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Aznavour Isnomore

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    Aznavour Isnomore

    RIP, Charles.

    #2

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      #3
      Blimey. I thought he'd been dead for years.

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        #4
        Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
        Blimey. I thought he'd been dead for years.
        This. Last I'd heard was the version of She he did with Elvis Costello. That was 1999.

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          #5
          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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            #6
            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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              #7
              Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
              Blimey. I thought he'd been dead for years.
              I was talking to a mate about this the other day, when Dionne Warwick's name came up. One of the many advantages of non-fame is that nobody will ever say, "I thought that cunt treibeis went years ago."

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                #8
                Originally posted by Sits View Post
                This. Last I'd heard was the version of She he did with Elvis Costello. That was 1999.
                Which wasn't a collaboration at all, Costello simply covered it. But no, Aznavour was still hale and hearty and performing concerts up until this year deep into his 90s. What a man. RIP Charles.

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                  #9
                  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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                    #10
                    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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                      #11
                      B

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                        #12
                        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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                          #13
                          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.
                          Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 01-10-2018, 18:22. Reason: Half of the lyrics were missing

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by Logan Mountstuart View Post
                            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.
                            God, I can't, LM. I was so in love with someone when I first came across that song via Notting Hill and the Costello cover: someone who was beguiling and withdrawn and damaged and beautiful, and to me it described better than anything what she felt like ("the mirror of my dream / a smile reflected in a stream / she may not be what she may seem / inside her shell") and how the bittersweet struggle and reward felt of trying to plot a course through all the darkness and difficulty and hope that she carried and that loving her carried, towards some sort of longed-for happy ending. And at the same time it equally acknowledged the terrible truth ("the face I can't forget / a trace of pleasure or regret / may be my treasure or the price I have to pay") that I was likely as not going to end up one day in your second and third categories there too.

                            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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                              #15
                              RIP indeed.

                              Amongst all the other good stuff he did, musically and politically, he and his sister were awarded the Raoul Wallenberg award for sheltering Jews from the Nazis during WW2.

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                                #16
                                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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                                  #17
                                  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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