WOEBOT

Boris Vian. Who he?

I thought what with Penman perpetually spouting Post-Structuralist thought I’d better swot up a little or get left behind. Stick to the catalogue numbers I hear you say!

My darling beautiful wife, who is a Fellow at Magdalen, Oxford (read “jolly clever”) leant me a book: Twentieth Century French Philosophy by Prof. Eric Matthews. An elegantly written guide to the historical currents of French Philosophy. I started on the chapter Levinas, Derrida and Lyotard but then thought I’d be better getting a bit of a run up, and went back one chapter to the Structuralists. I was quite pleased that I knew a little more than I first thought of this wrecking crew. Saussure (Langue, Parole etc), Levi-Strauss (The Raw and the Uncooked), Lacan (Mirror phase) and Foucault (The Order of Things). So that’s where I am right now. I heartily recommend the book, which is a sort of Idiots Guide on Steroids.

What really struck me however was the photo on the cover. Who were these beatniks? It turned out to be Sartre (and his wife) hanging out with Boris Vian (and his wife). The French are hip like that. Could you see Bertrand Russell chilling with Coltrane, or even Gunther Schuller for that matter? There’s that great line Miles had about Sartre: “Sartre said Juliette and I looked really cool together.”

Here’s the cover of my Boris Vian record, which I picked up in an open-air market in a village in the South of France on my honeymoon for 50F. Not exactly a rare record I’m sure:

I know only a little bit about Vian. He was one of those infinitely connected nodes. Amazing how much we know about Jamaican Culture in Britain but how little about that of our (extremely wonderful and interesting neighbours). If I was the editor of The Wire I’d look into things like this.

Vian was the dude who fixed up all the Jazz for Paris in the 40s and 50s. He brought Ellington over to France. I imagine he probably brought Miles over too. I bet he was sloping around on set of Ascenseur a l’Echaffaud (the film Miles did the soundtrack to). He’s the early reincarnation of that perennial French figure, the Afro-American culture importer. In the late 60s we have Daniel Caux bringing over the Free crew for the Shandar stuff and in the 90s we have Laurent Garnier getting the Detroit lot over. Interestingly one of Daniel Caux’s later enthusiasms was Detroit Techno. He made a TV programme about it. Vian was also a poet.

This record is classic/typical French music-hall stuff. Fais-Moi Mal Johnny is a superbly sexist anthem, featuring a breathless Chiquita screaming for Johnny to “be bad to her” (er like it says in the title). There are also some great baubled stop/start hinkly-dinkly instrumentals which sound like the car on the cover looks. Isn’t it funny to compare Aphex in his tank to Vian in this car?

French Music hall isn’t really to my taste, but I guess it’s fun. The other day at one of my favourite stores Harold Moore Records Barry “Dame Edna Everedge” Humphries had offloaded his ENORMOUS collection of French Music Hall records. Bet you didn’t know he was a massive expert on the subject! So there we go. From Hardcore Theory back to gossiping about transgressive Australians in 5 moves.

Posted by Woebot at June 2, 2003 08:28 AM