Seven Red

No graffiti this Friday, but no less nostalgic for all that.

sevenred’s Albany and Atlanta family is in town, visiting babygirl and taking in the scene. Specifically, she’s MathMom and MathSister arrived, an hour apart, from their respective towns, which of course led to many wonderful adventures at O’Hare international. That means that I’m on babysitting duty (if one can babysit one’s own child, a point she consistently takes a negative view on when I use the term) tomorrow, since the ladies will be heading to the Art Institute and probably some fancy lunch or other, then to dinner, while I sit around drinking beer (after babygirl has gone to sleep, of course).

In any case, we were hanging around in the sevenred kitchen, chatting it up, and we had NPR on. Chicago NPR is about 1000% better than State College, PA NPR. Better funding base, I guess. So night show was some weird world music review or other, and suddenly, I was 11 years old again. The DJ played Chanson pour l’auvergnat, the classic French pop jam by Georges Brassens. Georges Brassens is a bit like a Leonard Cohen avant la lettre, but in French. I haven’t heard this song in probably 20 years, but I was practically singing along with it. Is it obscure? Well, yes. So how do I know it?

My parents would occasionally have some weird music night. We’d be disallowed from watching television, since the record player was in the same room as the television, and instead they’d play their records. (Occasionally, they’d allow us to physically carry the TV into my brother’s room, and these were real boon nights, since we could watch whatever we wanted to on our New York City non-cable selection!). I used to resent my parents a bit for this, primarily because their music seemed, at the time, irretrievably lame. My friends parents listened to cool stuff, ya know? And modern stuff. My parents didn’t play a track that came out after 1975, with the exception of a Kenny Rogers record they bought in 1980 or so, and Purple Rain, which my uncle and aunt bought me Christmas in 1984. My parents had the Beatles, of course, but only the first Beatles album. No fucking around with Sgt. Pepper, you see? White album? Forget it.

But now, I’m a bit happier that things went the way they did. Because when Georges Brassens comes on the radio, I sing along, and that’s pretty cool. I know Harry Belafonte’s early stuff by heart. I heard some song the other day that was riffing off it (“my heart is down/ my head is spinning around/ I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town…”), and I was on it immediately. See what this guy’s doing? Kingston Trio? No problem. In fact, when I was waiting tables way back when, I heard a group trying to figure out “that song about the subway in Boston, where the guy can’t get off?” Who did that? I walked over and said Kingston Trio, MTA. They just about lost their shit, since I was way too young to know that.

But now I know my birthday present for the Pops. I’m going to send him a double CD of Georges Brassens, and then a mixed CD of a bunch of songs they used to play. The record collection is long gone, but that’s why you have kids. To remember shit like that and burn you CDs, or whatever it is that they know that you can’t possibly imagine. The folks were – and are – cool in their own way, something I’m learning more everyday. I think it’s difficult when you grow up a bit poor, because you develop all these resentments that are unnecessary, especially towards your parents. I look at my brothers now, and I kinda admire what the Folks managed to do with a little. And I’m getting into strange “I’m developing perspective…” mode here, so I will stop.

The French also inspired me to track down the version of Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas that played in the Christina Ricci movie Pumpkin. That would be the version, in English, by folk singer Emiliana Torrini, which I now own a copy of. Pumpkin‘s also great for its prominent play of Belle and Sebastian’s Stars of Track and Field, which she and I suspect inspired the screen play (or vice versa).

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