Thursday, February 28, 2013
Memphis Slim at the Trois Mailletz
In 1972 I was living in the centre of Paris in the Marais quarter in a tiny flat. The toilet was a half flight down, a squat toilet also known as a "Turkish" toilet and you had to take a torch with you when you went there. The woman I was living with, and whom I was in love with, had just returned in the last hour or so from a visit to London. I knew that the superb blues pianist Memphis Slim was playing at the cellar club in the Latin Quarter known as Aux Trois Mailletz on the Rue Galande. Leo Ferre , the great chansonnier, had performed there in 1948 , the year of my birth. I tentatively suggested , with no hope whatsoever of acceptance, that we attend this gig. This suggestion was met with a wonderful smile and joyful acquiescence. It was a warm evening. The cellar club was the size of a largish living room. Amazingly we got a table right behind where Memphis Slim would be sitting at the piano. He gave his usual highly professional performance and I was able to look over his shoulder and clock his extraordinarily long fingers dancing on the ivories as he played the blues. It was , for me, a memorable evening. I wonder if it is remembered in the same way by that woman?
Labels: Aux Trois Mailletz, Memphis Slim, Paris
Only a dreamer
Only a Dreamer
Poem by Chartist poet John Bedford Leno
Only a dreamer, only a dreamer,
Pass him by, pass him by; Why should we trouble our heads about him?
You and I.
Let the fool dream that the world will alter, Get wiser and better, in rhythm and rhyme;
Come away Harry, come away Walter,
The world only moves at its own set time.
Keep to the pathway, keep to the pathway, It will do, it will do;
Why should we seek for newer and better, I and you.
Let the poor work out their own salvation, Get freer and better as best they may,
We will keep step with the bulk of the nation, Unmindful of those who may fall by the way. There is no danger, there is no danger,
Let him cry, let him cry; Why should we trouble our heads about him, You and I.
Let the fool cherish his visioned tomorrow,
And fill in his pictures with rhythm and rhyme, Careless of grief, and careless of sorrow,
The world only moves at its own set time.
List to the dreamer: List to the dreamer! Calling us back! Calling us back!
In tones that are stirred by sudden danger:
Death on your track! Death on your track!
Swift as the wind,for your own salvation, Fly for your life, as best you may;
The dreamers of dreams are the kings of the nation, The scorned of the scorners of yesterday.
Labels: Chartism, John Bedford Leno, Poetry
Boyards and bleus
Every morning except Sundays in the early 1970s I woke up in a flat on the Rue du Temple in the Marais quarter of Paris and put on my bleus, those uniforms of dark blue thin denim, jacket and trousers, and made my way by metro to Courbevoie which lies on the other side of the Seine from Paris. There I shook the hands of thirty or so fellow workers at the BP building there. It's something of an effort shaking so many hands at that time of the morning. I later found out that the habit of handshaking, still very much alive in France, was introduced from England, where it seems to have more or less died out. Wearing bleus marked you out, and still does, as a prolo, especially if you wore a flat cap with the ensemble. The classic look was finished off with a cigarette, a clope or a tige de huit in argot, hanging from a corner of the mouth. Marching down the street, you would swing around in response to a greeting from another, and grunt "Hein?" The best cigarette for the look was the Boyard, better than a Gitane or a Gauloise, and like them made out of caporal tobacco. That reminds me, how often do you smell that in France these days. The ubiquitous cigarettes of blond tobacco seem to have taken over. The Boyard resembled a stick of yellow chalk, as the foul smelling and rough tobacco was wrapped around by yellow maize paper. They were of course unfiltered. They were manufactured from 1876 but changing times meant plummeting sales as they were loaded with tar. A fire in the factory finished them off, although now an electric Boyard has been introduced!!http://www.djibnet.com/photo/boyard/boyards-caporal-french-unfiltered-cigarettes-packet-late-1970s-3847003550.html
Labels: Boyard cigarettes, Parisian working class
Elegy for the PILIs
In the early 1970s the PILIs -Plans Indicateurs Lumineux d'Itineraires -were at every metro station in Paris. By pressing a button, you could (more or less) work out how many times you had to change to reach your destination thanks to lines of lights on a map that illuminated when you pressed a metal button. Since 2011 new indicators are being introduced and now there are fewer and fewer PILIs. Will they go the same way as those reeking open air urinals, the green metal vespasiennes, of which only one example still exists in Paris on the Boulevard d'Arago? I for one will miss the PILIS
Hazlitt on Youthful radicalism
Hazlitt on William Godwin deriding the youthful radicalism that disappears with "maturity" " 'Throw aside your books of chemistry,' said Wordsworth to a young man, a student in the Temple, 'and read Godwin on Necessity.' Sad necessity! Fatal reverse! Is truth then so variable? Is it one thing at twenty and another at forty? Is it at a burning heat in 1793, and below zero in 1814? Not so, in the name of manhood and of common sense! Let us pause here a little. Mr. Godwin indulged in extreme opinions, and carried with him all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of the time. What then? Because those opinions were overcharged, were they therefore altogether groundless? Is the very God of our idolatry all of a sudden to become an abomination and an anathema? Could so many young men of talent, of education, and of principle have been hurried away by what had neither truth nor nature, not one particle of honest feeling nor the least show of reason in it? "
Labels: Hazlitt, Radicalism, William Godwin
Song of the ages
Song of the ages.
According to rock writer Nick Tosches in his book Country, the theme of Black Jack David finds its origin with Plato and the ancient Greeks: the myth of Orpheus & Euridice, where a god descends on earth to capture a lady. Through Roman writers as Virgil the Orpheus myth was spread throughout Europe. What is considered to be the first modern opera, Claudio Monteverdi's l'Orfeo (1607), was based on that same theme. The English, Irish and Scots adapted it again. In their ballads no god but a 'Gypsie Lad' took away their wives. Since the 15th century Gypsies and Travelers of disputable repute roamed all over Albion. See a ballad as The Gypsie Laddie, notorious through the writings of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns. The oldest British versions mention a Johnny Faa, in those days a current name in gypsy circles. In 1540 James V of Scotland granted the title of Earl of Little Egypt to a Johnnë Faa. Later on, all Egyptians were ordered to leave Scotland on pain of death. The Parliament issued a formal expulsion edict and there are facts to prove that a Captain Johnny Faw was arrested and executed in 1624, along with his son and seven disciples. The accusation read: "for contemptuously entering and residing in the country". Immigration policy problems are truly of all times, fed by a case of abduction that was proved by a rolemodel ballad: Lady Cassilis Lilt, a manuscript from 1630 with similar convincing power as a tabloid rumour. A certain Lady Jean Hamilton was in love with a Sir John Faa from Dunbar but got married with the Earl of Cassilis. When that marriage was blessed with two children, the lady's lover reappeared in full Sheik of Araby attire. Lady Hamilton and her Rudolph Valentino were caught in the act by the Earl himself, who executed the Gypsy lad while incarcerating his wife in the castle's tower, throwing the key away. A legend was born. Even today the bridge over the river Doon along the castle wall is still called 'The Gypsies Steps' and there's still an 'Earl Cassell' or a 'Lord Cash' mentioned in modern day versions of the Gypsy Laddie. See the Alan Lomax Collection medley mentioned, whereby the Earl is regarded as the good guy, the 'dark-eyed gypsy' as the bad guy. June Tabor has her own theory explaining this saga's enduring power: a strange man appearing out of the blue, offering a wedded wife a way to escape matrimonial shackles, has long been regarded as an opportunity of a lifetime. Since there were no Gypsies in America, Black Eyed Davy or Black Jack David or Blackjack Davey is regarded as a good outlaw conquering the west and all that goes with it, while it's the lady he dishonored who was all to blame. Stand By Your Man. What works for Blackjack Davey works for the Raggle - or Wraggle - Taggle Gypsies. (see there) http://www.originals.be/en/originals.php?id=566
Labels: Black Jack David, Folk songs, Raggle Taggle Gypsies
Whenever I hear the words East Side...
Whenever i hear the words East Side I reach for my trusty Mauser. Yes, I was looking through some material on my shelves on East London when I came across the following brochure produced by Time Out entitled Eastside- A Guide to Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Columbia Road. I noticed that I had angrily written across it "The East End, you ponce!" The East End is Tower Hamlets and some parts of Hackney. It does not need a renaming by some glib and vacuous marketing consultant. It is not some area of Chicago or New York. Fortunately these asinine attempts to rob us of the history and traditions of the past that are summed up in the words East End have come to nothing, in spite of the drive towards increasing gentrification and social cleansing on the western edge of the East End and further afield. Thousands of throats are opened and pour forth the complaint: "The East End , you ponce!"
Labels: East End, East London, East Side
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Oily type and crepe soles
My elder brother was separated from me by the vast chasm of the Second World War and by the even vaster abyss of years. My father did not treat him well. He became an apprentice printer with the local paper. We shared a bedroom for a while. He was no teddy boy but wanted to be one and his winklepickers and crepe soled shoes could be seen lined up on under a table on the bedroom floor. Metal type often coated with oil lay on the table and I , at the age of eight, was as intrigued by the type as by the shoes.
For my brother, the indignities of adolescence and an unloving father were supplemented by pirea which led to the early loss of his teeth. He appeared to put up with this with a silent determination and to wish to flee our family as soon as he could. He often, in the early evening, put his head around the door of the room where we were sitting and mumbled "going out". He eventually found a girl in the Brighton dance halls and they got married. He moved out with the marriage.
After his stint at the local paper, he got a job with the Polish language daily. He never learnt Polish but was able to immediately spot an error in the text of the typesetting. With the ageing of the exile community and the increasing anglicisation of the second and third generations the demand for the paper fell; this was before the second great wave of Poles. The company had to "let him go". He worked for a while stacking shelves in a supermarket, and the indignity of such a skilled worker being ordered about by some acned upstart must have been immense. His first wife had left him, and his second wife, a nurse, is now in the advanced stages of a degenerative disease.
It's a long time since I have seen my brother. I often wear a pair of crepe soled shoes that are a facsimile of the ones that lay under the bedroom table.
Heine and Capital
A great calm currently reigns here. Everything is quiet, as if
enveloped in snow on a winter night. Only a mysterious and
monotonous sound like spattering drops. It is the unearned
income of capital that falls into the cashboxes of the capitalists
nearly causing them to overflow. The continuous increase of
the wealth of the rich is distinctly hated. Occasionally this
muffled roar is mixed with a sob emitted in a low voice, the
sob of indigence. Sometimes a light metallic sound echoes
like that of a knife being sharpened.
—Heinrich Heine, September 17, 1842
Labels: capitalism, Heine
The Pneus of Paris
The Pneus of Paris
When I lived in Paris in the early 1970s, if you wanted to contact someone quick and they didn't have a phone, you sent a pneu. See below. Alas they were abolished in the 1980s:
PARIS PNEUMATIQUE IS NOW A DEAD LETTER
"By JOHN VINOCUR (The New York Times); Style Desk
March 31, 1984, Saturday
The epistolary tradition, which has been steadily running out of breath in this country since Madame de Stael, took another very hard blow on Friday at 5 P.M. Afer 117 years of service, the Government has done away with la lettre pneumatique. A whoosh of compressed air, a rattling of tubes under the city, and then a postman ringing the bell, announcing he had brought what the French simply called a pneu: For the equivalent of about $1.80, you could get a letter from any point in Paris to any other place in the city in two hours. The system was good for dispatching a theater ticket or paying a bill, and better when a phone call was best avoided. Sending a pneu, a letter that was always a bit of an event, offered an exquisite means to mask on paper the eagerness or anxiousness that even a practiced tone of voice could betray. If telegrams here are for announcing deaths and lottery winners, the pneu served more circumscribed but just as real emotions - and announced several generations of broken dates."
There was a whole system of tubes linking up the Paris post offices. Once the pneu , which was a letter sent in a canister, sped through the tubes to the nearest post office, a postman went with it to the recipient all in the course of a few hours. I used it a couple of times myself.
Labels: Paris, pneumatiques, Postal service
Bronco Bullfrog and the Pie Crust
I only learnt recently that the Pie Crust cafe, a greasy spoon by day and a Thai place by night on the Stratford Broadway, and so not far from me, was the caff featured in the superb East London film Bronco Bullfrog. It's at the start where the main protagonist and his friends break into the caff to steal the cash
Labels: British films, Bronco Bullfrog, Pie crust Cafe, Stratford
RLS and Gentrification
We think of the bohemian and artist acting as the unwitting vanguard of gentrification in the inner cities as a phenomenon of the latter half of the 20th century onwards. But what is happening in the Marais, in Harlem, in Homerton and Brick Lane was being written about in the 19th century. Robert Louis Stevenson on the artists' villages of Fontainebleau:
"The institution of a painters' colony is a work of time and tact. The population must be conquered. The innkeeper has to be taught, and he soon learns, the lesson of unlimited credit; he must be taught to welcome as a favoured guest a young gentleman in a very greasy coat, and with little baggage beyond a box of colours and a canvas; and he must learn to preserve his faith in customers who will eat heartily and drink of the best, borrow money to buy tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver for a year. A colour merchant has next to be attracted. A certain vogue must be given to the place, lest the painter, most gregarious of animals, should find himself alone. And no sooner are these first difficulties overcome, than fresh perils spring up upon the other side; and the bourgeois and the tourist are knocking at the gate. This is the crucial moment for the colony. If these intruders gain a footing, they not only banish freedom and amenity; pretty soon, by means of their long purses, they will have undone the education of the innkeeper; prices will rise and credit shorten; and the poor painter must fare farther on and find another hamlet."
Labels: artists, Fontainebleau, gentrification, Robert Louis Stevenson
