Jane Birkin

Bought Jane's Arabesque Voyage-dvd the other day for 5 euros in a record shop - what a great performance! I knew the album, and I saw some clips, but how fragile, how intimate and how joyous this show is to watch, shot at the beautiful Odeon theater in Paris. For the show and the album, Jane fused songs written by Serge with North-African folkmusic, to great result. Especially her duet with singer Memouen on Valse de Melody (that had an Arabic feel in the original version) is stunning.
At the same time I read a piece on the interview Jane gave to German newspaper Die Zeit, in which she talks about her infamous cuffed-to-the-bed picture, and Je t'aime.

Manchmal signiere ich heute noch nach einem Konzert das Foto, auf dem ich nackt an eine Heizung gefesselt bin. Ich finde mich darauf sehr schön. Aber tatsächlich gibt es, glaube ich, selbst heute keine Schauspielerin, die so etwas tun würde. Es war Serge, der mich für dieses Foto fesselte. Ich mochte es gar nicht. Ich mochte schon das Lied Je t’aime nicht

(Transl: "I still sign that picture after a concert. I think I look very beautiful. But I don't think that any actress nowadays would let herself be photographed that way. Serge cuffed me to the bed for that picture. I did not like it. I did not like Je t'aime, for that matter.") Hmm. Further down, she says that when she broke up with Serge, she felt like she wasn't his puppet anymore. But nowadays, she's reminded of Serge 20 times a day, because people bring him up everytime. "I don't need to think of him myself", she says.
Singing a lot of songs by Serge, like she's going to on February 1 in Paradiso, Amsterdam, helps a lot too, I guess.

Jane Birkin - Valse de Melody
See original version here.
EXTRA:
Beck & Jane Birkin - L'Anamour
Video? Here!

Oh, and by the way, on February 16, not only Thomas Deligny (Boutique Chic) will be at our next Chick Habit party @ De Nieuwe Anita Amsterdam, Minimatic will be present too!