RIP, Charles.
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Aznavour Isnomore
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- Mar 2008
- 9819
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
Great performance in Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste around the same era as that video.
Another cinematic anecdote- he was an Armenian refugee, family name Aznavourian; Robert Guediguian deliberately includes mention of the family in the film Army of Crime, about the networks of migrants/refugees who carried out most of the resistance actions in Paris during the Occupation.
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For the entirety of my lifetime, he was the most prominent Armenian in France and central to efforts to have France recognise the genocide. He was also Armenia's ambassador to Switzerland and its permanent representative at the UN in Geneva.
His legacy as an advocate for his people may outlive his as an artist.
RIP
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Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View PostBlimey. I thought he'd been dead for years.
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Originally posted by Sits View PostThis. Last I'd heard was the version of She he did with Elvis Costello. That was 1999.
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I can remember my sister and I moaning and groaning when She was number one for a month back in 1974: I didn't think I could name any other hits of Aznavour's, either, but come to think of it, I do recall Dance in the Old-Fashioned Way.
Not really my 'tasse de thé', but RIP of course.
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- Mar 2008
- 4929
- Amersfoort. NL
- Bristol City, RC Lens, Borussia Dortmund, Feyenoord, Bath Women's Roller Derby
- Nobosprits.
It's become a knowing cliché like everything else these days, but anyone whoever really loved a woman, was bereaved by a woman they loved, or was rejected by a woman they loved will never find a song that expresses how love feels more than She.
Go on, tell me otherwise.
A great, lovely little man.
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- Apr 2011
- 2053
- A bottom-bottom wata-wata in Lake Titicaca
- Atlético Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca Pan flutes FC
- Buñuelos Arequipeños
Bugger, my parents must be very sad today, they were fans and went to see him several times in France, quite recently too I think. Amazingly, he was still touring the world at 94 and had just come back from two concerts in Japan, and was due to perform in Brussels at the end of October.
I liked him as an actor too, as mentioned by Felicity, particularly in La métamorphose des cloportes (1965 – starring the great Lino Ventura, with the exceptional Michel Audiard as a screenwriter). The film is adapted from the eponymous Alphonse Boudard novel, a famous (in France) post-war working-class Parisian novelist with the most improbable life story. Boudard is possibly the most delightfully sweary author in the French language, you could write an encyclopedia of French slang from his œuvre.
I’m not a great fan of She (his accent wasn’t great for starters in this song, and it just doesn’t flow very well IMO), I find the French version (Tous les visages de l'amour) much more natural and melodious:
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- Apr 2011
- 2053
- A bottom-bottom wata-wata in Lake Titicaca
- Atlético Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca Pan flutes FC
- Buñuelos Arequipeños
And I’ve posted it before on here but I love the gipsy-flamenco-ish cover of La Bohème by Kendji Girac so I’ll post it again. The lyrics of La Bohème are great, it’s so graphically reminiscent of bohemian Montmartre and Montparnasse of yesteryear. I swear to god, play the song while having the Green Fairy as a companion and before long you’ll see Toulouse-Lautrec and a young Picasso joshing about in the Lapin Agile while three decades later André Breton is having ding-dong discussions with Tristan Tzara and Man Ray at La Coupole or La Rotonde in Montparnasse, probably about who’s going to fork out the bill or start doing a runner.
Fuck, if you go to La Rotonde these days, all you’ll see is wall-to-wall bourgeois and possibly even King Macron as it’s his brasserie of choice, that's where the cunt celebrated his victory last year, probably with Benalla at the door ejecting and roughing up would-be diners.
Lyrics of Bohème, Charles Aznavour
Je vous parle d'un temps
Que les moins de vingt ans
Ne peuvent pas connaître
Montmartre en ce temps-là
Accrochait ses lilas
Jusque sous nos fenêtres
Et si l'humble garni
Qui nous servait de nid
Ne payait pas de mine
C’est là qu'on s'est connu
Moi qui criais famine
Et toi qui posais nue
La bohême, la bohême
Ça voulait dire
On est heureux
La bohême, la bohême
Nous ne mangions qu'un jour sur deux.
Dans les cafés voisins
Nous étions quelques-uns
Qui attendions la gloire
Et bien que miséreux
Avec le ventre creux
Nous ne cessions d'y croire
Et quand quelques bistrots
Contre un bon repas chaud
Nous prenaient une toile
Nous récitions des vers
Groupés autour du poële
En oubliant l'hiver
La bohême, la bohême
Ça voulait dire
Tu es jolie
La bohême, la bohême
Et nous avions tous du génie.
Souvent il m'arrivait
Devant mon chevalet
De passer des nuits blanches
Retouchant le dessin
De la ligne d'un sein
Du galbe d'une hanche
Et ce n'est qu'au matin
Qu'on s'asseyait enfin
Devant un café crème
Épuisés mais ravis
Fallait-il que l'on s'aime
Et qu'on aime la vie
La bohême, la bohême
Ça voulait dire
On a vingt ans
La bohême, la bohême
Et nous vivions de l'air du temps.
Quand au hasard des jours
Je m'en vais faire un tour
A mon ancienne adresse
Je ne reconnais plus
Ni les murs ni les rues
Qui ont vu ma jeunesse
En haut d'un escalier
Je cherche l'atelier
Dont plus rien ne subsiste
Dans son nouveau décor
Montmartre semble triste
Et les lilas sont morts
La bohême, la bohême
On était jeunes
On était fous
La bohême, la bohême
Ça ne veut plus rien dire du tout.
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Originally posted by Logan Mountstuart View PostIt's become a knowing cliché like everything else these days, but anyone whoever really loved a woman, was bereaved by a woman they loved, or was rejected by a woman they loved will never find a song that expresses how love feels more than She.
Go on, tell me otherwise.
Then only a couple of months later, after it felt like I'd found my way 90% of the distance through, she suddenly ended it, and I was there in those categories sooner than I'd ever feared. "The love that cannot hope to last", indeed. Even the mid-July-to-late-September timeline that spanned this period proved to be eerily in sync ("She may be the song that summer sings / may be the chill that autumn brings") with those lyrics.
I think it's an astonishing song, not least because that ambiguity inherent in it makes it work perfectly whether or not you're still together with the 'she' ("the one I'll care for through the rough and ready years") or not.
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He was encouraged to make a career of singing by Edith Piaf. And that career continued until a couple of weeks ago. That's quite something. Apparently he was still on French TV on Friday.
By all accounts, Chuck was a decent sort. Alas, Aznavour was also a great supporter of Israel, going back to the founding of Israel and continuing to the end. His next tour was to end with a concert in Tel Aviv. He and Shimon Peres were close and personal friends, apparently. Given his history of engagement on behalf of victims of genocide -- Armenian and Jewish -- Aznavour's lack of engagement for the victims of Israel's incremental genocide of Palestinians is regrettable.
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He went back to Armenia for the centenary of the genocide. Also wrote Ils sont tombés [They Fell] on the topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcSCkBY6-K4
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