Post-war Los Angeles was doubtless a swell place to live if you were a movie star, Hollywood mogul, business tycoon, captain of industry, political big-wig, gangster or otherwise a money-bags, cosseted by wealth, not much in life you couldn’t afford.
Mildly annoying evening last night, as I watched the ecstatic tweets coming in from the Lubomyr Melnyk show at Café Oto, unable to be there myself. Comfort came from the Ukrainian pianist’s new album, “The Voice Of Trees”, which I think has been one of my favourite personal discoveries of the last month or two.
Paris, 1968. On the set of a nondescript film called Slogan, 22 year old English actress Jane Birkin finds herself playing the love interest of a washed-up advertising executive undergoing a midlife crisis. In real life, Birkin’s three year marriage to Bond-theme composer John Barry is falling apart. She embarks on an affair with her leading man, a French pop star called Serge Gainsbourg, ushering in a year he would later call “un année erotique”, during which the duo would record a hit single, “Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus”, banned by the BBC for its suggestive sexuality.
This comes in a cute Dansette-style box stuffed with ten albums of antique Kinkorama and Meet the Kinks!, a fab 1960s style booklet with rare fab pix. For complete retro-authenticity, everything is in mono, this being how the original records were released back in those sacred days (so sacred that “Days” itself is now the theme tune for a car advert).
I’m increasingly conscious that one of the main criteria for inclusion in this column appears to be a penchant for very long tracks. When writing about The Necks, a questing trio from Australia, it is especially easy to come up with a timetable rather than a review.
100. Rene Hell – The Terminal Symphony (Type)
99. King’s Daughters And Sons – If Not Then When (Chemikal Underground)
98. Wolfgang Voigt – Kafkatrax (Profan)
