Fringe : A british guide to French pop

Last night, we went to see this...

To start with, we (Fringe Fest French luvvies) met up in Brandon Terrace to prepare ourselves psychologically to what we might expect in such a show - and also to alleviate a certain anxiety from my part, as was wondering whether the whole thing might be construed as a clever insult to the French sense of aesthetics, rather like the latest joke I read (had a good laugh at it myself, but my dad said that 'c'est pas drôle, c'est insultant'. Oh la la!! In truth I have just googled it, and most of the sites that have been talking about it are rather francophobic... So just to be different and naturally controversial, I thought I'd include it here: see below*)

Sooo - We had a glass of wine, with cheese and paté generously brought back from France by Sandrine, my French side-kick (on the Edinburgh tiles for the second fest in a row). After such liberalities, I felt the time was right to introduce French 'Chanson' throughout the ages: more classical repertoire first, reinforcing the French cliché of the 'chanson à texte', with serious 50s stuff, such as Montand, Boris Vian, Reggiani and Brassens, moving on to the bubblier 60s, with Dutronc, and his charming Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille (It's 5am, Paris is waking up - an anthem to generations of partygoers - obviously!). The 70s was introduced with Souchon's guitar - I should really have added the Claude François disco dimension, but felt constricted by lack of time... 80s = shocking punk anthem Porcherie, by Bérurier Noir, an aborted attempt to listen to Négresses Vertes due to CD failure, and a hint of Mano Negra which led us gently into the 90s with Manu Chao , towards the finishing line, with the noughties, chanteuse extraordinaire (and trust me when I say that I use both these terms in the loosest possible sense...) Lorie (former egerie of former French prime minister Raffarin). Pff.

Quality stuff, really.

The cultural tension was sizzling hot and perceptible... We were ready.

So we left for the C electric venue (basically the former odeon cinema near Nicolson Street for those of you in the know).

After much wait and anticipation, we were ushered into a smallish room where we were first greeted in French by Toby Mitchell. Who paled oh so insignificantly as he realised THE FRENCH were on to him!! (Sorry Toby!)

The show kicked off with a rendition of A Paris, one of Montand's old favorites, and we were quickly introduced to the 2 protagonists: Toby, obviously, and 'French singer' Madeleine Delacroix. The truculent evocation of Toby's former French girlfriends had us all in stitches, as did Madeleine's wonderfully evocative dance magic performed on Gainsbourg's classic Je t'aime moi non plus.


After a quick recap about French singers, we were treated to a number of short renditions of a French classics, very amusingly loosely translated into English (with often hilarious treats curtesy of babelfish and other automated translations), in particular with Boris Vian's Fais-moi mal.

And then we had Un Monde Parfait (be patient with the link... Actually it may not work, if like me you have a paranoid type of firewall...) But please do go and have a look at the quality lyrics here ... This is top notch! Vanessa Paradis's former brit hit Joe le Taxi truely pales into insignificance when you consider the incredible literary audacity displayed in Un Monde Parfait...

Anyway -
Madeleine managed somehow to get us into performing a kind of trance-like rendition of Un Monde Parfait (I suspect foul-play may have been involved: after all, we were given sweeties mid-show - they looked like Edinburgh rocks, but god knows what mind-numbing substance they might have contained!!!!)

"Un oiseau, un enfant, une chèvre,
Le bleu du ciel, un beau sourire du bout des lèvres,
Un crocodile, une vache, du soleil,
Et ce soir je m'endors au pays des merveilles."
...
....
.....

In short, we all loved the show which comes across as a fresh Priorité à Gauche. Although some of the themes (Toby's father as a jazz musician) came across as rather unrelated to the rest of the act and the end was rather abrupt, we left C electric with a (rather unfortunate) song in our heart...

"Un oiseau, un enfant, une chèvre,...."

Aaaah...



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*(UPI-Paris) Be aware that the French government announced yesterdaythat it has raised its terror alert level from Run to Hide. The only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing their military.