Salut!

J’écris ce poste directement de ma chambre à Paris. 

And, in honor of spring break in Paris, I present you with a few of my top  French albums (7 of them, because I couldn’t narrow it down to 5). These are French albums near and dear to my heart, some classics (and maybe slightly cliché) but still fantastic.  In no particular order:

7. Air–Talkie Walkie (2004)

Maybe sort of obvious to list Air as # 7 on the list, but Air is great and actually well-loved by the French.  I could have put Moon Safari instead, but Walkie Talkie  features “Alone in Kyoto” so my fondness for Sofia Coppola trumps here. Also, this album may or may not have been named after “Le Talkie Walkie” by Serge Gainsbourg, another favorite on my list. 

6. Stereo Total–Musique Automatique (2001)

I love Stereo Total and I love this album. Technically, while they’re not entirely French (the duo is 1/2 German), they make my list for fantastic songs like “Kleptomane” a song about a kleptomaniac.

“alors j’ai piqué du chocolat, un agenda, un pyjama, et plus que ça…”

5. Yelle–Pop-Up (2007)

Ok, I guess it’s sort of lame to put Yelle on this list, as she’s really over-played and all that, but I couldn’t get enough of this album when it was first released, and she’s so cute! This album reached #61 on the French charts, not bad!

4. Oui Oui–Chacun Tout Le Monde (1989)

This is Michel Gondry’s (director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep, etc.) band before he got famous as a director. This album is on this list mostly because of the music videos…which are all incredible. Look up “Les Adventures de Junior et la Voix d’Or” on youtube, so good. 

3.  Erik Satie–Gymnopédies (c. 1888) 

Not really an album, per se, but Erik Satie was an incredible composer (and later part of the French Dada movement). He is considered one of the first minimalists. Gymnopédies is an amazing series of compositions that typifies that era of revolutionary French music. They were later orchestrated again by Debussy (who should have made it on this list, but got beat out by Satie). 

2. Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin– Je t’aime Moi Non Plus (1969)

Serge Gainsbourg was a French icon, even though by the end of his life he started to seem more and more like a dirty old drunk Frenchman. This album is great, and includes the title track “Je t’aime Moi Non Plus” which was a worldwide hit, and apparently features Birkin and Gainsbourg, then lovers, having sex in the studio during the song. The rest of the album is great too, Birkin’s sexy, airy vocals are oh-so 60′s fantastic (even though she’s not actually French by origin, she does a good job faking). 

1. Monade–A Few Steps More (2005)

Monade is a post-rock group originated as a side project of  Lætitia Sadier, 1/2 of Stereolab. A Few Steps More is like Stereolab but better, pure French fantastic-ness. 

Voilà! Voici a few of my favorites. There are many more, but I should be out in the city instead of in my room writing blog posts. Enjoy!

à bientôt!

Lauren

We recently received a thoughtful note from Jay Briar, former WVKR DJ and executive staff member, catching us up with where life has taken him since graduation. We thank Jay for his kind letter and encourage all former DJs or staff members reading this to drop us a line through the mail (Box 726, 124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604) or e-mail (promotions@wvkr.org).  We would love to hear from you!

Here is Jay’s letter:

“Hello from Washington, DC, where I’ve long since traded the studio microphone for a smaller audience: history students. Since graduating from Vassar and leaving WVKR in the summer of 1998, I’ve been teaching history (my other pastime in college) back home, first at Norwood School in Bethesda, MD and now at Sheridan School in northwest Washington, DC.

Each morning I drive past the studios and transmitter of WAMU, our NPR affiliate and the radio station of American University. I admit I haven’t shaken the radio bug completely, and last Friday I volunteered to answer phones during their member campaign. It was certainly a different experience than when I was pitching for donations at VKR; they raised $25,000 in just one hour! But it was nice to be back near the studio again, if only for a short time.

Jay Briar

I’m getting married this summer to my partner of five years; another teacher with whom I’m basking in the relative job security of education. And I still make my donation to WVKR every year, as I hope my fellow DJ alums do, as well. DC is a town without a true college station, so I’m glad to pick up VKR online from time to time and gratified to hear some of the long-time voices that were there long before me, like Bill Eberle, Doug Price, and all the Polka Rascals. It’s also great to see the continued dedication of some folks that came on board on my watch, like Peter Clark, a long time Hudson Valley radio personality who finally “made it big” on college radio, and Julie Broccoli, who took a modest jazz show and turned it into a voice for justice.

I also got to see several old colleagues like Frank and Judy when I was at the station last spring during my 10 year reunion. Best wishes to everyone in the WVKR family!”

In Walter Percy’s The Moviegoer, Binx Bolling views movies as a sort of validation. In a constant fight against becoming an Anyone, lost in deadening everydayness, Binx shambles together a unique reality from the movies he sees. For Binx, movies situate time, place, and even character. A neighborhood only becomes real–becomes solid–when it is featured in a film. By extrapolation, a person only becomes real when they can be identified as a specific character.

The Moviegoer, a novel, was assigned to my Literary Nonfiction class, one focused on culture and criticism. At first, I thought this was kind of weird. As I read however, I realized we were reading not for the merit of the writing (of which there are many), but for the way in which Binx related to movies. For Binx, popular art–the movie–was not a reflection of life, but a model for it. This is somewhat of a disturbing idea. Is all pop art a sculptures, from which we are supposed to find reality?

I’m not much of a moviegoer, but I do listen to a lot of popular-ish music. I decided to explore the relationship of music and listener, in the context of the latest album that I’ve really enjoyed: Polka Dot Dot Dot.

I began at the basics.

Polka Dot Dot Dot’s first full length–Love Letter to New Zealand–was released of off Bicycle Records, the Olympia based label that epitomizes everything cool about the new “Weird America”. It’s an aesthetic that I have an affinity to. Like Binx, for who the whole movie going process was part of the experience of the art, the context in which the art is delivered is not without an effect. I liked the band before I even heard them. Packaged in environmentally-friendly looking cardboard, the design was simple and earthy. The picture of the band showed a somewhat homely trio standing in a tall field of wheat. They stood awkwardly with their eclectic group of instruments (guitar, harp, banjo) and their frumpy prairie clothes, and I liked them all the better for it. They looked like how I wanted to be: simple, caring little for modern times and trends, living in their own fragile nostalgia.

As I considere my initial reaction to the CD, I realized I was off to a bad start. Part of my appreciation of the band definitely stemmed from an attraction to the lifestyle they represented. I was like Binx turning to Gregory Peck as the model of masculinity.

But what about the actual music?

As the cover implies, Polka Dot Dot Dot is a folk band. Kind of. The tracks are sparse. Often comprised entirely of vocal harmonies and minimal alternating twangs and pings of the banjo and the harp. On songs like “Little Finger” it is impossible to miss the band’s Americana roots. But Polka Dot Dot Dot is also tapping into a much older tradition. The song “Rose Rose” is pulling from Medieval court music traditions. The rise and fall of the pitches, the vocal rounds, the stark contrast in the harmonies, and the lyrics all recall late Anglo-Saxon Medieval secular music (Aha! The harp makes sense). This is a sinker for me. I love Medieval art, music included. When I was younger I would walk around my garden, pretending to be a Medieval maiden in search of knights and unicorns. Combining neo-folk and Medieval music? These guys are golden.

Ok, circumstances aside, the music on its own merit quickly drew me in. As early as my initial album listen, I got lost in the world of the music, its sound. Stylistically basic, the sound is surprisingly rich. The vocals are warm, full of harmonies that fold onto themselves, pulling the listener along. The instruments are used sparingly, but they maintain a steady rhythym and a contextual flow from song to song. The latter half of the album builds on the skeletal foundation of the stringed instruments, incorporating bird chirps, typewriter taps, and a variety of additional jingly instruments. Rather than alienating–as I often find abstract sampling to be–the effect is one that brings me closer to the music. An intimacy is gained. The sounds are part of the story. In “The Letter” the clacks of a typewriter conjure images of a sundrenched summer day in the nineteen thirties, of someone writing to a beloved. Love Letter to New Zealand is a simple album, but is also one that draws you in. The songs tell bittersweet stories of loss and the natural world.

Ok, I was charmed by the music. Does this mean that it’s the auditory equivalent of Payton Place?

I think not. Even though Love Letter to New Zealand is a beautiful album, an album that I like and admire, an album that I can lose myself in, it never replaced my sense of reality. In fact, it rather acted as an escape from my reality. I lost myself while listening, but I never replaced myself with the nostalgic romance of Polka Dot Dot Dot’s model.

But why? How can I forget myself in the world of the music, but still emerge unmarked? I can’t extrapolate to all music, but in the case of Polka Dot Dot Dot I think it has to do with their own strong sense of nostalgia. Everything, from Medieval refrains to the sound of a typewriter, recall an earlier age. Each and every song on the album carries strong memories of the past. The world of the album may be seductive, but is also one that no longer exists outside of the music. It is therefore very easy to separate onself from the musical aesthetic. One may sojourn into a different place when listening to the album, but there is always the nugget of a thought: This song is telling an old story. And a story it remains. Unlike the blunt manliness that Gregory Peck portrayed in his films, Polka Dot Dot Dot offer no model for living. The farthest I can draw from the album is a sense of longing, which (sadly) I think was there to begin with. The world of Polka Dot Dot Dot is contained within the elipses the name implies.

Phew.

Polka Dot Dot Dot

Meet VKR’s new mascot– Buddy Vidrine, the 11-month old standard poodle of Cajun Medicine Show’s Doctor Romo.  You can never know for sure who’s really operating the board.

Cajun Medicine Show airs every Thursday from 10 AM to noon.