Too much music, too little time! :D

Bonjour à tous, after about 2 months of continuous study, :D I’m finally attempting to assemble a suitable and reasonably concise entry about Mr Jacques Brel. First, a little background. Okay, where do I begin? Well, he was a prolific Belgian singer/songwriter who lived an intense 49 years, influencing generations of singers, even beyond his native tongue, through his poignant lyrics  and soulfelt delivery. He defined himself a dreamer in search of tenderness, defying the greatness people labelled him with and thank goodness, he didn’t mind sharing his unfinished work.  He gave up touring in ’67, fearing to become a copy of himself, which he couldn’t stand to face.  When asked about it, interestingly enough, he said he could live without singing, but not without writing and didn’t consider his songs to be poetry, saying songs are immediate and poetry is something to be savoured later. He wrote many types of songs with recurrent themes like death, the military, love, infidelity and drinking, which he often brought to life with a waltzy sweep or a tango drive to them, mixed and matched in various permutations. Mr Brel had a true gift for painting vivid pictures of characters and landscapes, “verbing” a noun here and “adjectiving” a verb there and he had a fun and crazy sense of humor. An interviewer once described him as “throwing his songs in our faces, singing with a clenched jaw, with some kind of anger, as if to make us share his faith”. I suppose some of his songs can be perceived as such. As an example, here’s the first song I heard from the first CD I borrowed, it’s called “Amsterdam”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xtxbpoR6KQ

Many of his songs were character descriptions, which he said lived somewhere around him when he sang. One of my favorites is “Jef”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu008TxSuxE

In this one, he’s consoling his heartbroken friend Jef, attempting to  sweep him up in the “Viens!” wave of the beginning of the chorus and it’s endearing to hear him care so much about his friend and cheering him on when Jef finally rises... I heard him say in an interview that he didn’t like convention and thought man was better than to just settle with bourgeois routines and just do what he was supposed to do and he wrote plenty of songs about the subject, like “Les flamandes”, “Les bigotes” and “Les bourgeois” to name a few:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxAp3ymhY4M

In this one, he talks about a trio of friends who mock the bourgeois and end up becoming just like them by the end of the song. One of his admittedly meanest songs against convention is “Les singes”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmYVsa5aHEg

In it
, he deplores subjects like sensorship, the electric chair and the atomic bomb, being invented by the “civilized” apes.   I’ve learned that  he’s funny, irreverent and can be blunt in his descriptions, but can also be tender and vulnerable, and his personal stamp is all in the delivery. Listen to this song called “Le plat pays”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Pc-Z_r5jQ

He’s describing the flat country he grew up in and I personally feel it’s very evocative and you can sense the greyness of it. I think he’s a great observer, partially because of his explanatory, but also his contemplative descriptions. One of my favourite contemplative songs is “Isabelle”, written for his youngest daughter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDg_di3J8M

It’s as sweet and adorable as you’d expect a father marvelling in his child’s beauty and innocence can be. That reminds me of another song, which will take me in part 2 of my Jacques Brel showcase in my next entry, à tout de suite! Thank you for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi everyone, as a gift to myself, I want to share my new, very rewarding experience of discovering Jacques Brel’s music. I’ll elaborate with a comprehensive study with links in the next little while, but today wanted to start with what I wrote on the “Livre D’Or” of his site jacquesbrel.be:

“I’ve discovered Jacques Brel less than 2 months ago, thanks to a Quebec baritone namedÉtienne Dupuis, to whomI’m very grateful. During his recital I was listening to on the radio,  he sang “La chanson des vieux amants” saying that Jacques was his greatest influence for opera.   He said you only had to watch/listen to Jacques Brel once to realize he really knows how to deliver song text. I trusted Étienne and don’t regret it.  Since last month, I avidly borrow everything I can find at my local library, which even surprised myself, since I’m generally not a huge fan of francophone music. My first loan was the Olympia ‘64 recital that simply ran me over like a bus...   The generosity with which Jacques opens his soul to sing, his picturesque and colourful stories, his way of “verbing” words to project images, his authenticity and conviction with which he transmits his work and the way he makes me laugh and cry so easily, made me want to get to know him more, which is what I’m doing, CD by CD, song by song etc. I’m also very happy to have found this site, to somehow get closer to his memory. Thank you Mr Brel for bringing me your “bonbons” and thanks to the people running this site for keeping his memory “alive and well and living...” for the entire world”

I posted it 4 days ago, because it felt right to me to post it while at the same age he last was. The song “Les bonbons” I refer to is an adorable little song.

It’s the story of a, oh let’s say insecure guy who brought candy to his date, because flowers are more perishable. You find out through the song that he’ll agree to everything his date says to please her and when she dumps him, he’s quite eager and willing to offer his candy to any other prospect, even one he was bad-mouthing earlier, agreeing to the former date… :D It’s just sweet and has a music box innocent sound to it. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWPl5hDjhoo

It’s my favourite funny song of is. He has several types of songs and recurrent themes, but I’ll explore this in a future post. Merci de me lire, sincèrement, Sylvie <3

Hi folks, today I’d like to examine the strange world of comfort songs. I’ve recently found out in Daniel J Levitin’s book “The world in 6 songs” that only sorrowful tears contain the comfort hormone, isn’t that interesting? Yes I know, mindless trivia. In any case, he did mention that the comfort song might not be the same for everyone. Of course, when we feel sad or  depressed, we don’t want to be told: “HEY! Cheer up, the sun is shining, birds are singing and it’s a glorious day!”, we want to have our feelings validated and not to be told” Don’t feel that way!”. Just like we don’t want to be told to calm down when we’re miffed off. Personally, being rather tamed in my excesses, I enjoy a bit of Green Day when I drift to the dark side of frustration. I enjoy songs like “Basket case”:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTGr5t3MoY

“Stuck with me”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fevGo3H5840

and “Hitchin’ a ride”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6jtGjiDwIQ

Doing a little Green Day research on YouTube, I realized I don’t really know many lyrics, just mostly bits and pieces here and there. I think it’s just the right kind of beat that suits me, Billy Joe Armstrong’s specific tone and irreverence  and the ever releasing of choice words that works for me anyway. Those songs are all on their “International superhits” CD I've owned for a good while now. So anyway, I won’t put any Metallica, Avenge Seven Fold, Emminem or emo/scremo links on here, though I know they do the trick for some people. I suppose it all depends on the degree of emotion. I do find comfort in songs like “Smile” from Nat King Cole:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I85ApzR43jU

An operatic  bass singer, sir  Willard White told this story in an interview once: as a child, he’d been scolded by his mom and feeling despondent, he just went outside to sit under a coconut tree. I believe this was in Jamaica. Anyway, as he was sitting and brooding there, he said he heard a voice in his head say: “Sing!” and he thought to himself: “What? Sing when I’m feeling this way?”, but  the voice repeated and he finally did. He said it started more as a growl in the beginning, but after a while, he sang it loud and clear until he felt better. I love that story! That’s the power of music and higher inspiration, I guess... :D Then there’s your never-ending stream of heartbreak songs and sometimes variants on the genre. Personally, a song that nails it right on the head for me every time, even though it’s not a sympathetic agreement to my mood or situation, is Weird Al Yankovic’s  “One more minute”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LfnAQpeLPU

I put it on repeatedly and sing it nice and loud until I feel better. Weird Al has his special brand of humor and sometimes I feel his songs are just a bit too off color, but even though  the self-inducing of physical pain and sometimes down right grossness of his lyrics, the extreme ridiculousness of this song is generally a perfect cure  for my aching amygdala. :D On that happy note, everyone have a happy and healthy emotional day and thanks for reading. Sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi again, this is a small overview of 3 Motown tribute CD’s I own. I’ve heard and own a few others, but I’ll share about the Boys II Men,  Phil Collins,  and Hall & Oates albums that all have a different approach, but equally interesting.   I think my favourite (aside from our Michael’s) is Phil Collins’ “Going back”. A friend turned me on to it and I checked it out from the library, the version with the companion DVD. The time, care and love  that went into that album just brought tears to my eyes as I was listening to the DVD. Here’s a sample of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQaSYNzq8PY

I discovered a few great new songs on it like “Do I love you” which is my favourite song on it.  It’s really a warm and fuzzy album: I got the deluxe version and it was worth every penny. As far as Daryl Hall & John Oates, Daryl said that the title “Our kind of soul” was representative of the album. The songs on it are mostly their recollections of the songs, with their own flavour of course, mixed in with great new old-school soul flavoured  compositions.  Daryl said that if they forgot the words to the classics, they made up new ones! Lol Here’s a sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVNXC0MIsA8

I’m not crazy about people covering Marvin Gaye, but I think they did a great job with “after the dance” and I did enjoy their live version of “What’s going on” a few years back. My faves on this CD are “Rock steady”, which I can’t sit still to and their own composition of “Soul violins”, which captures very well the 70’s soul sound. As far as Boys II Men, their CD “Motown, a journey through  Hitsville”, I can’t say that there are too many surprises: it’s the Boys II Men sound singing Motown songs. Here’s a great sample of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2s1DkZujhw

My personal favourites from this one are the ones I feel serve better their rich sound like “Got to be there”, “Just my imagination” and All this love”, which sounds like it was written for them. My ultimate favourite from this one and my repeat-button abuser song is their version of Mr Stevie Wonder’s masterpiece (as far as I’m concerned), “Ribbon in the sky”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHSrmRqj9F4

Lord have mercy: listening to Boys II Men acapella, phew! Guess that’s it for now. I do hope you take some of my suggestions or at least enjoy the samples. Thank you for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi everyone, I was listening to my “Hitsville U.S.A.” box set last night and somehow, for once, it caught my youngest son’s attention and he actually checked out the box and said this was a pretty sweet compilation. Do I know how to raise my  kids or what? :D One of the songs that caught his attention was “Bernadette” by the Four Tops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g_TVRGWcfk

Mostly, it was the voice of Levi Stubbs.  I remember Levi as the voice of the carnivorous plant in the movie “Little shop of horrors”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7SkrYF8lCU

I love the way he sings: “Feed me Seymor”! :D Anyway, Phil Collins says that when he recorded his “Going back” album, he knew he couldn’t compete with Levi Stubbs’ voice, so he had to find his own sweet spot. I was just searching for “Bernadette” on YouTube, but just typed in “Four Tops” and browsing through the links, I kept going: oh I love this song, Oh I love this song! Lol I love the way they sing “Reach out” and countless others, but I think my favourite is “Standing in the shadows of love”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oSYhNVaHwY

Ah man, the Funk Brothers were such fantastic musicians... Not sure if I've ever mentionned it, but I had the priviledge of hearing them, or what was left of them,  in concert  in 2006: they were opening for Hall & Oates, if you can believe that! This song, SITSOL  reminds me of one of my favourite music documentaries about the Funk Brothers called “Standing in the shadows of Motown” I bought on VHS years ago and I still have it. It’s a great documentary about Motown to begin with, but all the fun anecdotes they had, special highlights about playing methods and such, it’s just pure delight. Oh wow, I found it on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO9_CjUgThI

It’s 1:43:07, if you can take the time to watch. Going back to the song, Daryl Hall & John Oates did a pretty decent version of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dDayL5n9c

The entire album is fabulous, if I do say so myself... And speaking of “Going back”, which was Phil Collins’ Motown interpretation package, here’s his version of SITSOL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDPNje1g60s

Well you know what? I’ll need to get into an analysis of the few tribute albums I have, because this entry will be turning into an essay! What else is new, right? :D All right peops, that’s it for now. Thank you very much for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi everyone, today I share little news I found on-line. I’m still chin-deep in my Jacques Brel “study” and very much enjoying it. I’ve borrowed and returned a few sets of  CD’s from the library and I must say I’ve had trouble to part with some. I just may reborrow them! :D Anyway, I thought it might be time to check into buying 1 or 2. I was comparing prices and came to the realisation that it would be more cost effective if I got a box set. After much research and track comparison between all the box sets out there, I found that next September 17, there will be a new release of, count them: 21 CD’s. It’s called “Suivre l’étoile-intégrale”. First of all, here’s where it’s available for pre-order:

http://www.amazon.ca/Suivre-L%C3%89toile-Int%C3%A9grale-Jacques-Bre...

Now I have to say that I don’t like to check Amazon.ca because they have very little details about products in general and to my knowledge, no sound samples, which I think is a shame. Anyway, I did find the run down of the titles on the Archambault.ca web site, here it is:

Cd 01: Jacques Brel et ses chansons  (Grand Jacques)

Cd 02: Quand on n'a que l'amour

Cd 03: Au printemps

Cd 04: La valse à mille temps

Cd 05: Marieke

Cd 06: Les bourgeois

Cd 07: Les bonbons

Cd 08: Ces gens-là

Cd 09: Brel 67

Cd 10: J'arrive

Cd 11: L'homme de la Mancha

Cd 12: Jacques Brel - Ne me quitte pas

Cd 13: Les Marquises

Cd 14: Brel au Trois Baudets 1957

Cd 15: Les adieux à l'Olympia 1966

Cd 16: Roubaix 1967

Cd 17: Olympia 61

Cd 18: Jacques Brel à Knokke

Cd 19: Olympia 64

Cd 20: Brel en scènes enregistrements inédits (1988)

Cd 21: Les enregistrements radio de 1953

Most of these are available at my local library and I’ve had an auditory feast listening to them. Now I’d never heard of CD 14, 18 and 16 (which was apparently his very last live performance) and CD 15 I know exists on DVD. CD 21 sounds like a true gem though, so for $117.57 for 21 CD’s on Amazon, it’s definitely worth it. I’m still not done studying his original recordings so I don’t want to post an attempt at a concise entry yet, but that should come in the next little while. I have a feeling I may have 1 or 2 more entries about Jacques Brel... :D Thank you for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi everyone, tonight, I heard this terrific early 80’s pop hit I used to love, it’s the Icicle Works Whisper to a scream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVQCpI4GbKQ

As far as I’m concerned, they were a 1 hit wonder, so I thought I’d add a few more, just because it’s Friday! :D Here’s one of my all-time favourite early 80’s songs, Modern English “I melt with you”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuN6gs0AJls

That’s one I played over and over again when I got the  CD! It was in a movie called “Valley girl” I remember seeing on cable, check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s56q8oY9xOo

I thought Nicolas Cage was so cute in it... :D Okay, here’s another one from that movie, Josie Cotton with “He could be the one:”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soleSTp_u_c

The soundtrack to that movie was like totally awesome! Lol But seriously, it had even more great music than on both soundtrack CD’s. Well anyway, now here’s one that brings great summer memories to mind, Split Enz “I got you”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQlBfxh4Us

Now here’s one I remember loving the video, because it had sweet little children’s smiling faces in the beginning, General Public “Tenderness”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmoHQ2DC3zo

I think the next one was recently in a candy commercial of some sort, Fiction Factory “Feels like heaven”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v81cJiuS2oI

I’d say those are pretty much all 1 hit wonders, except for Split Enz, which also had at least “6 months in a leaky boat”  and “One step ahead”, which I enjoyed too. I have oodles of 80’s compilations, but just because I’m in an early 80’s pop mood, I’ll share one more that wasn’t a 1 hit wonder, though they might have been a 1 hit album wonder, I should look it up. Anyway, here are  A Flock of Seagulls with my favourite of theirs “Wishing (if I had a photograph of you)”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opkzgLMH5MA

Ah yeah, that’s the stuff! Well that's it for now, but I just might decide to make this a monthly or bimonthly feature if the mood strikes me... Hope you enjoy, thanks for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi everyone, you know how it is when you have a song stuck in your head? You can’t get it out until you’ve listened to the full thing at least once... Well I’ve had this song stuck in my head since yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjSpO2B6G4s

It’s Buffalo Springfield’s “Stop, children, what’s that sound”. I blame 2 people for this: Orrin Bolton and Daniel J. Levitin. I’ll explain. Well first, since Orrin has been revamping his site and FB page, he’s been dropping breadcrumbs of hints about upcoming changes. Recently, he simply posted: “There’s something happening here...” which is the first line of the song, so the following lyrics of” What it is ain’t exactly clear...” appeared in a comment below, just as I was thinking them... :D Still waiting for what’s happening, but I did wonder for a minute if OB was thinking of recording it, which would be très cool! Okay,  now Daniel J. Levitin. I’ve been reading this fabulous 2009 book of his  called “The world in 6 songs” and it’s even better than “This is your brain on music” so far. Here is a description of the book:

“Levitin explores how the evolution of our brains made music, art, science, and society possible. He uncovers six fundamental ways that songs communicate emotion and ideas--songs of friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge and love--and so have built human nature. Mixing cutting-edge neuroscience, his own sometimes hilarious experiences in the music business, and illuminating interviews with experts from Sting and David Byrne to conductors, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists, Levitin reveals the prehistoric, elegant systems at play when we sing and dance at weddings, cheer at a concert, or tune out privately with an iPod.”

It’s rich in anecdotes  and guides us to understand through human evolution, the social aspects of the hows and whys we love and need music. I loved his “This is your brain on music”, though it was more technical and did need more focus, but this one is one I’m more likely to read, re-read and recommend. I enjoyed the fact that he mentions Oliver Sacks’ book “Musicophilia” in his, just as Oliver Sacks mentions his book “This is your brain on music” in his book. Incidentally, I highly recommend “musicophilia, tales of music and the brain” also. FYI, Daniel J. Levitin is a neuro-surgeon who took a break from his medical studies to attempt a music career, became a music engineer, then returned to his initial life plan and now specializes in brain imagery. All this to say that as soon as Mr Levitin mentioned the protest song, in his “friendship” section, the first note of “Stop, children, what’s that sound” popped into my head. Hey, I just thought of another version of that song that came to mind, though it doesn’t start the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-DrQ98t56I

lol This one’s for my eldest daughter: you gotta love the Muppets! Wow, that was a strange entry... Just goes to show how my mind works... ;D On that happy note, thank you for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3

Hi everyone, I’ll share just one link today. I was just listening to a DVD I borrowed called “Millenium chorus, greatest story ever told” and though there are many fine performances on that program, I discovered this beautiful voice I didn’t know. This is  Wintley Phipps with “No Need To Fear”:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVIONfsC-w

This is a gorgeous inspirational song by this beautiful bass voice and I have a feeling he’s a Christian singer. On the same program was Bob Carlisle with a song called “Treasures in the darkness”, which is unfortunately not on YouTube  and the ever mind-boggling performance of Mr Michael Crawford  in “How still, how silent”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBPqWKeflpw

It’s too bad it’s only in one speaker, but it’s the only link on YouTube. If you just pay attention though, this man knows how to deliver text and he truly deeply feels what he’s singing, God bless him...Ah! Michael Crawford... Another entry in the making... :D Well so much for only one link! XD Thank you for reading, sincerely, Sylvie <3