Q: How old were you when you started to play guitar? A: If you were taller than the guitar, you were too old.

This is almost beyond belief:

Listen to Now: Umphrey's McGee

Never need to apologize for more UM.

One of my favorites:

Watching/Listening Now: Smells Like Teen Spirite

Several versions of the song which comes in at number 7 on the Rolling Stone best ever list:

First, a Ukelele Orchestra

Next, Bad Plus

Finally, the original (in a somewhat overdone video).  But the sound is good.

Listen to Now: Bo Diddley

Yes, another distraction.

But what radical music for 1955.

Evidently this was from the Ed Sullivan show.  This is from wikipedia:

On November 20, 1955, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show, where he infuriated the host. "I did two songs and he got mad," Bo Diddley later recalled. "Ed Sullivan said that I was one of the first colored boys to ever double-cross him. Said that I wouldn't last six months". The show had requested that he sing the Merle Travis-penned Tennessee Ernie Ford hit "Sixteen Tons", but when he appeared on stage, he sang "Bo Diddley" instead. This substitution resulted in his being banned from further appearances.

Watching Now: Perpetual Groove

Still undecided about these guys, but definitely a Jam Band, and decent sound and picture and jam in this clip:

Vies with 'Slightly Stoopid' as worse name for a jam band however.  Not that Umphrey's McGee or Disco Biscuits are much better.

Jam Bands. What strikes you?

These are the Jam Bands I am enjoying most:

Umphrey's McGee
   - formed at the University of Notre Dame in 1997
Phish
   - formed at the University of Vermont in 1982
Disco Biscuits
   - formed at the University of Philadelphia in 1995
moe.
    - formed at the University of Buffalo in 1989
New Monsoon
    - formed at Penn State in 1998
String Cheese Incident
    - formed by ski bums in Colorado in 1993

And as proof of sorts...UM from 1998

Watching Now: Lotus

Music for a Saturday morning...

Lotus is on the margins of my jam band interests and also kind of a guilty pleasure.

But at least it's still a guitar band.

Watching Now: Disco Biscuits

If you're keeping track...I'm trying to provide samples from the best jam bands:

Umphrey McGee: (11/15) In the Kitchen
moe. (11/12): Crabeyes
New Monsoon: (11/14) Greenhouse
Phish (11/15): Stash and Bathtub Gin

Now it's Disco Biscuit's turn.  Odd rhythms for about 2 and a half minutes, then a smooth transition to something funkier.

Coming soon:
String Cheese Incident
Lotus

Watching Now: phish

Can you do you a bunch of jam bands without some phish.

Two vids, both of pretty good songs.

The first is shot close enough that you can see what they look like.  Be sure to catch the familiar snippet in the piano break (around the 2:30 mark).

This gives a better sense of what a show might be like.

Watching Now: Steve Albini?

Not a jam band.  Just something I found while browsing

And this clearly isn't Steve Albini.  But Albini did a cover, which I consider the definitive version.

Here's the original.

And here's the Albini cover (unfortunately couldn't find a live version).

(Billy Gibbons -- the ZZ Top guitar player -- is highly respected by Eric Clapton and ZZ Top has been included in the Crossroads guitar festival for several years.)

Watching Now: New Monsoon

Happy jam band music, nicely recorded.

Watching Now: moe.

Playing iPads.

Really.  Watch:

And here's a version in none-virtual instruments:

Jam Bands

I've been listening to Jam bands recently.

Here's the line-up, more or less in order of preference

Umphrey's McGee
Disco Biscusts
New Monsoon
Lotus
moe.
Phish
String Cheese Incident
O.A.R.
Perpetual Groove
Tea Leaf Green
STS9
Widespread Panic
Gov't Mule

Which has a led to some old fusion:
Weather Report
Return to Forever

And some rediscoveries or overlooked cross-overs:
Garaj Mahal
Medeski, Martin, and Woods
Vandermark 5
Chad Wackerman
Allan Holdsmith
Bill Bruford
Mahavishu Orchestra

The  common denominator:
live performance with extended jams/improvisations, locomotive rhythms.

I'm listening to a live version of this as I write:

(I've stayed away from  obvious: Grateful Dead,  and the Allman Bros.  Just not that interested in that right now.)

Watching Now: Medeski, Martin and Wood

This is too long to watch casually, but I didn't want to lose track of it.

Watchng Now. Rusted Root

A bit outside my normal play list, but especially interesting to see how the delivery of the lyrics are 'distorted' to support the melody.

I don't think I ever saw the movie that used this.  Iceage -- a Disney animated movie I think.

Watching Now: Umphrey's McGee

One of my favorite Umphrey tune's, in a high quality video (sound and pic), as a full 16 minute jam

Other things worth checking out on this site as well:

http://www.myspace.com/video/jamcamdvd

Quiet since July?

This may get things started again.

More Jam Bands to come.

Theory. Coltrane cycle

This is mostly just a way to get started on the next theory post after a two week absence.


The Coltrane cycle (from wikipedia):


"In jazz harmony, the Coltrane changes (Coltrane Matrix or cycle, also known as chromatic third relations and multi-tonic changes) are a harmonic progression variation using substitute chords over common jazz chord progressions. These substitution patterns were first demonstrated by jazz musician John Coltrane on the album Blue Train on the tunes "Lazy Bird" and "Moment's Notice". Coltrane continued his explorations on the 1960 album Giant Steps, and expanded upon the substitution cycle in his compositions "Giant Steps" and "Countdown", the latter of which is a reharmonized version of Miles Davis's "Tune Up." The ability to solo over the Giant Steps/Coltrane cycle remains one of the standards by which a jazz musician's improvising ability is measured."



Here is 'Countdown':

And here is 'Tune Up', on which it was based:

Listening to Now. Jacki Terrason and Michel Portal`

Not quite on topic, but Michel Portal is the justification...

Well, actually, the intimate view of the keyboard is the justification.  Hands faster than the camera can capture.

But don't worry Kate. Very accessible and a familiar tune.

This appears to be a segment of a film.  Some research is indicated.

Francois Tusques. Some background.

More on Francois Tusques, quoted extensively from the excellent review by Clifford Allen (http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=20242)


"François Tusques, while almost unknown outside his native France, is certainly among the rare few of the European [jazz] not have been summarily left by the wayside over the course of the music's history.]. Not only is Tusques a crucial figure in the development of the music in his sector of the continent, but so crucial that he was able to record the first true French free jazz record (Free Jazz, reissued by In Situ)—a claim which, Stateside, is not even Ornette Coleman's."


"[In the mid 1960's], there was a coterie of French improvisers for whom American-derived bebop was not the end, if even the means. Composer, arranger and sometime pianist Jef Gilson (who eventually began the famed Palm Records) was one of the ringleaders of the Parisian new jazz scene, mentoring young players like trumpeter Bernard Vitet, tenor man Jean-Louis Chautemps, drummer Charles Saudrais, bassist Beb Guerin and other soon-to-be leading lights. Tusques, though, was the only pianist at the time in Paris willing to extend those steps into the demanding compositional sound-world of 'free jazz,' and those who saw a continuous upward- and outward-mobility with this music looked to Tusques as a fulcrum.

"By 1965, Vitet, Chautemps, Saudrais, and Portal (then primarily a classical clarinetist) had asked Tusques to compose a number of loose springboard-pieces to work on as a group, which led to the recording of Free Jazz for poet Marcel Moloudji's tiny Moloudji label. In company with German vibraphonist-reedman Gunter Hampel's Heartplants (Saba, 1965) and trumpeter Manfred Schoof'sVoices (CBS, 1966), Free Jazz is among the very earliest documents of a wholly European improvised music, one which springs more greatly from regional influences than those from across the Atlantic."

Jazz History. Francois Tusques

If one of the defining elements of French jazz is the classical training of many of the musicians, another is the commitment of many of them to social change.

Francois Tusques was a primary contributor to that side of French jazz.

Here's a sample of his work.

Notice that Michel Portal appears on this recording too.

Listening to Now. New Phonic Art

European jazz has roots not just in American jazz, but also in European classical music, especially the experimental music from the turn of the century.

New Phonic Art can stand as one example. It consisted of four avant-garde musicians:

Carlos Roqu Alsina. Born in Buenos Aires in 1941. Composer and pianist; studied composition with Luciano Berio; has been a freelance composer in Berlin since 1964.

Jean-Pierre Drouet. Born in Bordeaux in 1935. Premier Prix du Conservatoire de Paris for percussion.

Vinko Globokar. Born in Anderny, France, in 1934. Premier Prix du Conservatoire de Paris for trombone and chamber music; studied composition with Luciano Berio and Ren Leibowitz.

Michel Portal. Born in Bayonne in 1935. Premier Prix du Conservatoire de Paris for clarinet. Laurat des Concours internationaux in Geneva in 1963 and in Budapest in 1965.


from an Interview with Michel Portal:

"New Phonic Art was something else altogether; improvisation became a fashion and a formula, and it seemed like composers and musicians were afraid of losing control over what was played. So this was a test. Of course, there is the fact that we wanted to improvise, and improvisation has a quality of bringing together very good things and very bad things, but the will to improvisation is nevertheless very strong. For me, it was a conflict between the written tradition and what was "spoken," if you will. New Phonic Art was a tool of two composers who were trying to go in this direction [Stockhausen and Kagel], and also of performance.

<snip>

"But eventually we had to stop the group, because we had reached the limits of what could happen with the personalities of the players and with the ensemble. As it was pure improvisation, one could tell what the others were going to do before they did it. One of the musicians was a sad guy, and he'd always start his improvisations with a lament: "oooh, oooh, mmm... and I always thought "I know who's doing that!" No matter what he was doing or what anybody else did, that's always how it went. So, it was done. Also, it had become common to incorporate freedom into some sort of written form, as a tool, and that made more sense to us."

--http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=18096

Django lives.

...in the Twin Cities too.

France Travel Journal. Day 23 (Wed, June 22) - Toulouse

The end.

A pleasant day shopping, but forgot the wine gummies.

Home tomorrow before dark.

Planning next year.

This seems reasonable as a last thing:

France Travel Journal. Day 22 (Tues., June 21) - Toulouse

A varied day, ending with the Fete de Musique.

Morning: took metro to the memorial site of the 1814 Battle of Toulouse.  Much more interesting than I anticipated, though the site was just a monument and a plaque diagramming the battle.

But it made real an important part of the French Revolution, and also the geography of Toulouse.  Napoleon surrendered 2 days before the battle, but that wasn't know at the time.  He was exiled shortly thereafter.

Late morning: metro back to St. Cyprien, to look for 3 Wallace fountains.  We found them all!

Lunch: walked back to the Toulouse side of the Garonne and had lunch at a perky student restaurant.

Break: went to hotel to clean up and rest. Also stopped and purchased Calvados and Hypocras.

Late afternoon/evening:  walked to Garden Royale and Garden des Plantes to search out the remaining Wallace fountains.  We had given up finding the final one, but spotted it just as we were being chased out of the Garden des Plantes, which was closing for the night.

Then, the Fetes de Musique. Kate took many movies.  Great fun. Huge crowds. Lots of booming bass, and very interesting mix of novel instruments and electronic dj mashes.  Kind of a measure of what young musicians are doing today

France Travel Journal. Day 21 (Mon., June20) - Toulouse

The morning started quietly.  We were the last party for breakfast, and strolled a bit before walking up to Pam and Morgan's house for an extremely pleasant lunch.

I didn't see the house last year of course but it evidently was practically a ruin. This year it had become an elegant French house, with one floor built around a small garden. It was exquisite, and a fine of example of the life behind the door.  French streets and house fronts can look shabby, neglected, even rather soiled and off-putting.  But behind these is where the French live, with elegance and grace.

Later in the day we did some window shopping, and had an excellent dinner in the place St. George.  After, a walk along the Garonne to close the day.  There were many, many people relaxing on the banks of the Garonne.

(PS.  Also stopped at Barclay's to straighten out the credit card issue.  It was totally unlike a bank: no teller windows, just a receptionist and some offices.  We met with a 'personal' banker, who discovered that for some mysterious reason, my card had been cancelled.  However, the account was in good standing, and appropriately reflected recent transactions.  I was also able to arrange to have the mot de passage reset and confirm that travle and car rental insurance was covered by the card.  By the way, 'personal' was not entirely untoward.  She had introduced herself via email several months ago, and had a reconrd of our correspondence.)

This is not a French song, but much of it is sung in French. (Ok, a cheap post, but it brings me up-to-date.)

France Travel Journal. Day 20 (Sun., June 19) - Toulouse

We left Lunac in the morning, and drove to Toulouse.  After an unintentionally serpentine path into the centre, we parked the car, consolidated luggage and packages, and dropped them off at the hotel.

Lunch with Kate's Alliance Francais friend Ruiz, and his companion Christof.  I ordered Toulousian sausage, to to assure that I had a least one meal of it.

Then returned the car, and took the Navette back from the airport.

But the social day continued.  We had dinner with our friends Bertrand and Cecile at their home, and we joined by Pam and Morgan. Pam was hugely pregnant.  She's due on the 28th of June.

Here's some more Michel Portal.  It's a bit out of place -- the next posts really should be about the emergence of free jazz in France in the late 60's -- but given Portal's importance to French jazz, it really needs no apology.

France Travel Journal. Day 19 (Sat., June 18) - Lunac

(Feels like a bit of a sprint to keep the posts more or less current.  So this will be another short one.)

The weather was again uncertain, but we decided to take a walk anyway.  It worked out.  We walked without a plotted randonnee however, and looped back to our starting point earlier than planned.

So in the afternoon, we decided to drive into Villefranche de Rourgue.  We arrived late in the afternoon, so it was very quiet.  Villefranche is a bastid, and consisted of a central square and very gridded streets -- right angles and no meandering narrow paths.

Bastides were planned communities -- thus accounting for their regular layouts -- established by nobles to encourage commerce and produce new tax revenues.  Taxes were collected on trades, rather than production, which I imagine made them similar to sales taxes.  Peasants were encouraged to move into the bastide, and develop goods for trade, though they also kept their land for crop production, which was also was used in trade.

I've been trying to sort out how a bastide differs from a villefrance, but without success.  This is the first time wikipedia has come up short.

France Travel Journal, Day 18 - bis

This musical posting is a bit of a stretch, in several ways. I was mislead by a sign that suggested the composer had been born in the Aveyron, though it turned out it was his father who had been. Also, it's not jazz.

On the other hand, it's an opera, and subject of which is Carmelite nuns and the French revolution.

Here's some extra info

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 - 30 January 1963) was a French composer and a member of the French group Les Six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio,opera, ballet music, and orchestral music. Critic Claude Rostand, in a July 1950 Paris-Presse article, described Poulenc as "half monk, half delinquent" ("le moine et le voyou"), a tag that was to be attached to his name for the rest of his career.

Poulenc was a member of Les Six, a loose-knit group of young French and Swiss composers (it also included Milhaud, Auric,Durey, Honegger and Tailleferre) who had links with Erik Satie, Jean Hugo and Jean Cocteau. He embraced the Dada movement's techniques, creating melodies more appropriate for Parisian music halls than the concert hall.

France Travel Journal. Day 18 (Fri, June 17) - Lunac

Today we traveled to Lunac, but stopped in Rodez (pronounced row-daze) on the way.

The principal thing we wanted to was the menhir museum, though went to the Cathedrale first. The Cathedrale was an impressive, instituional church. As Kate put it, it was a church that knew it's business was serious, and took it seriously.

It was by far the largest church we have visited this trip, and it was more gothic than we'd previously seen in Southern France.

After, we drove to Lunac, a tiny town south of Villefrance de Rouergue (pronounced row-er-gha).  It was too small to even have a restaurant.

The hotel is a Chambre d'Hote, and this is our first experience with one. Our room is chateau, and to reach the room, you go up a circular staircase.

We been in many museum/castles with rooms like this: wooden beamed 15 foot ceiling, fireplace, 2 foot walls.  An amazing way to end our wandering.

BTW, Chambre d'Hote basically means rooms in someone's home.  There were 3 rooms in this Chambre d'Hote, though we are the only guest.  It is a very personal experience: we take petit dejeuner in the family dining room, our room is not made up at night, we are given a key to house when we leave at night and let ourselves in. When we went out for a walk, they offered us a sweater and cloak in case it rained.

A test of our French, which thus has been up to it!

France Travel Journal. Day 17 (Thurs., June 16) - Estaing

Another overcast and threatening day,so we jumped in the car and drove to:

St.Euluie -- one of the official 'most beautiful villages in France'.  It was.
St.Genie -- It wasn't. Pleasant enough, but nothing particularly interesting.
Lagouile -- Of the knives fame.  I was prepared to purchase a set, but what was available in the many shops were crafts/arts knives. Local craftsmen purchase the plade from the eponymous factory, and then add handles. They were beautiful, but very expensive: 140 Euro's per knife was not unusual.

French music. I continue to be distracted by the need to convert a flac file to mp3, and so research has been slight. I hope to catch up again in Toulouse.

France Travel Journal. Day 16 (Wed., June 15) - Estaing

We took a pleasant randonne into Estaing. Kate gives a particularly nice description, with some evocative pictures, on her blog.


I've been a bit stymied on musical posts.  I found a clip I want to include, but it's in flac format, and I've been having trouble converting it to an mp3.


In the meantime, this is what it is:



New Phonic Art.

In Europe during the late 60s, there was no historical precedent for free jazz, but improvisation was seen by composers as a way to escape the dead end of serial music, with composers like Penderecki, Stockhausen, Morricone and Bernd Alois Zimmermann employing free musicians to various ends. Argentinian-born, Cologne-based composer Mauricio Kagel even went so far as to bring homemade and non-Western instruments (and improvisation) to his situationist excursions. The Paris-based group New Phonic Art, formed in 1969 by trombonist/composer Vinko Globokar, jazz/classical reedman Michel Portal, percussionist Jean-Pierre Drouet and Argentine composer/keyboardist Carlos Roqué Alsina, had connections to the very different music of Kagel and Stockhausen. Though initially New Phonic Art performed compositions, by the early 1970s their meetings became wholly improvised. 

- from a review by Clifford Allen in Paris TransAtlantic Magazine

France Travel Journal. Day 15 (Tues., June 14) - Travel to Estaing

The musical segment of this post is taking extra time. I'm hot on the trail of some of the origins of French jazz, but it is requiring a bit of additional research.

So for the record...yesterday was primarily a travel day.  We wonder around Aix-en-Province for the morning, leaving around noon.  It was a 4 hour drive to Estaing, mostly on pleasant French freeways/toll roads.

The highlight was crossing the Millou bridge.  Kate took another video.

We arrived at our destination around 5:00.  The hotel, which we are staying in for 3 nights, is fabulous.  But you'll need to read Kate's blog for the details.

Time now for a randonnee.

France Travel Journal. Day 14 (Mon, June 13) - Aix-en-Province

A day exploring the city.  There were no destination sites, but we spend a pleasant day strolling the medival streets of the 'centre'.  It's a prosperous city, with a small square and fountain at every turn.  Kate liked it very much, and it's certainly rival to Toulouse.

Two things we did see were:

the Cathedrale Saint Sauveur -- which was multilayered historically, with visible elements from a Roman forum in the bapistry, a Merovigian segment, a Mediterian romanesque nave, and a gothic entrance.  It also had a unique cloister -- unique because it was never associated with a monastary.

the Musee de Beaux Arts --which contained as many Picasso pieces as I've ever seen in one place.  On the other hand, the Cezanne collection was disappointing: 9 paintings, but none in most mature and recognizable style.

Today's music.

Django Reinhart defined a unique voice for French jazz, but development was interrupted by WWII, and then dominated by the hard bebop Americans (Coltrane, Coleman, etc.).  There was extensive interchange between the two countries, but French jazz didn't seem to develop its own voice until the late sixities.

That voice was based on two things: Classical training,and by association, use of the violin.

Here's an obvious though not very subtle example:

Jacques Loussier playing Bach:

France Travel Journal. Day 13 (Sun., June 12) - Orange & Saint-Vaison-le-Romain

This is all I can manage tonight.  It was a long day: the Theatre in Orange, the ruins in Saint-Vaison-le-Romain, and the drive down to Aix-en-Province.

And finding parking in Aix-en-Province.

We went to dinner on the rue Mirabeau, and stopped to hear a band perform a very credible version of this:
.

France Travel Journal. Day 12 (Sat., June 11) - Orange

It's now evening, and we have arrived in Orange.   We started the day visiting the famous Uzes marche, which is held every Saturday in the summer.  It was huge, with booths and stands and tables filling every sidewalk and square. There were many arts and crafts on display, and we bought several souvenirs.


We then headed toward Orange, but detoured slightly to a city famous for it's ceramics (not famous enought for me to remember the name right now however). Many of the shops were closed when we arrived, which was around lunch, but opened as we were leaving.  The work we saw was a marvel;  it was ceramics which surpassed craft.  Original, colorful, intricate delicate.  I'm sure Kate will add to this.


We did a walk-around of the city before dinner, and also viewed the Arc de Triomphe, one of the 3 best preserved in the world.  The colossal Roman Theater awaits us in the morning, then on to Aix-en-Provence.


But for tonight, more French jazz.


Steaphan Grappeli and Michel Legrand.


Here's snip from wiki about Legrand:


Legrand has composed more than two hundred film (including the Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and television scores and several musicals and has made well over a hundred albums. He has won three Oscars (out of 13 nominations) and five Grammys and has been nominated for an Emmy. He was twenty-two when his first album, I Love Paris, became one of the best-selling instrumental albums ever released. He is a virtuoso jazz and classical pianist and an accomplished arranger and conductor who performs with orchestras all over the world.

France Travel Journal. Day 11 (Fri., June 10) - Uzes

Day 11 was a restful day.  We left the hotel late morning and went to the Information bureau.   Uzes is a charming city, but doesn't offer any destination sites, so we decided on a randonnee today.

We found a pleasant 8 km walk and though we didn't choose it for this reason, it passed the spring which fed the aquaduc to Nimes. The Pont du Gard is part of that aquaduc. There were also some very clear stretches of the aquaduc along the walk, though they were ruins of course.

The route back took us past the Haribo candy manufacturing plant.  We stopped at the outlet store, but only to buy water.  The store was full of brightly colored candy and excited children.  The prices must have been very attractive, because parents were purchasing huge amounts of candy.

The origin of a truly French jazz is usually attributed to the Quintette de Hot Club de France.  The group formed in 1934, anchored by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappeli. Here they are from 1938.

.

France Travel Journal. Day 10 (Thurs., June 9) - Travel to Uzes

Another quick post. Internet connections remain uncertain.

Today we travel to Uzes, via the Pont de Gard.  A spontaneous walk led to a thrilling patch of the Roman aquaduc of which the Pont de Gard was as continuation.

It was a ruin of course, but represented that which Prosper Merrimee discovered and documented.

A jump in musical time. Here's one of the most popular French songs of 2010:

Not quite sure what to make of this.  Musically, it seems rather ordinary.

France Travel Journal. Day 9 (Wed, June 8) - Avignon

Another quick post.  We only have one internet connection in the room, so I have limited time to research and post.

Hopefully, the next few hotels will provide more generous connectivity.

In a word, Wednesday was: museums.  See Kate's excellent summary.

France Travel Journal. Day 8 (Tues., June 7) - Avignon

This is just a placeholder, to make sure I don't get confused about where/when.

Mostly Palais des Papes.  Dinner in our 'apartment', which is the French version of a residence inn in the US.

France Travel Journal. Day 7 (Mon., June 6) - Travel to Avignon

The best weather of the trip. Clear sky, temperatures in the 70's (21c to 24c)


We started the day visiting  hospital at Saint Paul-de-Mausole, just outside of St. Remy de Provence.  It was the hospital that van Gogh (pronounced van Gog in France) spent the last two years of his life.  It's a major attraction at St.Remy, though the real appeal was a very serence church, a pleasant cloister, and finally two spectaclur fields of lavendar and of poppies.  I'm sure Kate will post photo's of them both.


We then drove a short distance away to see the Abbey of Saint-Roman.  Unfortunately, it was closed, so we launched a spontaneous rondannee.  It ended like an authentic one: a variety of groomed and rugged path, and confusion about directions.  We finally stopped and asked a hiker/jogger (one of only two we saw in our hour of walking) for directions:  'Nous sommes perdu.  Ou se trouve la parking pour l'Abbey?'  It turns our that we a couple of hundred meters from it, though that was after having doubled back before asking the amused Frenchman.


We arrived in Avignon about 5.  More on the city and apartment tomorrow perhaps.


For dinner, we stopped at a small shop, and bought some country pate, smoked salmon,  tomatoes, lettuce and wine.  A marvelous French meal, with no cooking.


Tonight's musical interlude...starting with some background from wikipedia.

Chanson réaliste, or realist song, refers to a style of music performed in France primarily from the1880s until the end of World War II. Influenced by literary realism and the naturalist movements in literature and theatre, chanson réaliste dealt with the lives of Paris's poor and working-class.

Chanson réaliste was a musical style that was mainly performed by women;some of the more commonly known performers of the genre include Édith Piaf, Fréhe and Yvonne George.

The chanson réaliste sentimentalised the plight of poor and dispossessed women, such as prostitutes, waitresses, failed singers in cheap bars, orphans, single mothers and the like. Some of the performers of the genre were also known to have lived the part—both Édith Piaf and Fréhel sang in the streets as children, were teenage mothers and lost their children very young—and many shortened their lives with drugs, alcohol and illness: Yvonne George lived an excessive lifestyle and died at the age of 34; Fréhel became an alcoholic at an early age, attempted suicide at 19 and eventually died in poverty; Piaf suffered from addictions tomorphine and alcohol and died of cancer.

However, given the dramatic and melancholy aspects of chanson réaliste, the withered and diseased aspect of their appearance became an integral part of the show.

France Travel Journal. Day 6 (Sun, June 5) - St. Remy de Provence

Woke up to more rain, but the day cleared so we decided to do a 'petit randonne', and walk to Glanum.  It was about 7 kilometers round-trip.

Glanum is a fascinating site, with layers of Gallic, Greek and finally Roman civic construction. The presence of Greece was especially interesting.  Greece founded and had a strong presence in Marseille, but this was the first evidence of their presence thus far on our explorations.

St. Remy is also famous as the city where Vincent van Gogh spend the last year's of his life, mostly as a patient in a mental hospital.  Many of his most famous paintings date from this period, and are based on things he saw here.

BTW, we stopped at a picnic table at the entrance to Glanum for a typical French lunch: cheese, bread, sausage, and an apple.

There were a few heavy downpours on the walk back to the Château, but we were able to find shelter and arrived reasonably dry.

Today's music.  A very popular young singer doing a cover of Edith Piaf (almost 3 million views).

Here's the original.

France Travel Journal. Day 5 (Sat. Jun 4) - Tarascon & St. Remy de Provence

On  the way to St. Remy de Provence, we stopped in a small town named Tarascon, and visited an extremely well preserved medival castle.  Again, see Kate's blog for a description and some pix.

I just need to do a confessorial post: we dined at a 4 star restaurant. The tab came to about $300.00.

It was worth it.

France Travel Journal. Day 5 (Sat. June 4) - leaving Arles

It was market day in Arles. The main street was closed, and the vendors had put out their wares: tables of fresh fruits and vegetables; breads and fancy confections; refrigerated display cases of meats and cheeses; bins of olives; baskets of and sausages; prepared food (especially poulet roti and paila), and then of course tents with  men's shirts, dresses, printed fabrics, and hand-crafted soaps. This stretched for at least a kilometer.


The vendors were on each  side of the sidewalk and formed a narrow lane. There must have been several thousand people spread down the length, and 75 vendors.

There was nothing especially surprising or unusual about it.  We've seen something similar in every French town we've ever visited.

But of course it was marvelous.

In some form, everything was available in the US.  But not with the same extra-ordinary quality or diversity. The olive stand had 20 varieties, all simply prepared (no olives stuffed with garlic and pimentos); the cheeses shops offered 3 dozen soft cheees, at least half of which were made from goat or sheep milk;  sausage vendor had a dozen varieties of dry sausages, some porc, some beef, some boar, etc.

Kate has a few pictures, which I'll try to add later.

In the meantime, a female singer for a change.  Often cited along with Edith Piaf.

Frehel

France Travel Journal. Day 4 (Fri., June 3) - Arles

The day started out clear, but turned rainy.  It was heavy at times, and we ended up wetter than yesterday.

Primary events today (not in order of occurrence):

1/ Kate got a haircut, which included boldly walking into the shop and making an appointment.

2/ We visited a necropolis called the Alyscamp.  Most of the best sarcophagi had been removed, but it was still an impressive 300 meter lane lined with them.  At the end of the lane was an abandoned chapel, which had been taken over by the pigeons.  The wall hummed incessantly with their cooing.

3/ The Alres achaeology museum,where many of the best pieces from the various Roman sites had been moved and restored.  Of particularly interest was a model of a seven stage water powered mill.  In one day, it could mill emough wheat to feed 12,000 people.

I suppose a survey of French singers needs to include Johnny Hallyday.

I promise some balance tomorrow.

France Travel Journal. Day 3 (Thurs., June 2) - Arles

Starting with the music today, for no particular reason.

Wait for it.  The familiar tune starts at about the 1 minute mark.

Today's recap.

Cold (10 C) and rainy.  It was also a national holiday (l'asscention), but all the interesting sites were open. We took in:

1/ cloister St. Tropheme and the associated church.  Worth seeing, though the interior was somewhat familiar. The curious element was a side alter containing relics, which consisted of the bones of saints in various gilded boxes. The bones were quite visible and reasonable large: a skull cap, a forearm, a piece of thigh bone.  (It made me wonder about supply-and-demand for relics. Run out of relics? Just consecrate a new saint.)

The exterior includes a famous portco, which for some reason, we didn't linger over.

2/ the Roman theater. Sumptuous originally, though less than half is standing. Yet it is used today for concerts.

3/ the cryptoporticus (sp?), which were storage and support structures under the Forum.  They were arched tunnels underneath the periphery of the Forum, and were quite extensive.  Thye resembled the Horarium (sp?) of Narbonne.

4/ the Colisem..  Not as preserved as either the Coliseum in Rome or Nimes.  In fact, photo's of it from the 1860 may have been the highligh of the visit. At that point in time, it was little more than a pile of terraced rubble.  Extensive work has been done on it over the century, and it is now used for public entertainments, (inlcuding occasional bullfights).

5/ the baths.  A reminder of how complete Roman civic life was, and how intricate the engineering.

Also bought Kate some shoes.The ones she brought were slippery and treacherous on the marble and stone of Arle streets.

France Travel Journal. Day 2 (Wed., June 1) - Narbonne

The day started out sunny, but turned very windy and rainy mid-day. But there were few complication today...until the end.

1/ We visited the archeology museum, which had some marvelous reconstructions of the interior wall decorations. To call them reconstructions is a bit misleading. They were built from actual pieces of wall excavated from nearby ancient Roman villas, and only included original tiles and mosaic pieces. The missing parts were line sketches. Think of a jigsaw puzzle with 80% of the pieces missing and a few simple lines completing the picture.

2/After we went to the Roman Horarium. This was set of underground chambers thought to have originally been store houses.

3/ Lunch, to get out of the rain.

4/ The lapidary museum, which consisted of huge stone blocks which had been used at Roman burial sites,and then on medieval city walls. It was a marvelous jump. Think of the storeroom at the conclusion of Indiana Jones, where the Arc was stored.

5/ Finally, a quick run through another church.

Then drove to Arles. A very pleasant drive through an area called the Carmague. But the TomTom took us into the heart of the old city,which was a tangle of narrow streets, one-ways, and no parking. Roads so tight there was no room for pedestrians to get by us, and we scrapped the side view mirror on a windowsill. We worked out way out, and came back into newer city on our own, found municipal parking, and walked to the hotel. We decided to never again ask the TomTom to take us to the hotel; just use it to get to the city, and we'll figure it out from there.

Today's musical segment:

France Travel Journal. Day 1 (Tues, 31 May) - Narbonne

Just some quick notes to jog our memories in the future. Look to French Kate for the real stuff.

Zeus wanted to remind us that we were in his land, so decided to remind us what travelling was really about:

1/ We went to the tourist office to purchase an all inclusive museum pass, and discovered all the site in Narbonne that we came here to see were closed on Tuesdays!

2/ We stopped at Monoprix to buy picnic supplies (a knife, paper napkins, paper plates) and my Barklay's credit card was refused.  Kate's is ok, but there's a Barclay branch in Arles, and we're going to stop tomorrow and see  if we can find out what the problem may be.

3/ Because nothing was open in Narbonne, we decided to visit FontFroid instead. This is a monastary not far from Narbonne.  The map was very misleading, and a 15 minute drive took over an hour.  We were never lost, but Slyvie TomTom was.

On the other hand, we stopped at the local marche, and bought some fresh cherries, a dry sausage, and 2 local cheeses.   The market was typically French, and a delight to the senses.

Musical interlude: Narbonne was the birthplace of singer Charles Trenet. You probably know him by these (careful, may be ear virus.)