We're kicking off this Month of Male on Filles Sourires with one of my alltime favourite French rocksongs: Cargo de Nuit by Axel Bauer. It's from 1983, it was Axel's debut-single and France went apeshit when it was released. Over 700.000 singles were sold. The video, which was my first introduction to the song, was based on R.W. Fassbinder's movie Querelle - it made a sexsymbol out of the then 22-year old Bauer. It took a while before Bauer got a grip of both himself and the mega-succes - albums released after Cargo sold poorly, his record company went broke and the young singer got himself into a musical identity crisis. After his move to Britain, he returned as a bluesrocker - the 2003-compilation Desintégrale shows that Bauer was a one-hit-wonder. Well, okay, his 2001-duet with Zazie is nice too. After 25 years, Cargo de Nuit still rocks, the electronica sounds fresh today and the lyrics are magnificent: Mais cette machine dans ma tête/Machine sourde et tempête.
The title and the song were borrowed and used by French-Belgian music-tvshow Cargo de Nuit, presented by Ray Cokes. This show introduced me to the song, but also to clips by David Sylvian, Scritti Politti and Elvis Costello. Cargo was also sampled by French rapper Tagada Jones.
Axel Bauer - Cargo de Nuit
Axel Bauer & Zazie - A Ma Place
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