French pranksters replace holy water with alcohol

Tourists visiting a church in the picturesque French town of Chateau-Chalon were surprised to discover that local pranksters had replaced the fonts’ holy water with alcohol, the local tourism office said on Friday.

A dozen tourists sniffed out the telltale signs of eau-de-vie, a clear fruit brandy, when they visited the church in Jura, eastern France, at the end of August. “I made the sign of the cross and it smelt like eau-de-vie. Is this a local tradition?” the tourists asked officials at the nearby visitor centre. The enquiries prompted the authorities to carry out an impromptu investigation.  “A litre of brandy had been poured into both of the fonts, you really smelt the alcohol when you walked into the church,” local tourism official Pauline Fisseau said. The church is not regularly used for mass and the fonts are usually empty. The two fonts were immediately drained and cleaned before being filled with more traditional holy water ahead of a festival the following day. The identity of the pranksters and their intentions remains unknown. Village mayor Christian Vuillaume said it was “clearly a joke”.

Source: French pranksters replace holy water with alcohol – The Local

Charlotte Gainsbourg Announces First New Album in 7 Years

 

Rest includes collaborations with Paul McCartney, Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, and others

Charlotte Gainsbourg has announced the long-awaited follow-up to her Beck-assisted 2010 album IRM (and the 2011 compilation Stage Whisper). Rest is out November 17 via Because Music. She’s also shared the title track, which was co-written and produced by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Check out the song below, and scroll down to preview her self-directed music video. The album was produced by SebastiAn and features collaborations with Paul McCartney, Owen Pallett, Connan Mockasin, and others. Check out the tracklist and album artwork below.

Rest is the first Gainsbourg album where she wrote the lyrics herself. “In the shadow of my father, writing in French was something I never dared to do,” she said in a statement. Following the death of her sister, photographer Kate Barry, she said she decided to write an album about loss, public life, childhood fears, and more.

Source: Charlotte Gainsbourg Announces First New Album in 7 Years | Pitchfork

The Making of a Counterculture Cook 

An excerpt from Alice Waters’s new book, ‘Coming to My Senses’

“When I got back from France, I moved into an old Victorian house on Dwight Way. I felt like the most sophisticated person. I just thought I knew everything. I wanted to live like the French. As luck would have it, a Frenchman, Pierre Furlan, lived downstairs from me in the basement apartment, and he would pop into our lives every so often.

Sometimes when we were experimenting with French recipes, Pierre Furlan would call upstairs, ask what we were having for dinner, come up, and cook. He knew how to cook and would make corrections and additions or give bits of advice if we were going off the rails. At the time, I was making a lot of buckwheat crêpes and watching plenty of Julia Child. She was speaking my language. She was very funny and grounded — she’d drop the chicken on the floor, pick it up, and keep right on going — and I wanted to master the art of French cooking, exactly that. I did buy her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but it was more or less incomprehensible to me; it had no pictures, long and detailed recipes, and lots of writing about precision. It was daunting. But luckily there was the TV show — I loved her manner, and she was a Francophile just like I was. “[ . . . ]

Read More: The Making of a Counterculture Cook – Eater

Jazz in La Villette: Sarah Murcia celebrates the Sex Pistols, Magic Malik and Vic Moan

Sarah Murcia is a double bassist, singer, composer and eclectic and brilliant arranger. She has performed three times this year at Jazz in La Villette. This week’s evening, with her group, is a re-release of the album “Sex Pistols”. Sarah Murcia is an amateur singer and songwriter, who is a student of the American Academy of Music. Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Fred Choulet, Elysian Fields, Sylvain Cathala, Steve Coleman and Kamilya Jubran. She also writes for cinema and dance. In 2001, [ . . . ]

More: Jazz in La Villette: Sarah Murcia celebrates the Sex Pistols, Magic Malik and Vic Moan

“At the Cigale, the room vibrates at the same time as the music”

INTERVIEW – The pop-rock hall with its special acoustics, in the heart of Pigalle, celebrates its 30th anniversary. Jean-Louis Ménanteau, its director since 2011,

 

LE FIGARO – Why is La Cigale so special?

Jean-Louis MENANTEAU – It was a center of culture in Paris before the venue became a theater [it is a former erotico-kung-fu cinema]. Jacques Renault [the co-founder of the hall in 1987] wanted to make it a pop-rock room that allows amplified music to occur under decent conditions . In 1987, it was really no obvious, there were many places where the sound was not at all. It was also the period Jacques Lang, post-1981, very favorable to pop-rock sound.

Tell us about the acoustics of the room …

It is a set of elements that give the room its rich sound that can be hard-hitting without being aggressive. The architects  [ . . . ]

Read Full Story: “At the Cigale, the room vibrates at the same time as the music”

Autour du Velvet Underground

Entretien avec Joseph Ghosn et Philippe Azoury, auteurs de l’excellente biographie “The Velvet Underground” aux éditions Actes Sud Rocks. L’occasion de revenir sur ce groupe mythique, devenu au fil des décennies une pierre d’angle de l’histoire du rock, aujourd’hui l’objet d’une

Listen: Autour du Velvet Underground