Here Comes the Sun (from Israel)

I am not the greatest fan of the Beatles, yet I love some of their songs and sometimes I stumble upon a cover of their tunes that is great. This was the case recently andI thought it was so great I had to share it. This was filmed at the Shaare Zedec Medical Center of Jerusalem. And it is seriously the very best version of Here Comes the Sun I have ever listened to. Well, Spring has arrived and it is a fitting spring song, especially done like this.

Ray Charles sings... Eleanor Rigby

I have not uploaded on this blog a song from the Beatles since March 2012. Of all the great British bands, you can tell I don't consider them the greatest, even though they are the most famous. I lived a year in Liverpool, where I didn't listen to their music much. I mean I like the Beatles all right, but I don't love them. And since I lived a year in Liverpool, I know how heavy their heritage has been on the city: do anyone remember that the city existed before the Fab Four and that it has a life of its own? All the same, I enjoy some of their songs sometimes. What I find far more shameful is that I did not upload Ray Charles singing since May 2012. And Ray Charles is one artist I love far more. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upload Eleonor Rigby, covered by Ray Charles. And, I might add, done far better by him than by the original Scousers. Ray Charles brings pathos and power in the words, as if he witnessed the account of the song. So here it is.

Quelqu'un se souvient de Ciné-Famille(s)?

Je me pose la question, qui deviendra peut-être une question existentielle. J'ai cherché partout sur Google, jusqu'ici je n'ai rien trouvé. Je ne sais même pas si ça s'appelait Ciné-Famille, Ciné-Familles, Ciné Famille ou... enfin vous voyez ce que je veux dire. Ca passait chaque samedi après-midi à Radio-Canada, on y présentait des films pour enfants, en général des dessins animés. Au générique, il y avait la musique, sans les paroles, de Love, love me do des Beatles. Et on voyait je crois un minibus ou un truc du genre. Il y a même une rurale dans la station de métro Jean-Talon où on voit le minibus du générique. Bon, qui s'en rappelle? Je n'ai pas rêvé, ça existait.

Liverpudlian (counter)culture

One of my Facebook friends put on her wall this silly internet article, 22 Things Only Students In Liverpool Will Understand. Well, I never was a Liverpool student, but I worked as a teacher in Liverpool and many if not most of my students were Scousers. So reading this silly article brought back some memories. Among them that I never quite got their accent, however charming I found it. Some of the vocabulary I never got either. Anyway, reading this, even though it is exaggerated and overall rather silly, really made me miss my time there. I do disagree with one thing: I am not certain the Beatles and their heavy heritage is as popular as the article seems to claim. And I have a confession to make: I don't remember the lambananas. Which is a darn shame, as I love that kind of quirky stuff. I guess I will need to revisit the city at some point.

Anthony Burgess on Liverpool

I knew Anthony Burgess had written about Liverpool, I even read it in his autobiography years ago (which I read in French), but I didn't remember much of it. I rediscovered it via Wikiquote. It is a strange feeling, reading this after having lived there. I know he is my favourite writer so I am biased, but I think he is spot on:

"The view of Liverpudlians that they are a race apart is well-founded. There is the unanalysable genetic mixture of a great port and also Welsh from the south and Irish a jump across from Dublin. The speech is distinctive. ‘All got your furs, love?’ cried the tram conductress, who kept warm with a bit of moth-eaten fare. The energy is immense and explains the gratuitous violence. ... Generosity could lead to violence. If I asked a direction I would soon have a crowd around me giving contradictory instructions. I would leave a fight behind and have to ask again. ... Of all the British cities that deserve the curative attention of the British government Liverpool comes first. The Bootle Beatles were taken too seriously, but, in their modest way, they exemplified the combative energy of the great decayed port. Guilt pricked me when I began to feel a larger loyalty to it than to Manchester."

Penny Lane and an anecdote from Liverpool

I hope my readership don't mind that I upload a song that is not Irish music while Saint-Patrick's Day is coming (especially since Liverpool is maybe the most Irish city of England) and that it is from a band which I always had ambivalent feelings about (read this post about McCartney coming to Quebec City, it gives you some ideas what I can thing about the Fab Four as persons). That said, I do love some of their songs, and I love Liverpool. And I have almost an anecdote about Penny Lane, which might make for a blog. It used to be, it might still be, my favourite Beatles song.I am not sure why. It's not that smart a song (but then the Beatles were not exactly Pink Floyd in terms of content). Maybe for the atmosphere, I don't know.

So yes, I lived a year in Liverpool, where I worked teaching French language and literature. I listened to my share of Beatles songs, but more to Mozart and and Pink Floyd. When I was about to settle there, I looked for various rented places and I nearly visited a room on Penny Lane. In the end I didn't, as I had found something before which was lovely and much cheaper. I went only once on Penny Lane, doing the Beatles tourist trail, near the end of my time there. It was a nice street. I don't regret not living there, it would have been plagued by tourists. But as I said then: "At least it would have been easy to find." And I finish this post with a great unknown line... And a song.

The nostalgic and the pilgrims

I was watching a program a few days ago about Brittain as seen by tourists. It was not very good (some critics hated it), but there was one section about Liverpool and of course the Beatles, and seeing all these American tourists doing their pilgrimage there got me thinking about my relationship with the city. Not bored yet? I probablyblogged about something similar at some point, but there you go.

I lived in Liverpool for only a year, but it was a significant year to me, on many levels. I did not live there enough to absorb the accent, let alone to become a Scouser, but I have a profound sentimental attachment to the city. I am no Beatles groupie. As a teenager, I used to listen to them, of course, but I cannot say that I never was, at any moment of my life, a fan. For many people in the world, Liverpool is only that, the cradle of the Beatles, the heritage of Beatlemania (often a cursed heritage for the locals), Liverpool is their Mecca, their Santiago de Compostela. For me it is a rainy, windy city, with an up slope leading to my (then) working place, it is two cathedrals, one old and Protestant, one ridiculously futuristic and Catholic, facing each other like brothers or enemies (or both), it is an English city miscegenated with Irish blood and culture (and some weird displays of Catholicism). In my mind, the Beatles are an afterthought of Liverpool history.

For me, Liverpool has the feeling of the familiar, which calls for another sort of deference than the pilgrim has. When I go back there, it is as a nostalgic. It is when I walk in Manchester that I am a pilgrim. The pilgrim will love a city only in regards to its association with the object of worship. The nostalgic will love the city in and for itself.

Here comes the sun

The sun is back, at last, with the internet connection it seems. And when I say "the sun", I mean: it's hot outside, at last. We didn't have out time here since Summer 2006, we barely had a Springtime in 2007 and no Summer, so I am glad we will have at least a day of warm weather, especially after the rain and wind of the last few months/the last year.