until it was re-released on the first anniversary of the war in April 1983. Every line is near perfect but there is something about that haunting refrain at the end that just cuts so deep: “With all the will in the world/Diving for dear life/When we could be diving for pearls”
Costello recorded his own excellent version of the song on his album Punch The Clock, which was co-produced by Langer. It has a truly sublime trumpet solo by Chet Baker but, in my humble opinion, Bedder’s bass playing and the pathos in Wyatt’s voice gives the single version the edge.
Castles In The Air – The Colourfield (1985)
With its incredible history of conflict, you are never far from a chateau in France and the north west of the country is no exception. As well as Nantes, we’ve been in Saint Malo this week and both cities have castles which stand out. Along with the Cathedral St. Pierre, the Château des ducs de Bretagne is Nantes’ most important historic building. It was originally built in the late 15th century by François II (the last Duke of Brittany) and developed significantly by his daughter, Anne of Brittany, who was twice Queen of France. Anne was a busy woman as she was also responsible for the castle in Saint Malo which was built into the city’s amazing landward and seaward defensive walls. While the castle in Nantes has been beautifully restored, only the main towers and some of the original structure remain from Anne’s day, with the internal courtyards now housing the administrative Hotel de Ville in the 19th century barracks buildings.
So castles have been on my mind this week and it offers up the opportunity for me to playlist this terrific single from 1985 by The Colourfield. I think it shows that Terry Hall was the vocalist for not one great band, not even two great bands but three! Although The Colourfield are probably his least well-known incarnation, they did record some terrific stuff. The Colourfield’s sound continued the musical transition that Hall had begun moving from The Specials to Fun Boy Three, adopting a melodic 60s/70s pop vibe often enhanced by string arrangements. They had their only major hit with Thinking Of You in February 1985 which reached the giddy heights of No 12 in the UK chart. They released their debut LP Virgins and Philistines in April 1985 and Castles In The Air was issued as a single which I ran out and bought immediately as it was just such a great record. Sadly, I was in the minority as, despite wide radio airplay and promotional double pack singles, the tune struggled to reach No 51. The LP did better business achieving a UK album chart placing of No 12 and in retrospect is seen as a forerunner of the music produced by The Beautiful South and The Lightning Seeds in the 90s. As an added bonus, the LP includes a great cover of The Roches’ Hammond Song which Hall’s great voice suits so well – it really is worth a listen, so click that link now!
Public Service Broadcasting – Spitfire (2012)
I’ve been wanting to visit the historic fortress city of Saint Malo on the north coast of Brittany ever since I finished reading the book All The Light We Cannot See. Written by Anthony Doerr, it’s a brilliant novel which is centred around the siege of Saint Malo in 1944 when the occupying German forces were dug in under aerial bombardment from the US Air Force. It was recently made into a Netflix drama which wasn’t bad but the book is so much better and I’d urge anyone who enjoyed the series to read it.
The town didn’t disappoint. It has a long history of piracy by the Corsairs who were protected by its amazing defensive walls and forts set on rocky outcrops and islands close to the shore. So, it’s easy to see how the German army managed to hold out so long under sustained bombing. By the end, these attacks damaged nearly all of the historic city but, incredibly, the buildings were all rebuilt in their original form between 1948 and 1960 by a determined post-war French government. The Germans only surrendered on 17 Aug 1944 when they saw the impact of bombs the Americans dropped that day made with a secret new material. They were dropped by two small planes on the Alet promontory opposite the main harbour of the citadel, which is where our campsite was located. The secret new material was revealed many years later to have been napalm.
When in the city, we visited an exhibition of photographs taken in the last days of the siege by American Lee Miller, the only female war photographer in Europe at the time. A former fashion model turned photo-journalist, she lived an incredible life and her photos were amazing to see displayed in a small chapel in the city they were taken, eighty years ago.
While it was American aircraft which forced the liberation of Saint Malo in Brittany in the summer of 1944, we also found a monument to the crew of a RAF Lancaster bomber which crashed with full loss of young lives in Giverny in Normandy at the same time. The music I’m playlisting is taken from the second EP by Public Service Broadcasting released in 2012 which was titled The War Room. The tracks featured samples from different British WW2 propaganda films and the cover used a photograph of the bomb-damaged library in Holland House in Kensington, London. Although not the same type of planes as used in the liberation of France, given its major role in assisting the Allies defeat the Nazi regime, I’m playlisting the brilliant Spitfire. It features samples taken from the 1942 movie The First Of The Few which was produced and directed by Leslie Howard who also starred as R. J. Mitchell, the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft. It is a sensational merging of contemporary music with historic audio, just as we’ve come to expect from J Willgoose Esq and the others who make up PSB, and it remains a highlight of their live set to this day. The War Room EP was dedicated to Willgoose’s great-uncle George Willgoose who died at Dunkirk. Also, following Leslie Howard’s performance in The First Of The Few, he was killed when the Lisbon-to-London civilian airliner in which he was travelling was shot down by the Luftwaffe on 1 June 1943.
Bow Wow Wow – Go Wild In The Country (1982)
This morning, Lynn and I got up sharp and made the short drive from our campsite in an old chateau in a wee town called Bouafles to the nearby town of Giverny. Those of you in the know will be aware that this is where Claude Monet lived the later part of his life and painted many of his most famous works. Among other things, there is the opportunity to visit his house and walk around his gardens including around the famous lily ponds. It has become a very popular tourist attraction with large car parks, so we went early to try and beat the crowds. At first, it felt a bit like an Impressionist Disneyland – signposted walkways under the main road leading you to different entrances – but actually it was a really impressive experience. The house was fascinating but the gardens were incredible – crammed full of every flower you could imagine and all in full summer bloom. Although the lily flowers had passed, the pond which Monet had constructed 150 years ago still looked fantastic.
As we discussed our plan to visit Giverny in the campsite bar the night before, I mentioned to Lynn that, not coming from an artistic background, the first time I had really picked up on Monet was through music. I went on to tell how the great music svengali Malcolm McLaren had moved on from his string-pulling with the Sex Pistols and created the band Bow Wow Wow. He put the former rhythm section of Adam’s early Ants together with the then 13-year-old Annabella Lwin on lead vocals. After winding up EMI Records with their first cassette-only single promoting home taping (C30-C60-C90 Go!) and continuing this with their debut LP titled Your Cassette Pet, he moved on to his next wheeze for their second album. He arranged for Andy Earl to take the cover photograph showing the band recreating Monet’s painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Although by then Lwin was 15, the cover caused outrage as she is posing in the nude, albeit carefully posed. Scotland Yard began an investigation and McLaren and the band were forbidden to leave the UK. However, McLaren had got his publicity as usual and I recall him quoted in the NME as saying “we’re only it in for the Monet”.
All during this fascinating monlogue, Lynn was looking at me with a puzzled look on her face. Are you sure this was Monet, she asked – he wasn’t really known for painting people? Yes, I said boldly reaching for my phone to discover that Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe was, of course, painted by Édouard Manet! No matter, I thought – it gives me my last track for the blog. The infamous photo was reproduced in monochrome on the cover of the second single from the LP, Go Wild In The Country, which gave the band their first top ten hit in the UK. It’s a rattling good tune with those drums cracking away and Lwin’s distinctive vocal belting out a bizarre McLaren lyric all about disdain for town life, lonely streets and takeaway food, and a desire to “go wild in the country/where snakes in the grass are absolutely free”. Apparently, he was going through a phase where he believed the roots of modern culture lay in primitive societies. As pop svengalis went, he was as mad as a box of frogs.
Late edit – picture of the week is Monet’s Lily Pond – that’s Monet with an ‘o’:
Last Word
So the great tour is drawing to its close with our ferry back to Blightly booked for next Wednesday evening and then the long drive north to Fife. With all the travel, I am unlikely to have much time to give any great thought to next week’s blog so I feel a themed edition coming on. We shall see.
It is notable that all this week’s tracks are by UK bands and five of the six are making their WIS debut. So who’s been on before, do you think? While you are working that one out, be assured I have added this week’s selection to the very large basket of goods that is the Master Playlist. And hopefully, I’ve only added them once this week…
AR
Week In Sound 
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