Saturday, April 23, 2016

Frehel - Where is it then?


Original Title: "Où est-il donc?"
Text: Carol and Decaye
Music: Scotto
Year: 1926
Some tell you about America
They have views you see in movies
They tell you "What a magnificent country
Our Paris is nothing next to that"
Those sales talk make you less shy
In short we leave to there
one day of blues
One more who with the empty belly
In New York will look for a dollar

Among the beggars and the exiled
The immigrants with a bruised heart
He will say regretting Paris:

Where is it, my mill of the Place Blanche
My tobacconist and my corner bistro
Every day for me it was Sunday
Where are they, the friends, the pals
Where are they all my old popular dances
Their popular waltz at the sound of the accordion
Where are they, all my meals without dough
With a cornet of chips for two pennies
Where are they then?

But Montmartre seems to be disappearing
Because already from season to season
From the Abbesses to the Place du Tertre
Our old houses are being demolished
On the waste grounds of the hillock
Big banks will soon birth
Where then will you do your somersaults
You the poor kids and street urchins

While regretting the times past
We will sing thinking to Salis
Monmartre your De Profundis

Where is it, my mill of the Place Blanche
My tobacconist and my corner bistro
Every day for me it was Sunday
Where are they, the friends, the pals
Where are they all my old popular dances
Their popular waltz at the sound of the accordion
Where are they, all my meals without dough
With a cornet of chips for two pennies
Where are they then?

Where are they all my old popular dances
Their popular waltz at the sound of the accordion
Where are they, all my meals without dough
When I was eating even without having a penny
Where are they then?


Version sung by Fréhel herself in the movie "Pepe le Moko":

Monday, April 11, 2016

Léo Ferré - Rimbaud - My bohemia(n life)


Original Title: "Ma bohème"
Text: Arthur Rimbaud
Year: 1964
I was going away, fists in my bursted pockets;
My cardigan as well was becamin ideal;
I was going under the sky, Muse! and I was loyal to you;
Oh! There! There! What an amount of splendid loves I have dreamt about!

My only pants had a wide hole
- Dreaming Tom Thumb, I was shelling in the running
Some rhymes. My inn was at Ursa Major
- My stars had a sweet frills to the sky

And I was listening to them, sitting on the side of the roads,
Those good evenings of September where I was feeling some drops
Of dew on my forehead, like a wine of vigor;

Where, rhyming in the middle of fantastic shadows,
Like lyres, I was pulling on the elastics
Of my hurt shoes, a foot near my heart!

Léo Ferré - You never say anything

Original Title: " Tu ne dis jamais rien " Year: 1971 I see the world a bit like one sees the unbelievable This what the unbeli...