Orhan Gencebay: Mar Sur

I love this Orhan Gencebay video. Especially the studio scenes. I'm guessing it must be from an old Turkish movie. I would love to see this film and others like it.

You don't have to understand Turkish to follow the narrative here, or to appreciate how this clip combines music video with film scenes. As the song begins, a lovely redhead irons Orhan Gencebay's shirt with an ecstatic smile. Meanwhile he's shaving around his full mustache. His lady then helps him get dressed, and a shot of a saz foreshadows the coming scene: a recording studio, where Gencebay is now singing the song you've already been listening to. There's something really satisfying about suddenly seeing the string section in the flesh. Some of the violinists are wearing really fresh sunglasses. A guy in the booth conducts with clownish gestures but no one seems to notice him.

At a break in Gencebay's vocals, dialog cuts in. Redheaded lady is wearing a bubblegum pink t-shirt and she talks to a blond friend. She picks up what appears to be her passport and gets a faraway look in her eye. Now cut to Gencebay in an office. He signs a contract. His vocals in the song return, now quieter, so that he can talk to the man behind the desk. Gencebay is handed a stack of lira.

The pretty redhead character is then in an office of her own. Applying for a job? Her hair looks darker. She says "no" to the man who looks over her papers and the passport, or maybe it's a national identity card. Then she says something else and leaves.

The last two scenes, the picnic and the shower, are the best and the main characters are each wistful in his and her own way. I won't spoil it by describing the ending except to say that it looks like Gencebay drinks some raki and the woman stands motionless under a shower head and washes away the day's frustrations - in her clothes.

Dancing in the Western Sahara and Chofo Mazyan Wadna

ยอดรัก สลักใจ Otherwise Known as Yodrak Salakchai

This week MONRAKPLENGTHAI posted a cassette by ยอดรัก สลักใจ (yodrak salakchai). As usual, there's a succint paragraph jam packed with info, the tape cover, track listing in Thai followed by phonetic spelling in Roman letters, and a song to preview. What a fantastically with-it blog! Why can't there be more stuff like it?

รับครึ่งเดียว (rap khrueng dieow), the Yodrak Salakchi song preview at MONRAKPLENGTHAI hints at Afro-pop and American funk. The video below for a later Yodrak Salakchai groove is much more mellow and trance-y. Other videos from the same DVD posted at YouTube star the same cute couple; watch the ones with titles that begin YS (for Yodrak Salakchai) and you'll be treated to a disjointed narrative of their love story.

Gainsbourg Overdose, Part 6: La Marseillaise

This was supposed to be the second installment of my loose translation of Gainsbourg's appearance on Le jeu de la vérité back in 1984. But it didn't work out that way. Because the Serge Gainsbourg obsession is multifaceted and doesn't follow a straight and narrow path.

I knew that Serge Gainsbourg did a reggae album in '79, went to Kingston and recorded with Sly and Robbie, using Bob Marley's backup singers, and that one of the songs he did was his own interpretation of La Marseillaise (the song in this video), which pissed off right-wingers. You probably know that, too. But I didn't know the whole story until I watched this clip from French TV. If you don't know the whole story and don't understand French, here's what happened:

After recording the album, Gainsbourg then toured France with the group from Jamaica. He hadn't been on stage in like 15 years because he had developed stage fright after a shitty tour with French chanteuse Barbara. The tour in '80 did not go smoothly. Gainsbourg and the Jamaicans received a bomb threat at their hotel and concerts were attended by military groups who tried to stop the show. You will see Gainsbourg chewing out these extremists live at a concert in Strasbourg in the clip mentioned above. THEN... a couple years later... Gainsbourg went on to BUY the original copy of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, at an auction. He paid 130,000 francs for it in the mid-80s. I want to call that the last laugh but it's more complex and poetic than that.

It's hard not to want to be hungover and chain smoking watching this video, but caveat emptor: it doesn't look good on everyone.

Last Summer in Paris with Ludo Pin

If I breathe every three seconds: somehow the start to the chorus just doesn't sound as good in English. Luckily there are the fuzzy, hazy streets of Paris, Benday dots, fast-spinning clocks that make me think of the woman counting the minutes in Louis Chédid's 1984 video for Hold-up, and a trip on the Charles de Gaulle-Étoile Nation line that morphs into a roller coaster ride. And the blipping bass-y synth and a squeaky, trippy Nuthin But A G Thang quote.

LUDO PIN - 3 SECONDES
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