Gillian

Another guest-selector, my old copain Erwin, has chosen a great song by the lovely Gillian Hills from 1961, written by Charles Aznavour. Erwin has written a little story to accompany the track Jean Lou:

"Evening to night. Dark black a darker blue zebra electric lights. Bongo in the Cité.

Gillian, slave to the rythm and origin in one. Large screen, the Kit Kat bar in silent shadowplay. Her body still, hips moving, she's making a hand sign. Chequered paving and brick stone wall in head lights, it's starting to rain. Un whiskey s.v.p.

Rhythm entwined by her singing, her words end in tempo. She sports a tear in her voice, female ploys. A pastiche ancient cliché. Smokings and striptease. It's so thin it turns transparent: we see the members of the ensemble during the recording session, fatherly primal french, post-war optimists in shirt and spencer, smilingly aware of their joyful profession they nodd at each other during their play. Gillian, plain in blouse and ski pants, and head phones much too big. European rock guitar, infantile sounding to the American, so much deeper in spirit. Goes along with the saxophone, parquet flooring and panelled ceiling in a Paris midday sun.

On Jean Lou, chilly killer. Appears in the cellar via dark side steps, they smoke around him. Phantom, phenomenon, she is posessed, tad insane for his love. Like he cares. Jean Lou savage. She dwells in his rimboo.

He did her on a dead afternoon. Cold snow and she felt his scar, he vanished. Perhaps this evening...she smokes and she thinks, she has been drinking for the first time in ages. She is singing in a mist, lost her way. For certain he is outside pissing or something like that.

Jean Lou is little music made so untemperedly skillful, precisely by shamelessly applying only the stereotypes, liberated from further pretension to artistry. Hills' voice can do everything, convinces as the late teenager desired
by many, who yearns only for the cold indifferent player Jean Lou.

That nice mélange of plastic and feeling echoes in intensity the Broadway melody ballet scene from film classic Singin' in the Rain, where tables are turned; Gene Kelly is being sexually swaddled in by Cyd Charrisse. That
was in the States, Chevy Corvette and Harley Davidson. Jean Lou is Old Europe. Citroën Ami 6 and Vespa 150. Music made for the bourgeois, and brilliant. Merci, monsieur Aznavour.


Hear Here.