Carla 279

Mise en scene.... Imagine to yourself a lady in the late 1950's, who preferred the French chanson over Victor Sylvester and his ballroom music. Georges Brassens (b. 1921 - d. 1981) was a great but often controversial exponent of the French chanson because of his use of the rude language of the street. The record companies sometimes used a bit of censorship on the sleeves of his early LP's to avoid unnecessary provocation. A fine example of this is a song called "Putain de toi" (a whore you are) but written "P...... de toi" on the record sleeve. Fortunately, the recording itself was left completely intact. I was an admirer of Brassens since early childhood, long before learning French at school. His voice was always slightly lagging behind his guitar accompaniment and it was never over the top. Shortly after his death, I was invited by a popular Dutch group called Flairck to record a track called the Antichrist with them in the studio. They had put hand on the very last song texts written by Brassens before he died and they were in the process of writing music to the lyrics. Their plan was to bring out an LP to commemorate Brassens. Georges Moustaki would be the singer and my contribution would be to play a rather complicated accompaniment on the uilleann pipes. Two members of the group called to the house and we went through the song all afternoon until we were satisfied with the sound. Their only request to me was to have an F key added to the chanter as this note played a central part in the music. I sent the chanter to Ireland and soon got it back, fitted with the F key. Shortly afterwards, the group member who had written the music called me. Bad news. The heirs of Brassens (whoever they were, he had no children) had found out about the up coming LP and they threatened the group with legal steps if they would carry on with the plan. End of story.... I still cherish the home recordings made during that afternoon with Sylvia and Erik.
But let's return to the lady who was a Brassens fan in the 1950's just like me. She was in her forties and struggling with the onset of presbyopia. One day she bit the bullet and went to an optician. It turned out that she was also a bit longsighted so she was prescribed bifocals straightaway. The lady did not mind getting glasses as she liked the cat eye style but she was a bit confused about the use of bifocals. Here she is seen trying out her bifocals at home for the first time....