Category: Culture

Review: Paris Blues | The Arts Desk

The original 1961 poster for Paris Blues trumpeted it as “a love-spectacular so personally exciting you feel it’s happening to you”. Would it were actually thus. Instead, it’s ponderous and features a cast so obviously “acting” that any verve implied by being filmed in Paris and set in the world of jazz is missing in action. Paris Blues is worth seeing, but don’t expect the pulse to quicken.

Read the Full Review: DVD/Blu-ray: Paris Blues | The Arts Desk

Reeperbahn rendezvous: the glorious dive bar photos of Anders Petersen 

“Lehmitz was the first thing I did seriously. It filled me up,” says Anders Petersen. “I really identified with these people and their situation, this group who were outside society. I respected them. I felt very strongly about them.”

 

Petersen’s photographs of Cafe Lehmitz and its customers – regulars in a Hamburg red-light-district dive at the fag end of the 60s – have long been among the most revered of photobooks. First published in 1978, Cafe Lehmitz became part of pop culture when Tom Waits used one as the cover of his 1985 Rain Dogs album.Almost five decades after the photos were shot, the Swedish photographer, now 72, has revised his Lehmitz archive for an exhibition in Paris of previously unseen images

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Grand Corps Malade

A friend in Paris recently turned me on to this amazing talent known as Grand Corps Malade.  Also known as  Fabien Marsaud, the poet performs both a capella, and occasionally accompanied by a small jazz ensemble.

I love this video “Pocahontas,” which features family members and friends recreating photographs from their past.

In 1997, a diving accident left Marsaud unable to walk for a period of two years. Marsaud claimed the name “Grand Corps Malade” (meaning “Tall Sick Body” in French) in reference to his condition as well as his height (nearly 6’4″). The former basketball star regained the ability to walk in 1999, and started his career as “slam poet” in 2003.

2013’s Funambule is the fourth studio album, with the musical direction of musician and trumpet player Ibrahim Maalouf. The album Continue reading “Grand Corps Malade” →