C’est par hasard qu’un jour de fin 1988 je suis tombé sur un enregistrement des Quartets pour flûte de Mozart, interprétés par des musiciens habitués au répertoire baroque: les frères Kuijken.
People like me don’t leave France because of taxes. We leave France because the moderns lost. Because Finkelkraut won. The dark side of France… God save the Queen, and fuck Finkelkraut!
This very dark vision is a part of the testimony of my generation. Boomers used to say we were cynical, that we were too realistic, not enough idealists, and bla bla bla, and bla bla bla… We were only 15 and those of us who were lucide enough to understand what was going on in the world knew that all those dreams of “socialism” and “revolutions” were vain.
New Order and The Cure wrote for the crowd of their time, and to tell the truth, the result was spendid for New Order. But with this song, The Bunnymen went farther, far farther. They just didn’t know they were recording for the 90’s and the 2000’s. In this song, there is Nirvana, there is Oasis, with a much, much better style. Maturity, I said.
In 1985, I reached my 20th year. After years of “rock and roll”, I finally cooled down, but I entered another moment in my life. Didier Lestrade talked about this many times and it is a subject which is not so frequently told. I stopped having sex for almost a year and a half. Not completly, but almost. HIV was a fear in my generation’s mind like no one can understand nowadays...
1983/84 was a turning point. I started living alone in Paris the previous in year in september and very quickly I drawn into the abyss of the University. Students were boring, all from middle/upper middle class in a kind of average Telerama culture. I hated that. Instead of studying, I invested my time into concerts, my radio program, and booze, and pot, and acids… I was 18 after all. Sex...
Few days ago, as my friend Pierre posted a song of Passion Fooder on Facebook, Peter O’Tool, I suddenly remembered Orchestre Rouge, the previous band of the singer.
When people talk about a “French touch”, they should ask themselves “but how did it happen, when did it start?”… How could the country of Mireille Matthieu and Edith Piaf become so cool, so good…
As far as I recall, something changed in my life the day I heard this song, and even now it is still working somewhere deep in my soul. Yes, my soul.
I should write 1984 instead, but the original year is 1967.
I just loved that song. Bye, Mister Mandela.
I was 18 going 19. My summer of 1984. I didn’t like that kind of music, but Divine was different. The caracter, for sure, the sens of humor also, her history, magical caracter in John Water’s movie, a creature without borders, just free and funny.
MBC | Social