Two exemplars of French songs

(Listen to 'La Vie En Rose' by Édith Piaf from a 78s pressed in England in 1950, four years after its initial release in France in 1946.)

Excluding the so-called 'Western classical' works such as the famous habañera ‘L'amour est un oiseau rebelle’ from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen or Gabriel Fauré’s famous choral piece ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’, I cannot name more than two French songs with full and correct titles. The only two are the national anthem ‘La Marseillaise’ and Édith Piaf’s signature song ‘La Vie En Rose’.

I've been asking students and friends to give me two French song titles that they are familiar with and so far these two have been the unanimous responses.

I came to know ‘La Marseillaise’ through the all-time classic black-and-white Casablanca on TV on a Sunday afternoon in my childhood, in the 1980s.

There was a scene in which the house band of a nightclub played the French national anthem with the crowd singing along in response to a group of German officers' German patriotic hymn. My father told me that was 'Masai qu' (馬賽曲 'the song of Marseille' in Mandarin).

I came across 'La Vie En Rose' much later. Although the tune is not obscure and, despite its ranking as an foreign oldie, never obsolete in Taiwan, I only learnt that the original singer is Édith Piaf during my undergraduate period in the mid 1990s.

I had for thousands of times heard but always dismissed the tune, whether sung by Piaf herself or played as an instrumental piece, until one day when I found myself bombarded with it relentlessly at a record shop for half an hour. Finally I enquired who was singing what. Hence, 'La Vie En Rose' became the second French song I have seriously known.

I've just won an auction for a 78s record of 'La Vie En Rose' but have yet to find out 'La Marseillaise'. For now, while enjoying the former with surface noise from the record, could you, dear readers, name two French songs for me?

MetLife's advert song from the 1920s

(An advert song of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, with lyrics written by the vice-president, sung by the Peerless Quartet, c.1920s)

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, or MetLife for short, is 'a leading global provider of insurance, annuities and employee benefit programs, serving 90 million customers in over 60 countries' as claimed on the official website.

I acquired a record some time ago, captioned with 'Persoanl Record Specially Made for The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company', on one side of which is 'The Metropolitan' sung by the Peerless Quartette.

This male quartet is regarded as the most commercially successful vocal group of the acoustic recording era, the time before the introduction of the microphone when musicians had to play into a giant cone.

As this group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003, it's not too difficult to find out some biographical information. However, I was really foiled when trying to explore when the record was issued, to what extent MetLife was involved in the production, as well as what the song is about.

I visited MetLife's official website and contact them at various email addresses, but was only dismissed. I suppose they might be interested in it for this song is part of MetLife's corporation history. The lyrics were written by Dr. Lee K Frankel, the vice-president of MetLife.

However, this leading global provider of insurance and blah, blah, blah didn't even have the courtesy to informed me that the enquiry had been received.

Well, fine, as I am not a client nor was I asking for a quote, I deserve it, but the song isn't bad at all.

'Zara' reads 'Thara', you lazy news presenters.

(Image cited from The Internationalist)

Zara, a Spanish clothing brand owned by the Inditex group, has confirmed that it will start its first Taiwanese store in November 2011. Taiwan's first Zara will be located in Taipei 101 Mall.

Good news. As this Spanish high street brand offers a range of affordable and fashionable clothing for both men and women, and kids as well, Fanne and I are very much looking forward to its launch day.

However, I'm peeved off and fed up with the endless wrong pronunciataion made by those news presenters on TV. Zara is a Spanish brand and its initial consonant sounds 'TH' as in 'THink' rather than 'Z' as in 'Zero'. It reads THara ([ˈθaɾa] in IPA).

In my opinion, jounralists and presenters should make sure names of foreign origins are uttered correctly becuase they bear the responsibility to educate the general public. While a man on the street may read a foreign name wrongly, I don't think a news presenter is allowed to do so.

Can you news reporters or anchors do some homework before going on air? Would you think it's proper to prononce 'J' in the Spanish name José the same way you do in 'Joke'?

One more attempt at dance music with Ronne's voice

(Listen to this new track I made, mixed with my son's voice )

The only thing I know to appreciate electronic dance music (EDM) is still nodding my head and shaking my body to the beat of head-bangking music. I suppose I manage to do it quite well. However, I would rather stay at home to undertake this head-torso-limbs-quaking activity than go to a night club where I have to shout and squeak when making conversations with others.

Having not made any bid on eBay for quite a while, I have no more antique sounds from 78s records to share with the readers of my weblog. Therefore, I had scarcely decided to make one more tentative dance track this afternoon when I found some audio clips in the laptop, recorded half a year ago when my son started learning to speak.

It took me the whole afternoon to input note by note to create the framework first and then to prepare midi files, to edit audio samplings and to mix down the track. It all paid off when I saw Ronne shaking his body to the pulsating beat of the track.

PS. The female voice at the beginning of the track is singing the catchphrase from 'The evening bell at Mt. Nangping' (南屏晚鐘 Nangping wanzhong), a Mandarin oldie I often sing to lull my son to sleep.

Cooked breakfast on a Sunday morning

Tourists from the Continent or East Asian countries may complain that British cuisine lacks refined and heavenly specialities, but they have to admit that breakfast is absolutely an exception.

The full British breakfast features a range of cooked food such as bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, and fried tomatoes, to name a few. And the list may go on.

No wonder William Somerset Maugham, an English playwright and novelist active in the 1910s to 1930s, claimed English breakfast to be the best meal of the day and recommended serving it three times a day.

Believe it or not, I I used to prepare full cooked British breakfast from scratch for myself everyday, except those days when I had hangovers. Yes, for five years. Apart from those basic ingredients, especially the most important baked beans, I usually had one more extra dish—an omelette filled with cheese, mushrooms and finely chopped spring onions.

However, although I still cook breakfast after returning to Taiwan, I seldom have so much in the morning. Most of the time the only cooked bit is just a fried egg.

Today, waken up by the radiant sunshine and bloody chirruping birds at five on a Sunday morning, I decided to go to the food market at seven, much earlier than usual, and then have a quick, compact version of cooked breakfast—grilled tomatoes, fried sausages, sautéed mushrooms and fried eggs, served with some toasted baguette slices.

Though not as extravagant as what I had when studying in Britain, it's really a surprise for my wife Fanne. It's not too bad to have a long lie-in and then wake up to a meal ready to eat on a Sunday morning, isn't it?

A tango at a tango bar

(Listen to 'Por una cabeza' by Carlos Gardel from Tango Bar, 1935)

There are several definitions of the word bar to be used as a noun. Looking it up in a dictionary, you would probably find the first several to be 'a long rod or evenly shaped piece of solid substance', 'a regular narrow block of sold material' and 'a band of colour or light'.

One or two items further, there comes something like 'a counter or place across which beverages are served'. Right, that's where you intoxicate yourself and get tipsy, tight or, in the end, blotto.

However, there are some other types of bars where alcohol is not the main option. For example, whereas a juice bar serves prepared juice beverages, an oyster bar features fresh oysters, which are usually shucked on site within sight of the customers.

There is also a kind of bar which I've never come across so far—a tango bar. I can't imaging what else people can do in a tango bar besides tangoing.

Well, it's actually a Spanish-language film shot in 1935, with Carlos Gardel, the legendary tango singer-songwriter, playing the protagonist. It's where 'Por una cabeza', the second-most recognisable tango tune, after 'La Cumparsita', is from.

Tango Bar was acclaimed in newspapers as 'Un drama de pasion y aventuras, realzado por la música y canciones sin par' (something like 'A drama of passion and adventure, heightened by music and songs without the parallel', I suppose). It's definitely worth watching; I shall grab a DVD.

This 78s record arrived two weeks ago. Let's enjoy the original song delivered by Gardel himself, after having been bombarded with the instrumental versions in so many Hollywood films such as Scent of a Woman, True Lies and Schindler's List and so on.

For lyrics and English translation, please refer to The Tango Lyrics Page.

Fast-growing Ronne

While women change their mind in a way more capriciously than we can imagine, just like a feather in the wind (not my personal opinion but based on 'La donna è mobile', a song from Verdi's opera Rigoletto), babies grow up at a speed much faster than we expect.

Well,today I'm not going to tell another story about another gramophone record. Thus, there is no audio player embedded, nor any old-time recording added.

I just want to share this photo with the dear readers of my weblog.

Roone will be 14 months old on the 5th of May, but at the moment he simply doesn't look like what a 14-month-old one should. One of the colleagues said he though this was a three-year-old boy.

It might be exaggeration, but Ronne does increase in size as well as change in appearance so fast that sometimes in the morning I would doubt if I took someone else's child home, when I had too much booze the night before.

Fortunately, it's always him, my good boy.


(2-day-old Ronne: what a difference!)

Mama... I want a boyfriend

(Listen to the ‘Mama... yo quiero un novio’ by FUJISAWA Ranko, 1954)

In my opinion, the Japanese people are a very diligent and fussy people in the world. Once they start working on something that originates from another country, they work really hard so much so that they become the second best, if not the authority, in the world.

Listen to the audio clip. Would you observe that the singer is actually Japanese if I didn't tell you so?

I found this record on eBay when searching for some Carlos Gardel's tango records. The song title 'Mama... yo quiero un novio' (Mama... I want a boyfriend) caught my attention first. After I saw the fourth line on the paper label, I clicked the 'Buy It Now' button straightaway without any hesitation.

Wow, a Japanese vocalist's performance of tango produced by a Argentine record company! I just feel compulsory to own this record.

FUJISAWA Ranko (藤沢嵐子) is a Japanese singer who started her career at an American club in Tokyo after the War singing Western classical works, jazz tunes and Japanese popular songs.

Enchanted by 'La Cumparsita' played by an Argentine tango orchestra, she found Argentine tango the music she really wanted to sing and therefore turned to tangos from other genres.

In 1950, Fujisawa made her debut at the Ciro Club in Ginza with the Orquesta Típica Tokyo, conducted by her husband HATAKAWA Shinpei (早川真平). She then made her first recording in the ensuing year for Japanese Victor.

In 1953, she performed at a theatre in Buenos Aires, where the president Perón was among the audience. She was actually on holiday and only planned to stay there for a couple of days, but was requested to sing for the audience in Buenos Aires at a theatre by the director of a radio station, who had heard her on Japanese radio before.

The performance was so successful that several local radio stations strove to engage her to sing in the air. She finally stayed there for two more months.

Fujisawa performed again in Argentina in 1954 and for the third time in 1956.

Truly awesome. A Japanese singer conquered the Argentinians with Argentine tangos. If I didn't see the Japanese name on the paper label of the record, I would never know that the singer is actually Japanese-born Japanese.


(Portrait image from MySpace)

Clink, Clink, Another Drink

(Listen to the ‘Clink, Clink, Another Drink’ by Spike Jones and His City Slickers, 1942)

The famous British comedian Spike Jones, together with His City Slickers, produced a drinking song titled ‘Clink, Clink, Another Drink’ in 1942, with a ‘soundie’, an early version of the music video to be played in a special film jukeboxe, which is now available on YouTube.

The record of ‘Clink, Clink, Another Drink’ I purchased from eBay arrived last week. It reminds me of the round drinking culture in Britain. Although it seems to be more efficient to buy a round, as only one from a group has to leave to get some drinks rather than all of the group members queuing up in front of the bar, it makes people consume more. For example, if five chaps buy you drinks, you absolutely have to buy a round for all of them to successfully organise a piss-up.

This is why it’s so common to see a person come in for a pint but end up having probably five. Therefore, I believe that, having lived in the UK for five years, British people out-drink their European counterparts. While toddlers in the Continent are given wine with meals as soon as they are weaned, as the rumour goes, British children grow up eager to emulate the round drinking habits of their elders.

At the very end of ‘Clink, Clink, Another Drink’, it goes ‘From now on I'll stick to milk/ Nothing else to drink for me.’ To me, it doesn’t imply going teetotal; it simply means there is no more wine/spirits/beer left. Pubs close at 11 o'clock in England and Wales, or 12 o'clock in Scotland, on weekdays, so the last round has to be ordered in time or otherwise nothing left to drink.

Enjoy this short hilarious piece.

Clink, clink, another drink
Plenty in the cellar when it's gone.
Drink, drink, the glasses clink
Making tinkly music till the dawn is breaking.

Clang, clang, who cares a dang?
What's the difference when you're on a spree?
Over the teeth, behind the gums,
Look out stomach here she comes
Hi! Have another drink on me.

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.
Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.
Trinkle, trinkle, trinkle, trinkle.
Slice of cheese and bite of pickle
Doesn't even cost a nickel
Now to wash it down.

Clink, clink, no more to drink
I had a cellar full, but now it’s gone.
Drink, drink, the glasses clink
Like the anvil chorus and my head is splitting,
uh, brinking, uh, busting. Oh brother!

Oh, ow, what'll I do now
Pink elephants running after me.
Oh, that stuff is smooth as silk
From now on I'll stick to milk.
Nothing else to drink for me.

Birthday celebration with my son

It's been the fourth year of rabbit since I was born. There are 12 zodiac sings and therefore I am 36 years old now.

Although so insecure I feel about what's going on next year and the year after next year, I have managed to survive so far. It's absolutely awful to be on tenterhooks, but I am gratified to have a one-year-old son celebrating the date of my birth with me.