A Moveable Feast

Amy Macdonald - Mr. Rock & Roll

This song is currently playing in an endless loop and quite loud whenever I am at home (and not sleeping between services). It reflects my current good mood, or manages easily to get me into it...

Just because it's Valentine's day...

To whom it may concern.....

Colbie, Carla and all that

Time to move on to a new favourite song, that I picked up on French RTL2 radio yesterday, titled "Bubbly" by Colbie Caillat.

I am back in my beloved strike-country since a couple of days.

What's new : actually the strikes are over (for now), it is bitter bitter cold, too much difference to the Carribean, the Colonel G. and with him heated political discussions about the new government have left Paris and the number one topic is the president's new love. Le president is known to love "les pipol" (Frenched "people", the stars), so it was just a matter of time that he was "discovered" with a famous beauty at his side, Carla Bruni, a French/Italian singer and ex-model, they were seen this weekend at Disneyland together...For those not knowing her and having to guess about the significance of this event, just imagine Barbara left George 5 months after he had been elected president, then 2 months later George dates Jennifer Lopez, and this is discovered at Disneyworld. See ? This raises so many questions, and is much more interesting to discuss than the state of economy and social problems of this country. Yes. Make love not strike !

To get an impression of our new current potential future second first lady, admire her in this great performance with Bryan Ferry.

Beautiful song.

I have not written about food and my culinary career and projects for a while, but starting tomorrow this should change, just as my life will change again dramatically. I am very nervous before my first day working in a restaurant, feels like I have a knot in my stomach. Everybody tells me I'll be fine, but it doesn't help... At the moment I just think : "What the hell have I done ?" Need to survive the first days, hopefully I can sleep tonight.

Sting

Just checking email in San Sebastian, Spain (more about that later) and found that great picture in my intray from Diane who was at the Police concert too last Saturday in Paris. Merci Diane !!! When I told Ayako, that man is 56 years old, she didn´t believe me. Well, seeing the picture indeed you could guess he is thirty something. It was a fantastic concert, also for the eyes ;)

Ah and I forgot : Sting said hello to Sidney and to my Mother...

Late Happy Birthday Dr. B. in H. !!!

Better late than never ! Sorry, but I didn't have an Internet connection last week, you know why. So here is what you expected : A public Happy happy birthday now from the Munich airport. I dedicate you my new favorite play-in-a-loop-all-day song of the month/week/day ;).

fête de la musique

As you might have noticed I haven't updated my current favourite music for a while, which is unusual for me, but also linked to all the focussed exam preparation. But on Thursday music made it back into my life with a big bang. Everybody was out in the streets to celebrate the Fete de la musique, an event taking place all over France since 1982 every year on June 21st. The idea of the Fete de la musique is to encourage amateur bands play their music in the streets and get their night of fame, but also to make all kinds of music accessible to a wide audience through free concerts.

It was launched by Jack Lang, former culture minister, and I read that this year he kicked off the same event in New York. Which makes New York lagging 25 years behind Paris... !!!

I started to read the big program at 7 p.m. to check out, which route through Paris I should take to check out some jazz groups, when I found THE concert to go to : Kurt Masur, conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony with the Orchestre National de France in my favourite museum, the Musée d'Orsay (a transformed train station built in 1900). But : limited number of people accepted. So I ran, ran, ran, hopped on the metro, ran again, and .... as expected there was an enourmous queue, but I was let into the museum at 7.50 p.m ! I was very excited, and couldn't believe I belonged to the lucky ones to have made it. No planning, no entrance fee and seeing one of the greates conducturs playing one of the greatest pieces of classic music in the most beautiful location possible. How lucky I was !!! Kurt Masur was the director of the New York Symphonic Orchestra until 2002 and is still the conductor of the London Symphonic Orchestra. As a funny coincidence my parents had just been four days before in Leipzig, Germany to his 80th birthday celebration gala concert, so I was satisfied to be able to catch up now...

The ambiance was very special and I could tell the orchestra and Kurt Masur did enjoy the unusual environment. I was very moved during the whole concert. C'etait vraiement un grand moment !

Sorry for the wild moving camera, I was too excited, and am definitely a better photographer than movie-maker...

 
Pictures taken before the concert from the audience towards the orchestra and from the orchestra's view into the audience after the concert.

After the concert I went back to my original plan, to stroll some neighbourhoods and check out the small unknown groups playing on every street corner. I started in the Marais, on the place the Vosges, another favourite place of mine in Paris, usually very quiet, transformed by hundreds of singing people under the arcades, walking back by Notre Dame, watching bands playing on the banks of the Seine, then via the boulevard Saint Germain, where cars couldn't move any more, stuck in the crowd. In St. Germain things got a bit too wild for me, and I started to feel almost scared by the crowd, now many people with bottles in hand (and head) so I took the rue de Rennes back home, where the second best group of my evening played pop/rock from the 80s in a street cafe, with an enthusiastic audience that blocked the wide Rue de Rennes, so that traffic got stuck there as well.

The passing policemen, instead of moving the people from the street, were waving from their cars that night to the band...

Crowded Place des Vosges

Even more crowded street in St. Germain. The band is on the left side in the middle next to the girl with the trumpet standing above the crowd.

 
A group playing on the Seine bank next to Notre Dame, with the audience on the stairs.

My last stop (in the background the lights of Tour Montparnasse near my home): a band in the Cafe du Metro with a big audience dancing and occupying the Rue de Rennes.

De Two Two Two, De Da Da Da

Yesterday, March 21st, 10 am, sales started of THE concert to go to (well at least for my generation) in France this year. Somehow I anticipated, that I might not be the only person in France that would want to go and see three old guys playing together again after 21 years of separation, so all morning I kept wondering how on earth I would make it there since at 10 am I was busy learning how to prepare this piece of meat

and turn it into a wonderful dish called carré d'agneau persillé, looking like this at the end
.

So I made a plan, that during the kitchen break, instead of going into the faboulous school cafeteria for lunch I would go in the school's library and order tickets online. Exceptionally that day we were given a break at 11:30-12:20 instead of at 1 p.m. That was my first lucky event. So I thought, I would get easily a ticket. But as soon as I was down in the library and on the internet reservation site, I realized, that I should probably forget my chances to get tickets, as it looked like the server of the reservation site had broken down. I guess everybody in France above 40 was on the internet with me trying the same thing.

A that time I had 30 minutes left to be back in the kitchen. I told myself that I still haven't tried everything to get those tickets, and that I need to, as a broken server 2 hours after sales opening was a bad sign for chances to still get tickets in the evening, and so I ran down to the locker room, changed, ran to the next fnac (the biggest multimedia store in France), and found the queue for the tickets. I was very nervous, since it was not an option to come back late to the class. After just 20 people before me, it was eventually my turn, and I was told, that the reservation server was broken down, but that fortunately they had a couple of prereserved printed tickets, that had been "thrown out" by their system after the first computer failure in the morning. That was at 12.15. I couldn't believe my luck and took the best 2 seats among the 8 tickets they still had. Then ran back to the school, changed, and back in the kitchen just in time. In the evening news they said, that the concert had been sold out after 1.5 hours (30 minutes faster than U2 in 2005). That means I got my two tickets 40 minutes after the concert was sold out !!! What a lucky day of coincidences ! And something to add to my looking forward list now.

Mika

Here is a new star on my music planet, which I recently discovered watching the French show Taratata (the only program worth watching on French TV). Amazing to find that type of music in 2007 written and performed by a 23 year old guy. Not sure how to characterize it. A mix of Queen, Beatles, Mick Jagger and Bee Gees ? Or maybe just incomparable !. Watch in this Taratata extract his song "Grace Kelly" (I could listen to it in a loop all day) and some more samples of his talent. Pas mal !

Window in the skies

Since beginning of this year my favourite radio station RTL2 keeps playing the latest single of my favourite rock band, and I can't get enough of it. Great power pop, which will get you humming along.... I just love it.

My favourite part of the song is at the end, for lyrics, melody and intensity :

     I know I hurt you and I made you cry
     Did everything but murder you and I
     But love left a window in the skies
     And to love I rhapsodize

     To every broken heart
     For every heart that cries
     Love left a window in the skies
     And to love I rhapsodize

The official video is brilliant, very creative and funny, check it out and enjoy :

More than this

I posted my last new favorite song more than 2 weeks ago, so it is time to change it, anyway I can't stand Herman Dune any more, as I listened too often to that song.

Since Sunday morning I am humming "More than this" all day long. This is not really a new song, but was released when I was at the age of sweet sixteen (so more than 2 years ago). In fact the humming is not inspired by the radio at all, but rather by my friend Sophie. Well only indirectly. I think she doesn't even know about it.

Anyway here is what happened Saturday : Sophie had come for a couple of days from Barcelona to spend a "decadent" weekend with me in Paris (more details in future posts, as decadence includes a certain type of activities that are worth sharing with gourmets). As Sophie is very knowledgeable about French gastronomie (I owe the experience of my first froglegs to her), on Saturday night back at my home we got into a discussion about the right way to do a mayonnaise (I am still haunted by the crudités experience), covering "with or without mustard ?" and similar essential questions of life.

She was tired and went to bed, and I read to her the various recipes for mayonnaise and its derivatives from my "techno" books from school. Within seconds she fell asleep (like a baby, not surprising, but this is another story ;). When I came to realize that I kept reading loud the mayonnaise recipes to myself and that I was far from wanting to go to sleep at midnight during my vacation week, I decided this was an opportunity to watch once more one of my alltime favorite movies on DVD, Lost in translation.

Now here is one of the scenes of this really wonderful movie, that makes me shiver each time I watch it. It's when they are both at a karaoke party with her japanese friends, and he is singing "More than this", basically right into her eyes. Sigh.... So since then I keep humming.

I could feel at the time, there was no way of knowing
Fallen leaves in the night, who can say where they´re blowing
As free as the wind and hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide has no way of turning
More than this - there is nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there is nothing.....