SOUNDTRACK: THE DJANGO FESTIVAL ALL-STARS-“Them There Eyes” (Field Recordings, October 23, 2014).
This Field Recording was done under what looks like an old bridge outside of the Newport Jazz Festival.
Every year for the last decade and a half, select groups of hot swing musicians have come from Europe to tour the U.S. The exact lineups change, but they all feature masters of the “gypsy jazz” — or jazz manouche — style pioneered by guitarist Django Reinhardt. In fact, they’re billed under the banner of New York’s Django Reinhardt Festival.
After the last set of the Festival, done by the All-Stars, they asked the band, who had little time to spare, to play one last song. Soon fingers were flying [The Fastest Fingers At The Festival, For Django Reinhardt] The video there doesn’t work, but you can watch it on YouTube.
They chose the standard “Them There Eyes,” and to paraphrase its lyrics: They sparkled, they bubbled, and they got up to a whole lot of trouble.
Samson Schmitt, plays an amazing lead guitar–his soloing is blinding. The rhythm guitar from DouDou Cuillerier keeps up a great shuffle and Brian Torff on bass keeps the pace as everyone else gets a chance to solo wildly.
First up is Ludovic Beier, accordion and as a bystander observed: “He has the fastest fingers I’ve ever seen.” And he does, it’s amazing. His solo is followed by Pierre Blanchard, violin. And Peter hits notes that seem like they might not actually exist on the violin.
There’s no vocals in the version which is just as well. No one would be able to keep up.
[READ: January 28, 2018] “Little Deaths”
Félix Fénéon was born in 1861. In 1906 he wrote 1,220 brief items under the rubric “News in Three Lives” for the Paris newspaper Le Matin. They were collected in a book and translated by Luc Sante
Seeing that these were written over time makes a lot more sense than having them all printed in a book–I mean, 1,220 deaths would be a lot to do all at once. It’s still hard to believe that these would be printed in a newspaper at all.
Some examples in their entirety:
“If my candidate , I will kill myself,” M. Bellavoine, of Fresquienne, Seine- Inferieure, had declared. He killed himself.
Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.
Le Verbeau hit Marie Champion right on her breasts, but he burned his eye, because acid is not a precision weapon.
A poor box dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua was smashed in the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois. The saint is on the trail of the thief.
Some other deaths include drinking kerosene, jumping in front of train, a boy found in a ditch who had “undergone more than just death” and yet more acid.
Fascinating.
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