Oops, totally forgot Mark Willis’ Café Mouffe, which is on every friday (now irregularly), at his blog. Over here, we have started digitizing our bizarre record collection, which ranges from hard to find Moshiko Israeli folkdance records to obscure opera singers trying their hand at Schubert. I had a french teacher who made us listen to and translate his favorite chansons by ear, to improve our listening skills, and this worked fine. So apart from being fairly fluent in French (thank you mr. Janitchek), I have been exposed to his musical taste, which wasn’t at all bad. He fed us George Brassens a lot (don’t like Brassens, sorry) and he had a crush on Vicky Leandros, before she migrated to Germany and started to get involved in Schlager culture. Now, in our house, we love Vicky too (we have a record of Après Toi, as performed at ESC in the 1970s, of course, I may add), but we love the early Vicky even more, her “hip french chick” phase, so to speak. Soon, soon, it’ll be the Tour de France again, which in the Netherlands means “Radio Tour de France“, which serves live étappe reports and a generous helping of chansons, like those of Francis Cabrel. His “Je l’aime à Mourir“, brings back the buzzing silence of nearly empty french cafés in the south, pinball machine in the corner and the guy tending bar talking over the day’s étappe with his one regular customer.
[edit: this is great too]